Measuring Difference
Today, measurement is everywhere. We understand everything around us in inches, degrees, gallons, decibels, and more. Scientific instruments help us record precise measurements of what surrounds us—from land and sea to flora and fauna, human activity and productivity, and even human bodies. We measure what we can touch and see, as well as things we can’t, like stress and pain.
Yet measurements are human inventions. From the earliest societies to today, measures have helped to classify our surroundings. It is also through measures that we learn to compare the world, to see difference.
In the Americas, colonial powers introduced new measurements to describe and exploit the “New World.” Existing ways of understanding and explaining the world and our relationship to others were displaced, cementing European measures as norms and tools of authority. Using examples from across the Americas, this exhibit illustrates what —and who— was measured, and how.
Acknowledgments
This exhibition was made possible by the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments and the Harvard Museums of Science and Culture, with generous support from the office of Brenda Tindal, Chief Campus Curator, Harvard University.
With special thanks to our content experts and contributors:
Curator: Gabriela Soto Laveaga (Professor of the History of Science and Antonio Madero Professor for the Study of Mexico, Harvard University)
Curatorial Research Team: Katherine Enright (Harvard College ‘23); Manny Medrano (PhD candidate, Department of History, Harvard); Francis Newman (PhD candidate, Department of the History of Science, Harvard)
Artistic Contributor: Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez
With additional support from: the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University; the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University; the Warren Anatomical Museum, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School; Houghton Library, Harvard University; Harvard Art Museums; the Harvard Map Collection; the Ernst Mayr Library, Harvard University; the Harvard University Herbaria; and the Harvard University Mineralogical Collection.