BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Discovery and Revelation: Religion, Science, and Making Sense of Things

DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: Discovery and Revelation: Religion, Science, and Making Sense of Things:

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Description of Pictures: Discovery and Revelation: Religion, Science, and Making Sense of Things
March 18, 2022 – March 1, 2023
Religious and scientific ideas have influenced each other in surprising ways throughout American history. This interaction of religious ideas with scientific and technological advances are one of the most significant factors in the development of spiritual traditions and communities in the U. S. Discovery and Revelation looks at critical religious and scientific crossroads across three centuries, beginning with a 1721 controversy concerning smallpox and Puritan notions of divine judgement, and ending with encounters of technology and belief in the digital age. Artifacts on view are drawn from the museum's vast collections, ranging from medicine and science objects related to the work of the theologian-chemist Joseph Priestley; technology collections related to Samuel Morse and his telegraph as well as objects illustrating recent research into religion and the brain. Objects on loan from other Smithsonian museums include a portrait of Henrietta Lacks and a letter written by Galileo; the National Library of Medicine is loaning 18th century pamphlets and Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Rod is on loan from the Franklin Institute with the National Library of Medicine loaning 18th century pamphlets.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. SENSE_220410_009.JPG: Dru-gu Choegyal Rinpoche, a Buddhist teacher, wearing sensors that measure brain activity, 2003
2. SENSE_220410_016.JPG: When you have big questions, where do you look for answers? Religion? Science? Both? The same has been true of every generation.
3. SENSE_220410_019.JPG: Can science be religious? “I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” George Washington Carver Botanist
4. SENSE_220410_027.JPG: Can religion be scientific? “If … Science is not of God, then there is no invariable law, and truth becomes an accident.” Mary Baker Eddy Founder of The Church of Christ, Scientist
5. SENSE_220410_032.JPG: Neuroscientists have studied the physical effects of religious practice in the brain. One team at the University of Wisconsin studied Buddhist monks and nuns as they meditated in order to measure and map their brain activity. Researchers found that brain regions associated with subjective feelings, emotions, and even consciousness experienced a surge of activity during meditation. And they found that long-term meditation alters structures and functions deep within the brain.
6. SENSE_220410_033.JPG: What does it mean to be human? People have turned to both religion and science when debating questions about our inner lives, selves, or souls. What makes us tick? For centuries, people have used the metaphor of machines to understand the universe and themselves. Renaissance technologies like the ticking gears inside this 1550s mechanical monk helped inspire the Enlightenment-era concept of a divinely created “clockwork universe” that governed the stars, planets, and all aspects of life. Today scientists study the complex workings of the brain to understand the mechanisms that govern practices and beliefs.
7. SENSE_220410_036.JPG: People have turned to both religion and science when debating questions about our inner lives, selves, or souls. What makes us tick? For centuries, people have used the metaphor of machines to understand the universe and themselves. Renaissance technologies like the ticking gears inside this 1550s mechanical monk helped inspire the Enlightenment-era concept of a divinely created “clockwork universe” that governed the stars, planets, and all aspects of life. Today scientists study the complex workings of the brain to understand the mechanisms that govern practices and beliefs.
8. SENSE_220410_045.JPG: Does religion or science have the answers? “Faith” is a fine invention For Gentlemen who see! But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency! Emily DickinsonPoet
9. SENSE_220410_047.JPG: Neuroscientists have studied the physical effects of religious practice in the brain. One team at the University of Wisconsin studied Buddhist monks and nuns as they meditated in order to measure and map their brain activity. Researchers found that brain regions associated with subjective feelings, emotions, and even consciousness experienced a surge of activity during meditation. And they found that long-term meditation alters structures and functions deep within the brain.
10. SENSE_220410_050.JPG: Matthieu Ricard (center), one of the Buddhist monks who participated in brain studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging conducted by Dr. Richard Davidson (right), director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University Wisconsin-Madison, 2008
11. SENSE_220410_061.JPG: The Spiritual Lives of Scientists From the 1900s to today, Americans’ sense of self has often relied on their relationships to religion and science. Despite widespread belief that religion and science are in conflict, many scientists find meaning in spiritual sources. Even among professional scientists, religion can be both a source of new ideas and a means for describing discoveries that challenge human understanding. Botanist George Washington Carver called his lab “God’s little workshop”; geneticist Barbara McClintock considered her work to be influenced by Buddhism; and physicist Charles Townes believed that his contributions to the invention of the laser were divinely inspired.
12. SENSE_220410_063.JPG: The Technology of Prayer When people are separated by distance from their religious traditions and communities, sometimes technology can step in. Muslims worldwide have embraced technologies like digital azaan clocks that display times for salat, or daily prayers, and GPS-powered apps to identify the direction of Mecca, which they face during prayer. And younger generations of Muslims can rely on high-tech prayer mats in learning traditional practice. One, iPrayer, has a digital audio console preprogrammed to play the correct combination of recitations for each of the five daily prayers of Islam.
13. SENSE_220410_074.JPG: The Science of Religious Experience Both long-practiced rituals and recent experiments show that the brain plays a key role in religious experience. The use of peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus, is a traditional religious practice among Indigenous peoples of the Southern Plains. Its chemical compounds interact with the brain and may encourage spiritual experience. Scientists have found similar results when using technology to experiment on the brain. When volunteers donned a helmet that stimulated their brains with magnetic pulses, some reported perceiving an outside presence, which they believed to be God.
14. SENSE_220410_079.JPG: The Politics of Religion and Science Tensions flare over questions of whether and how religion and science should influence policy decisions. Because religion and science are so often seen in terms of absolutes—absolutely right or wrong—people draw on both when arguing social and political issues. Both guide debates about issues such as health care and climate change because they are closely tied to personal and community identities.
15. SENSE_220410_085.JPG: Protest sign, 2014
16. SENSE_220410_089.JPG: From the 1900s to today, Americans' sense of self has often relied on their relationships to religion and science.
17. SENSE_220410_092.JPG: Peyote serving tray made by Rev. Immanuel P. Trujillo and used by the San Carlos Apache, around 1955
18. SENSE_220410_094.JPG: “God Helmet,” a snowmobile helmet modified for use in neuroscientific experiments in Dr. Persinger's lab, 1989
19. SENSE_220410_099.JPG: iPrayer Mat, 2014
20. SENSE_220410_101.JPG: Engraving of George Washington Carver distributed to churches, 1946
21. SENSE_220410_105.JPG: Barbara McClintock’s microscope, around 1940
22. SENSE_220410_109.JPG: Maser Focusing Assembly
23. SENSE_220410_111.JPG: What do we owe each other? Religion and science have shaped debates over ethics, justice, and the greater good. Just months before Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951, doctors harvested cells from her tumor without her consent. They found that Lacks’s cells were unique: cultured in the lab, they reproduced indefinitely—a first. Her cells revolutionized the development and testing of drugs and treatments, while earning pharmaceutical companies millions in profits. Yet the story behind HeLa cells, as they are known, is part of the long, tragic history of medicine’s exploitation of Black patients. Even as they continue to be used by researchers today, HeLa cells raise questions about patients’ rights, medical ethics, and systemic racism in the face of a perceived common good. [THE FACE] For a long time Henrietta Lacks was lost to history. The Baltimore resident—raised on a tobacco farm in rural Virginia—was the working mother of five children. She lost her life to cervical cancer at the age of 31. [THE WALLPAPER] The “Flower of Life” pattern of the wallpaper is a symbol of immortality. In a way, Henrietta Lacks is immortal. Cells taken from her body in 1951 are still alive today—which some people consider a miracle. [THE HAT] The hat (or is it a ring of light?) suggests a halo, long used in art as a marker of holiness. Some of Lacks’s family members are devout Christians who believe the ongoing life of HeLa cells makes her a kind of angel. [THE DRESS] The pattern of her dress suggests the replicated HeLa cells that have played a role in countless medical advances. The missing buttons on her dress symbolize the taking and using of her cells without her consent. [THE BIBLE] The artist depicts Lacks holding the symbol of her faith over her body where HeLa cells were harvested, suggesting that scientific discoveries are open to religious interpretation. Henrietta Lacks (HeLa): The Mother of Modern Medicine by Kadir Nelson, 2017 Loan from Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of African American History and Culture; gift from Kadir Nelson and JKBN Group, LLC
24. SENSE_220410_127.JPG: Just months before Henrietta Lacks died of cervical cancer in 1951, doctors harvested cells from her tumor without her consent. They found that Lacks’s cells were unique: cultured in the lab, they reproduced indefinitely—a first. Her cells revolutionized the development and testing of drugs and treatments, while earning pharmaceutical companies millions in profits. Yet the story behind HeLa cells, as they are known, is part of the long, tragic history of medicine’s exploitation of Black patients. Even as they continue to be used by researchers today, HeLa cells raise questions about patients’ rights, medical ethics, and systemic racism in the face of a perceived common good.
25. SENSE_220410_140.JPG: Henrietta Lacks (HeLa): The Mother of Modern Medicine by Kadir Nelson, 2017 Loan from Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of African American History and Culture; gift from Kadir Nelson and JKBN Group, LLC
26. SENSE_220410_150.JPG: Religion and science have shaped debates over ethics, justice, and the greater good.
27. SENSE_220410_155.JPG: Are religion and science in conflict? "The history of Science . . . is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and . . . traditionary faith and human interests on the other." John William Draper Chemist and historian
28. SENSE_220410_158.JPG: Ellen Harding Baker’s “Solar System Quilt,” 1876
29. SENSE_220410_161.JPG: Stitching Together Religion and Science In the 1800s, the public experienced awe through astronomy—especially comets illuminating the night sky. Ellen Harding Baker spent seven years making this quilt to illustrate her astronomy lectures in churches and community halls across Iowa. In cotton, wool, and elaborate silk embroidery, she depicted the sun, stars, and planets. The blazing comet in the corner may represent one that in 1882 inspired religious musings and wonder at the universe.
30. SENSE_220410_165.JPG: Ellen Harding Baker, around 1870s
31. SENSE_220410_168.JPG: Darwin’s Legacy Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution challenged traditional religious explanations of human origins. Some religious people, seeing divine intent in evolutionary change, embraced Darwin’s theory. Others saw it as a threat. In the 1925 Scopes Trial, a conflict over evolution in a high school textbook captured the imagination of millions, inspiring headlines and popular songs. Only later was it noted that the textbook at the heart of the trial encouraged eugenics—a method of social engineering that valued certain bodies over others.
32. SENSE_220410_170.JPG: A Civic Biology, 1914, the textbook that sparked the Scopes Trial
33. SENSE_220410_174.JPG: Record inspired by Scopes Trial debates, 1925
34. SENSE_220410_177.JPG: A first edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, 1860
35. SENSE_220410_180.JPG: Binghamton Press newspaper, 1925
36. SENSE_220410_183.JPG: In the 1800s, both religion and science evoked wonder, but at times their interactions gave rise to conflict.
37. SENSE_220410_187.JPG: Wet-cell battery, around 1894
38. SENSE_220410_190.JPG: Experimental telegraph key, 1843
39. SENSE_220410_191.JPG: The Spiritual Telegraph The technological advances of the 1800s had surprising religious side effects. When Samuel Morse introduced his telegraph in 1844, he sent a Bible verse via electric dots and dashes over a wire stretched from D.C. to Baltimore: “What hath God wrought.” Later, wet-cell batteries used to power telegraph links across the country bore the name and likeness of a biblical strong man. In a twist, Spiritualists—who believed the living could communicate with the spirits of the dead—used the telegraph as both a metaphor and a tool for their practice.
40. SENSE_220410_195.JPG: Message sent during the first public demonstration of the telegraph, 1844
41. SENSE_220410_198.JPG: The Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences, by Edward Hitchcock, 1851
42. SENSE_220410_203.JPG: The Age of the Earth Orra and Edward Hitchcock believed that newfound fossils expanded their understanding of religion. Geological discoveries and fossil finds—from mastodon bones to dinosaur tracks—challenged biblical accounts of the formation of the earth. Even as Edward, a minister turned geologist, and Orra, a scientific illustrator, promoted these new findings, they argued that the discoveries did not contradict the Bible—just common understandings of it. Each of the seven days of creation in the Book of Genesis, they reasoned, should be interpreted as millions of years.
43. SENSE_220410_206.JPG: Drawing of a mastodon used as a teaching aid, by Orra Hitchcock, 1828–1840
44. SENSE_220410_209.JPG: Flask used by Joseph Priestley, 1790s Walking stick, gifted by Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, around 1800
45. SENSE_220410_212.JPG: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, compiled by Thomas Jefferson, 1820
46. SENSE_220410_217.JPG: Experimental Scripture Joseph Priestley and Thomas Jefferson both applied scientific principles to Christianity. Joseph Priestley, a Unitarian minister and a chemist who identified oxygen, advocated a theology that was equal parts religion and science. He believed that any religious thinking that failed to meet scientific muster should be revised. Priestley’s provocative views inspired his friend Thomas Jefferson to create an edited version of the biblical Gospels by cutting and pasting only parts that could be proved through reason or evidence.
47. SENSE_220410_219.JPG: Fossil popularly known as "footprints on Noah's raven" after accounts of the biblical flood, discovered in 1802
48. SENSE_220410_223.JPG: Does science disprove religion? “Science is how things change, not why; it does not mean there is no God.” Dr. Fatimah Jackson Biologist
49. SENSE_220410_227.JPG: Do religion and science answer the same questions? “Science polishes the gift of seeing, indigenous traditions work with gifts of listening and language.” Robin Wall Kimmer Ecologist
50. SENSE_220410_230.JPG: The Age of Reason In the 1800s, both religion and science evoked wonder, but at times their interactions gave rise to conflict. Thomas Paine developed new ideas that complicated religious teachings. Revolutionary-era political activist Thomas Paine was fascinated with orreries, moving mechanical models of the solar system. In them he perceived a natural order that seemed a more perfect reflection of divine design than was suggested by the Bible. Even as he envisioned “every house of devotion a school of science,” critics accused him of attacking religion.
51. SENSE_220410_234.JPG: Orrery, around 1820
52. SENSE_220410_244.JPG: Lakota winter count, covering 1786 to 1876, including “the year stars fell from the sky,” the 1833 Leonoid meteor shower
53. SENSE_220410_250.JPG: Benjamin Banneker's journal, 1781
54. SENSE_220410_252.JPG: Recording the Cosmos Religion and science intermingle in the kept records of many communities across time and space. Farmer-mathematician-astronomer Benjamin Banneker journaled celestial observations side by side with notes on religion, including vivid accounts of his spiritual dreams. Keepers among the Lakota of the Northern Plains recorded the history of their extended family groups in arrays of pictographs known as winter counts. With each image representing a single year, winter counts maintained memories of remarkable occurrences, often recounted in ceremonies at the center of community life.
55. SENSE_220410_253.JPG: Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky, by Benjamin West, around 1816
56. SENSE_220410_255.JPG: Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rod, 1760s
57. SENSE_220410_257.JPG: Heaven’s Lightnings Some considered Benjamin Franklin’s scientific innovations in religious terms. Benjamin Franklin applied lessons learned from his famous electrical experiments in developing lightning rods to protect buildings—hay-filled barns and churches with tall steeples, for example—from lightning strikes and fires. Critics declared it “impious to ward off Heaven’s lightnings” and accused Franklin of interfering with divine will. But he responded that “God in his goodness to mankind” had led him to the discovery
58. SENSE_220410_259.JPG: In the 1700s, new scientific ideas and practices complicated and enriched a world shaped by religion.
59. SENSE_220410_261.JPG: Faith and Healing In the 1700s, many faith leaders believed only prayer could cure disease, but others looked to science. During Boston’s 1721 smallpox epidemic, Puritan minister Cotton Mather broke with other clergy and advocated for preventative inoculation—a practice he learned of, in part, from a man he enslaved named Onesimus. Similarly, a Catholic nun in French New Orleans, Sister Francis Xavier Hebert, freely used her scientific knowledge—compounding herbs and other plants into medicines for the cure and comfort of those in her convent and beyond.
60. SENSE_220410_263.JPG: Detail from a painting imagining the 1727 arrival of Sister Francis Xavier Herbert’s order of nuns, 1859
61. SENSE_220410_265.JPG: Pamphlets arguing for and against smallpox inoculations, 1721 and 1722
62. SENSE_220410_274.JPG: Sister Francis Xavier Herbert’s mortar and pestle, 1697–1792
63. SENSE_220410_277.JPG: Does science contradict or coexist with religion? "I can't help wondering . . . how the scientific view of reality corresponds to the idea of reality in Buddhism." Trinh Xuan Thuan Astrophysicist
64. SENSE_220410_282.JPG: On Christmas Eve 1968, three astronauts aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft became the first humans to orbit the moon—and to see Earth from afar. For a television special broadcast worldwide, they transmitted images of the view out their window. Following a year of social and political upheaval, they wanted to send a message of hope. Each in turn read from the Book of Genesis, a story of the world’s creation. Not everyone appreciated hearing verses from the Bible on a broadcast celebrating a scientific milestone—including the founder of American Atheists, who filed a lawsuit in protest. Yet the moment highlighted one role religion continues to play in a world where some would claim science has replaced it.
65. SENSE_220410_284.JPG: For centuries, many people—informed by interpretations of the Bible—believed that God put Earth at the center the universe. In 1632 Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei advocated for the view that Earth orbited the sun in a solar system that was part of a larger galaxy. Some religious leaders were outraged, but a science-based understanding of space eventually replaced the view implied by biblical texts. Yet more than three hundred years later, when humans first orbited the moon, astronauts read from the Bible to express the wonder of seeing Earth shining in the darkness.
66. SENSE_220410_289.JPG: Apollo 8 flight manual, 1968
67. SENSE_220410_293.JPG: Letter by Galileo Galilie, following his arrest by suspicions of heresy, 1635
68. SENSE_220410_296.JPG: With awe and wonder, people have turned to both religion and science to understand their place in the universe.
69. SENSE_220410_302.JPG: When you have big questions, where do you look for answers? Religion? Science? Both? The same has been true of every generation.
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- 2021_DC_SIAH_Muppets: DC -- Natl Museum of American History -- Exhibit: The Muppets Take American History (27 photos from 2021)
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2022 photos: This year included major setbacks -- including Putin's invasion of Ukraine and the Supreme Court imposing the evangelical version of sharia law -- but also some steps forward like the results of the midterms. This website had its 20th anniversary in August, 2022. Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000. Trips this year: (February) a visit to see Dad and Dixie in Asheville, NC with some other members of my family, (July) a trip out west for the return of San Diego Comic-Con, and (October) a long weekend in New York to cover New York Comic-Con. Number of photos taken this year: about 386,000, up 2020 and 2021 levels but still way below pre-pandemic levels.
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Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].