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| new frontiers of understanding. Without the introduction of novelty and discovery, problems could not be solved. Discovery, however, is made not just through science and technology but, equally and importantly, through the explorations of art. It is the artists who perceive and communicate how people react to their environment and it is often through their discoveries that we change our behavior and our feelings, including our attitudes toward life and toward all of nature. Personal discovery, whether it occurs through art, through science or just by wandering around the city or the country or a museum, brings far-reaching satisfaction and personal consequences that are vastly greater than knowledge which is just handed to you or told to you. But even though we can appreciate the role of discovery and its importance in museums, it is never an easy task to provide it. There is no way of achieving a universally applicable balance between, on the one hand, the amount of guidance that is required to insure that people are not discouraged and, on the other hand, the amount of freedom needed to permit the kind of exploration that can give people the full satisfaction of discovery. Each situation, each subject takes a specifically appropriate adjustment of this essential balance. The balance that we have tried to achieve in the Exploratorium between unfettered exploration and detailed guidance is still constantly being adjusted. We may try this, we try that, and we decide that people need a little more guidance and we make a change, and then discover that people are being too regimented in the way they look at the exhibits. But the balance that we eventually adopt is undoubtedly largely a matter of taste and an expression of personality. I therefore think it is quite legitimate that different museums adopt different solutions to these problems. For the solutions are most human when they are reflections of some individual's attitude towards the entire process and purpose of learning. It is such attitudes, rather than specific 'objective evaluations' that ultimately must determine the balance between guidance and exploration. Regrettably, many of the people who talk about | the discovery method of teaching are really talking about the arranging of a lesson or an experiment so that students discover what they are supposed to discover. I don't think that is exploration. In order for exploration to take place, there has to be a built-in richness that makes it possible for people to find things that even the staff (or the teachers) didn't know about when they conceived the exhibit or the lesson. We find that the very process of fabricating an exhibit is full of discovery and that even after an exhibit has been out on the floor for a month or even a year, we discover new things in it. It also is especially remarkable and wonderful that our visitors keep discovering things that we haven't yet discovered and tell us about them. The fullest aspect of discovery, whether in a painting or in a diorama or in a science experiment, occurs when each separate piece of the museum is so rich that it has components that nobody knew were there when it was first set out. It is not enough that the museum as a whole be a place to find novelty. There are some museums that I know that defy any exploration. I would say, for example, that New York's Guggenheim Museum (which was designed by an architect and not a museum person) provides an example of such a place. Visitors cannot in any way change the order in which they see the pictures, and if they want to bring somebody back to show them a particular picture, they have to start at the top and go by all the other pictures. Two of the exhibits in the Smithsonian History and Technology Museum provide, for me, an excellent example of the difference between ample and overly limited opportunities to explore. "We The People" has all kinds of wonderful things to discover. It has political buttons, banners, speeches, photographs and costumes telling about all manner of moving, impressive or terrible things that people have said or done in our history. These things are tucked away and yet easily found. Thematically, however, the exhibit is highly organized. "A Nation of Nations," on the other hand, provides virtually nothing to discover. As one walks by it, one gets the message that we are a nation of nations very clearly and | ||