Discussing the “multiculturality” of science with a mixed audience

Science, as we know it today, is the result of millennial exchanges of knowledge and scientific practices between various nations, empires and cultures. These multicultural aspects of science were the core of a project we carried out at the Giovanni Poleni Museum, to set up bridges between people and have them develop new installations and experiences that will, in the future, inspire new activities in the Museum.

But how can we discuss this “multiculturality” of science when engaging with mixed groups made of people of very diverse backgrounds, from pupils from technical schools to PhD students in physics and astronomy, refugees, members of the local community? To face this challenge, we used the “power” of the historical scientific devices kept at the Giovanni Poleni Museum.

Historical scientific devices have more to tell than the story about their function alone. At the Giovanni Poleni Museum in Padua, we wanted to explore how scientific instruments reflect the way cultures interact. Thus we designed a series of lectures on what we can call the “multiculturality” of science.  The lectures were the introductory part of a broader third-mission project entitled “Science from the Islamic world to today's Europe. Cross-Fertilization between past and future”, proposed by the Department of Physics and Astronomy of Padua University and the Giovanni Poleni Museum in 2022-2023.

In this article, after shortly presenting the broad third-mission project, we will analyse in detail only the very first lecture of the series, its goals, challenges, structure, strength points and weaknesses. To shed more light on its impact, we will also shortly present the final outputs of the third-mission project.

The third-mission project

Within this project, we created four working groups. One was made of students from a problematic technical school, while the other three groups were mixed. They were made of PhD students in physics and astronomy and members of the local community with very diverse profiles: a few participants were professionals with a university degree, others were studying in adult public evening schools, some were foreigners who had been working in Italy for years, others were recently arrived immigrants, in some cases refugees who did not know yet whether they were accepted in Italy.

People of various nationalities with very different backgrounds thus worked together and, after the introductory lectures, were invited to develop new teaching and popularization projects to present the multiculturality of science to other audiences. We will say a few words about these new projects at the end of this article.

Each member of our team worked in depth with one of the groups, but we planned and carried out most of the activities all together.

For the PhD students, participating in the project was part of a PhD soft-skills course. The main objective of the course was to provide students i) with knowledge on the history of science, with a special focus on the exchanges between cultures, and ii) with ideas and tools to communicate science and its history to the public. The course also provided students the opportunity of working in groups, with very diverse people, which was a challenge and, of course, a great opportunity of sharing knowledge and experiences.

As for the introductory lectures, there were three for each group:
• A lecture on some exchanges of scientific knowledge and practices that marked the development of science
• A workshop on astrolabes, which are paradigmatic of these exchanges, conducted by Silke Ackermann (University of Oxford) and Taha Arslan (University of Istanbul) as invited experts
• A replication of an 18th-century experimental physics lecture, with spectacular demonstrations, to provide elements of the history of western science, from Renaissance onwards

Goals and challenges of the first lecture: a 3-hour introduction to the multiculturality of science

As already mentioned, the main goal of the first lecture was to make participants aware that science was and still is based on a continuous exchange of knowledge and practices. We focused only on a few scientific disciplines, i.e. optics, pneumatics and astronomy. The objective was to follow some aspects of their development throughout the centuries.

Of course, the very diverse backgrounds of the participants were the main challenge and, useless to say, we – the organisers - were very excited to start the project, but also worried: How to present the topic to such a diverse audience? How could we get them all interested without being too obvious or too difficult? How to provide them with some knowledge and raise their curiosity to learn more? Would people work together in a collaborative way? How could this first meeting stimulate them to carry out collaborative activities on science and its history in the following meetings?  

To face these challenges, we decided
• to organise our lecture as a mixture of a frontal lecture and an informal workshop;
• to put the Poleni Museum’s objects at the core of the lecture, as historical scientific instruments are the material evidences of the transfers of scientific knowledge that took place between different cultures.
To analyse and evaluate the activities during the lecture, we used an observation framework – we examined in particular the way people worked together, the interest raised by objects, the questions raised, the level of attention during the frontal presentation.

The lecture hall - The Poleni Museum

For each group, the lecture was held at the Poleni Museum, in a small, welcoming and informal room, with instruments displayed in show-cases all around and a small theatre. The latter evokes the theatre set up in Padua for the first physics lecture-demonstrations in the 18th century.  The Poleni Museum actually hosts the instruments that were part of Padua University Cabinet of Physics, i.e. instruments used for research and teaching activities from the 18th century onwards.

The audience could sit in the small theatre for the frontal presentation and small tables were prepared in the room, so that it was very easy to switch from the frontal lecture pattern to activities carried out in very small groups – these smaller groups had of course to remain mixed, to always have diverse people work together.

The structure of the first introductory lecture

After a short introduction, we immediately asked the participants to divide in smaller groups, to work on historical instruments that we had placed on the tables all around.  People were given gloves and could handle the instruments. What we asked to each sub-group was to write down at least 20-30 questions, i.e. all the questions they could think about when they handled the instruments. This was meant to stimulate careful observation and curiosity.

The instruments available on the tables were:
• A 19th-century instrument with 7 small mirrors (optics)
• A 19th-century instrument to study refraction (optics)
• A 19th-century mirror whose curvature could be changed by using an air-pump (pneumatics and optics)
• A 19th-century areometer (pneumatics)
• A 17th-century sundial (astronomy and time-telling)
• The very exact copy of a 16th-century European astrolabe displayed in the Museum – the original was difficult to move from its display case (astronomy and time-telling)
• A 20th-century Geiger counter (modern physics)

We chose every instrument so that:
• most people had few or no information about it: this was crucial to put everyone on the same level and stimulate curiosity;
• each device was related to one of the fields or periods of time we wanted to explore.
• Each sub-group presented its questions to the others. Some of the recently arrived immigrants had some difficulties to read and speak in Italian, so that we proposed to translate and help them, but they fiercely refused: they wanted to read their questions in Italian by themselves –a way to fully feel part of the group.
• We then started a general discussion to analyse all questions, showing how they were related to instruments’ design, historical aspects, uses and function. We discussed how all these aspects are connected one to another, and people realised that some questions were related to the specific instrument under observation, while others were more generally related to all the instruments of that kind.
• The work with objects provided a concrete starting point for a more theoretical part of the lecture, a slide-based frontal presentation, with maps that showed how science moved from Asia to Ancient Greece, then to the Islamic world and later entered and was further developed in Europe, in particular from the Renaissance onwards. Of course, we provided a very general framework, presenting only a few scientists for each period and field. All the topics discussed were related to one of the instruments the audience had the opportunity to see and touch.
• For some groups, the lecture ended here, while in some cases we had some time left and we invited participants to split up in sub-groups again and wander freely in the museum to look for other instruments related to the topics we had discussed. Every sub-group was asked to choose an instrument and present it to the other groups. Historical prisms, anamorphic paintings with their mirror and astrolabes were among the instruments that mainly caught the participants’ attention.
• In some groups, the audience started lively discussions about cutting-edge issues, for instance about the fact that schools, in most countries, usually focus their teaching on their home country and its neighbours, while knowledge about the rest of the world is neglected.

Evaluation of the first lecture - The power of objects

As we said, we were worried about the way participants would work together and we were not sure we would convey what we hoped to, but the lecture was a success with all the groups. Using the Poleni Museum’s devices was a key element of success: we experienced something like the “power” of objects, as Frank van den Boom calls it in his article available on this platform.

What happened?

First of all, as soon as people started working hands-on, in small sub-groups, with historical scientific instruments, we observed that their main feelings were curiosity, fascination and an utmost respect for the devices they were handling. This immediately created a first bridge between people, and it worked also for the copy of the astrolabe, a beautiful object conveying the complexity of the original.

Other factors contributed to lower the barriers between people:
i) as previously said, the objects proposed were quite mysterious for everybody;
ii) people were asked to raise questions and not to show what they knew. Most groups wrote down a list of interesting questions, well thought and original. Quite interestingly, the sub-groups who had more problems to raise questions included people, mostly men, who already had some ideas about the instruments on display and wanted to show their knowledge. These sub-groups also had more difficulties to set up a nice, lively and friendly atmosphere. This was quite an unexpected challenge for us, as we usually do not experience situations of this kind when we work with male young people like students or researchers, nor with the staff of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. As for the students of the professional school, they proposed lists of questions particularly original, showing how carefully they had analysed the objects, and how impactful the format of the workshop was for them, so different from what they were used to at school.

The use of historical instruments was also crucial to keep people interested in the following slide-based presentation about the transfer of knowledge between different civilisations. The curiosity raised by the real instruments remained lively during the whole lecture, as we answered the questions raised by the sub-groups only little by little, while presenting the developments of science. Instruments actually were common threads across all parts of the lecture. Astrolabes enjoyed a particular success in all working groups, due to their sophistication and their fascinating history. For example, three Bangladeshi refugees, who barely spoke Italian, picked up the copy of the astrolabe at the end of the lecture and started taking selfies, trying to replicate the pictures of Islamic scholars they had seen during the lecture.

Further developments after the first lecture

As we said, the first lecture was crucial for many reasons, not least because we hoped that participants, be they PhD students or members of the local community, would attend our following meetings. The lecture was a success in this sense, as many people came back and remained until the end of the third-mission project. The local Islamic community much appreciated the project, and invited one of us to present it to Eid Al- Fitr Ceremony – the first time a member of the University was invited.

What about the proposals eventually developed by each group to make other audiences more aware of the multiculturality of science? All were based on objects of the Poleni Museum:
• an exhibition “One Science, many cultures”, with captions, audios and videos in various languages, like Arabic or Albanese, is now available in the Museum;
• a Treasure Hunt based on the multiculturality of science is also available;
• a theatre piece entitled “Caravanserai”, focusing on the astrolabe was started: it will be finished and presented in various theatres, mainly in problematic areas of the city of Padua, from 2025;
• a 19th-century electrical motor was replicated by the students of the technical school.
These projects proposed by the groups also allowed us to evaluate the whole third-mission project.

Quite clearly, for all participants, the project was an occasion of broadening their knowledge about cross-fertilisation processes between various cultures. It is particularly important today to make foreigners living in Italy, especially young people, aware of the role of their country of origin in the construction of knowledge, in order to empower them; and it is of course important for Italians to learn more about other cultures. The project also provided an opportunity for all participants of working with very diverse people. A representative of the groups declared for instance that “seeing in Fatima and Vilma's eyes the emotion, the pride in thinking 'this is me, I have collaborated on an interesting project involving science, with various people of different nationalities and reading in my own language I have explained an instrument'… we think it was a nice gift for all of us... a cross-fertilisation between the past and the future through science.” As for the students of professional school, one of them told us at the end of the project “For once, with this project, we were lucky”.

For us, this project was a starting point, a first step to make the museum more and more welcoming for those communities who see museums as distant, unfamiliar and even hostile places. The history of science and historical scientific instruments can help to make our museum act as a mediator within society today. As we have seen, objects can set up bridges between people and contribute to social cohesion.

Acknowledgments: Our warmest thanks to Fresco Sam-Sin for his valuable comments, which helped us to improve our text.