I spent much of last Saturday with my wife and daughters (1 and 4) at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto. I had not been there in probably 15 years and was looking forward to the opportunity for my 4 year old to see the dinosaurs. The ROM is not a one day activity unless you are running and it is even slower with kids in tow. At most I figured we would have a 4 or 5 hour window before the youngest completely lost it. We were there from about 11 to 3:30 so my estimate was bang on. What brought me out to the museum in the first place was the American Museum of Natural History’s Darwin Exhibit. I had heard about this exhibit when it was in New York Last year so when I found out it would be closer to home I took the opportunity to attend.
My planned route through the museum considering we had three target exhibits (kid’s zone, dinosaurs and Darwin) was to hit the interesting stuff for the kids first. So the planned order was Dinos, kid’s zone and Darwin. I would change this order if I had it to do over. Always take the kids to the least interesting exhibit for them first, while they are still fresh. As interesting as Darwin is and my 4 year old didn’t mind the exhibit; he cannot compare to a dinosaur.
So after three hours of wandering through the bones and trying on medieval costumes and spelunking through artificial bat caves we headed to the basement exhibit area for the Darwin exhibit. My expectations were high. I think I envisioned tons of high tech displays and simulations; a sort of holodeck of Darwin’s life. It was not that at all. It turns out that real museums do not always have the same ability to spend as pretend museums in Kentucky. But those were just my expectations and as it turns out I was not disappointed in the least. When you are dealing with reality I think you do not need to be as overtly “Hollywood” to impress. While the creation museum looks like it could have been built by Steven Spielberg, this exhibit looks like it was build by scientists; and that’s fine with me.
I have had many “religious” experiences in my life and by religious I mean awe inspiring, tingling in the spine, hair stands up on ends. Sometimes laying on the ground on a summer night looking at the stars will do it, and from time to time I am struck by the beauty of nature. I had this experience again at the Darwin exhibit. Maybe it was the feeling of being in the presence of a couple hundred other rational people but I really think it had more to do with a feeling of witnessing how the most important idea ever; came to be. This is not an exaggeration; it really is the most important idea ever. I ties into all (or most) branches of science. It creates the opportunity for unheard of medical advances; it allows us to understand the world around us. It gives us the opportunity to shed the shackles of slavery that are forced on us by old authorities and teaches us to think for ourselves. To question, to learn; and if necessary to change.
While looking at the displays and reading about the voyage of the Beagle and explaining the similarities of the human hand to a bats wing as well as the differences in the beaks of finch’s to my oldest daughter; I was inspired. I had shivers on several occasions as I read. I already knew most of what I was learning, but tying it together was awe inspiring. The importance was reaffirmed, the evidence was presented. No robotic children riding on dinosaurs, just reality.
Official website: http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/darwin/