Visitors explore an immersive environment that puts them inside a droplet of water, inspired by the discoveries of Robert Hooke and Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.
The Linda Hall Library exhibit traces humanity’s quest for enlightenment from Medieval mysticism to AI
This season, The Linda Hall exhibition, “The Alchemy of Knowledge,” pays homage to the relentless quest for enlightenment that has propelled science and art alike over the span of a few thousand years. With an astonishing collection of original manuscripts and tomes from some of humanity’s greatest thinkers, “Alchemy” shows off the instruction manual for the universe that we have created so far.
But is this exhibit an affirmation of humankind’s great intellectual leaps that assures us we can still find a way to scatter the goblins who clamor to block the path? Or a poetic benediction, mourning our stunted progress in the era in which humanity gave away its soul?
Winding its way through the wings of the library galleries, “Alchemy” makes a noble effort at enshrouding viewers in a setting with the recreation of a medieval European forest that one can’t help but suspect might be haunted, or at the very least enchanted. It reminds visitors of a time before humans understood germ theory or celestial movement, but they still sought to find ways of explaining them, be it with mysticism, specious reasoning, or faith.
This section of the gallery offers an interactive component wherein visitors can manipulate objects to reveal the methods by which alchemists endeavored to divine natural phenomena. Even when people lack the means to understand invisible processes, they nonetheless want to know what makes them happen.
Renaissance era’s revolutionary advances in science.
If the exhibit’s prelude is a quaint nod to archaic superstition, the arrival of the Scientific Revolution and the Renaissance harkens the main act. In hindsight, of course, the intellectual bounty of this period may seem obvious. But to stand amid the echoes of pioneers like Galileo and Newton is a humbling experience when one reflects upon the tenacity it took to defy centuries of hegemonic dogma. Armed only with their minds and their senses (and yes, monetary support from benefactors), these iconoclasts strove to weave a canon of the universe bound by reason and evidence. And they did so unencumbered by an obsession to commodify their discoveries or amass great personal wealth, seizing the fallen, but still potent baton from the ancient mathematicians and philosophers and carrying it resolutely into modernity.
The section of the gallery devoted to the scientific heavyweights is outfitted to impress, with items like a copy of Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger, 1610) by Galileo Galilei. The first published work based upon celestial observations with a telescope, this treatise earned its author the condemnation of the Catholic Church for its support of heliocentrism. The book is displayed to reveal a page of sketches Galileo made of the scarred lunar surface — a challenge to the prevailing beliefs about the origin and composition of earth’s moon.
Beyond the usual suspects, “Alchemy” highlights a triumvirate of chemists — Robert Boyle, Johann Glauber and Andreas Libavius, whose work emphasized the importance of designing experiments that can test a hypothesis and produce replicable outcomes.
In a creative recognition of the relationship between science and art, the exhibit includes a section that illuminates how William Shakespeare entwined scientific developments of his age with the magical and fantastical tendencies of his characters. Showcasing Elizabethan costumes alongside excerpts from some of the Bard’s most famous plays, like Hamlet, The Tempest and Othello, the space invites visitors to contemplate the intersection of facts and fancy.
“Alchemy” concludes with a jarring reminder that in the present, humans are delegating an extraordinary amount of their thinking, research and decision-making to artificial intelligence. And while the exhibit does not condemn this trend outright, it does not shy from cultivating a sense of unease. The final gallery, festooned in printouts of AI-generated documents and pictures, dares people to ask themselves how replaceable they really are.
One theme of the Scientific Revolution is that Knowledge and Truth walked the same road. The books and artifacts in “Alchemy” remind us of a time when information had intrinsic value and when it demanded respect, even in the face of institutional intransigence.
The individual and collective actions humans choose today will determine whether or not, as Shakespeare notes, “what’s past is prologue.”
“The Alchemy of Knowledge” continues at The Linda Hall, 5109 Cherry St., through Oct. 10. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday – Friday, and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. second Saturdays. For more information, 816.363.4600 or www.lindahall.org.
All photos courtesy of The Linda Hall
