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Stumped

Lars Stenberg, Sensory Trust

Less than one in four (24%) British adults are able to correctly identify the Sycamore when shown a photograph of the tree found commonly throughout the UK according to the results of a joint survey by the Natural History Museum, London and Ipsos MORI in May this year.

Reportedly things get even worse when, according to a press release, “a worryingly low number were able to identify an ammonite, Britain’s most common fossil with less than 1 in 5 (17%) giving a correct answer.”

I was left with a feeling of ambivalence about the results of this survey. On reflection it’s the way knowledge is measured by this survey that makes me uncomfortable. It seems from the press releases that the knowledge the Natural History Museum requires from us is the sort that Victorian plant hunters had in abundance: the ability to identify and catalogue. This should not be surprising as it was the sort of ability that built the museum in the first place. The institution, however, seems disappointed that we’re not all dashing eagerly into the undergrowth armed with specimen pots, magnifying glasses and measuring devices like a horde of suburban Joseph Bankses.

In The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (Vintage, 1997) David Abrams argues that the development of written language has paralleled our gradual withdrawal from the oral, animist traditions in which we lived as part of our surroundings, knew their meaning and conversed with them on a day-to-day basis. Written language, the stock-in-trade of universities and museums, has enabled us to share knowledge and to debate more abstract concepts (such as truth and beauty) than the oral tradition could ever have coped with. Where centuries ago we could extract meaning from the way a tree shadow moved over a rock, we can now find meaning in patterns of abstract shapes printed on paper. We have shifted our conceptualising relationship from the natural world to the written word.

In order to engage visitors with an exhibit, interpretation professionals work hard to ensure that the information pertaining to the exhibit conveys meaning and relevance to those who attend. This is because the process of classification (and re-classification) of each element of the natural world does not in itself admit meaning. Science does not court relevance. Information useful to us in the past, such as “the berries will make you sick, but the root, if boiled, can stop your knees aching”, has been superseded by the mantra of Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. While our collective factual knowledge of the natural world - the whole world, not just our immediate environment - is measurably greater than that of our ancestors, much of the knowledge we trade in has little use outside the confines of an identification test such as that posed by the Natural History Museum, and presents no story to engage us. The contemporary version of the natural world is as impenetrable and irrelevant to the layperson as a photograph of a juicy bone is to a dog.

It could be argued that the scientific dissection of nature, which demotes our experiences to anecdotes and wonders to items in a collection list, is in large part responsible for our disengagement from the natural world. Natural History museums are founded on this process, and have a huge influence on how we view the natural world. For them to turn around and bemoan the fact that so many of us are ignorant of the natural world - within the terms that they have laid down - seems unfair and misses a more important point.

It’s not knowledge of the natural world that’s lacking, but experience. Most of us could spend ten minutes on Google images and ace the photo identification test without even looking out of the window. Similarly I spend a lot of time hiking in landscapes where I know the names of only a tiny fraction (usually the dangerous fraction) of what I encounter. I don’t need to know the names of the scarlet and electric blue parrots that fly through the forest in order to find them dazzlingly beautiful. If I wanted to inspire you to follow the track I had walked the previous day I would not start by listing the species, rock types and topographical features. I would share my anecdotal sensory experiences: the ground heaving around the tree roots on windy days, the spicy smell of fragrant shrubs, dappled sunlight through leaves, the blissful cool of the rock pool on aching legs, the smooth ancient rocks sculpted by the elements.

On its web site the Natural History Museum in London states its vision is “to advance our knowledge of the natural world, inspiring better care of our planet” as though inspiration naturally follows knowledge. I would argue that, while factual knowledge is fundamental to cataloguing and advancing our understanding of our environment science is, almost by definition, deliberately unengaging and it is emphatically not a key to inspiring contact with the natural world. By implying that the need for knowledge is a prerequisite for experience, it may even act as a barrier to many of us.

There is already too much division in our world and the schism between experience and knowledge is not helpful. On the one hand we have the rational scientific approach that views the immediacy of sensory experience with suspicion and, sometimes, contempt. Then, on the other hand we have the proponents of sensuous experience, who often fail to understand the importance on evidence and research.

What we really need, and what the Sensory Trust tries to do, is to marry the hard science - the rational research - with the understanding of the importance of anecdote and of qualitative evidence to engage all of us with where we live: our environment and our community.