In the Media

Boston Globe reporter Mark Feeney spotlights “Monsters of the Deep: Between Imagination and Science,” a new exhibit at the MIT Museum that dives into the “nature of knowledge about nature.” Feeney notes that one part of the exhibit “is chiefly visual: views of whales and related sea creatures, monstrous and otherwise, afforded by more than 40 maps and prints and books, some dating to the 16th century. They’re the imagination part. There’s also a preserved narwhal tusk and a video of a giant squid. They might be seen as a transition between the two parts of that two-ness. Narwhals loom large in the imagination. How could they not, being the inspiration for unicorns. They’re also real, and thus firmly in the realm of science. That’s the other part of the exhibition. It’s conceptual and stimulating: a kind of case study in the nature of our knowledge about nature. In this particular case, that natural knowledge concerns whales.”