First 9 Pages... Response

While reading over the first nine pages of Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, I felt as if I were being flooded with facts that a volunteer tour guide had memorized on their third day of training many years ago. Each subject was addressed somewhat randomly, as if we were walking from room to room, a slight flick of the hand directing our attention. After talking about ethnographic writing in class, I was a bit confused to start this book, appearing as a well-rehearsed script rather than a cultural study. However, after re-reading, I found the commonality between a neurophysiologist, a vocalist, and a chiroptologist all seem to stem back to fungus spores that use the carcasses of dead “stink ants” to spread to the forest floor. I believe that what this is symbolizing is a rebirth within an individual which in turn leads to a cultural phenomenon. A culture is a sub-set of a society and in order for there to be a functional society there is a need for a transfer of ideas that challenge generational truths. Each culture is affected by the discoveries of another. My assumption is that this museum documents a societal domino effect. With newly discovered knowledge, cultures continue evolving and not only within themselves. Cultures thrive off of each other. A fantastical theory inspired a scientific discovery, the energy of a vocalist suffering from memory problems inspired the theory of forgetting, and the death of an ant allows for the life of a fungus.