Wonder Cabinet
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During the Age of Discovery, from the mid-fifteenth century to mid-sixteenth century in Europe, a newfound curiosity about the natural world led to an increase both in exploration and collecting objects from locations abroad. These activities became intimately tied together. Various factors conspired to encourage exploration of the globe by sea and the "discovery" of the new world of America. In addition to technological, social, and political advances curiosity spurred European civilization to travel in search of new worlds. This curiosity was part of a larger intellectual movement that sought new forms of knowledge in the natural world, rather than in the previously dominant ecclesiastical one. This led to the spirit of rational inquiry and would lay the groundwork for the Renaissance, the Scientific Method, and the Enlightenment. As Europeans traveled beyond the Continent, they sought ways to share their discoveries with those at home. Because photography had not yet been invented, the explorers could not bring back visual records of the new world; they brought back objects instead.
The nobility, those who could afford both exploration and collection, placed their foreign treasures into wunderkammern (the cabinet of wonders) for contemplation. The wunderkammern was more than a collection of souvenirs; it symbolized a view of the universe as a great chain of being, in which planets, people, animals, vegetables, minerals, and metals are linked together in complex hierarchies of correspondences, with the Christian God at the top. This view encouraged the belief that every existing thing is in some measure a symbol or reflection of something else, and each item containing to some degree an emanation of divine unity. In the West, wunderkammern had roots in the collections of feudal lords. But by the sixteenth century they were widespread among the princes and members of the professional classes. The "cabinet of wonders" (also known as the cabinet of curiosities) reflected the belief that a human being had the ability to achieve universal knowledge. This represented a change in perception with the compartmentalization of knowledge in the Middle Ages.
The cabinet of curiosity is a precursor of the virtual collection. Things are seemingly put together disjointedly, putting an active demand on any user or viewer. To make associations, one cannot be passive; the eye must seek to create relevancy and meaning between objects or bits of virtual imagination. If these cabinets of wonders reflected the notion of the universe as a great chain of being, what then does a digital cabinet of wonders reflect?
See Also
- Wonder Cabinet
- Encyclopedia
- Commerce
- Cabinet
- TS Eliot
- WTC
