What is Life? Find out at the National Museum of Natural History

LHistory Museum of Manila possesses a domed glass ceiling supported by interlocking arcs of

- tral courtyard with light. Although smaller in scale and not as mighty

of London’s British Museum and its Great Court vaulted glass and steel ceiling, or the vast metal roof of King’s Cross railway station concourse — it is dazzling,

Natural history asks questions about our natural world — the plants and animals that inhabit the earth, their origins, anatomy, evolution, behavior, and relationships to one another and their environments, using methods of science.

In 1788, James Edward Smith,

Society of London, sat down and wrote his IntroductoryDiscourse ontheRiseandProgressofNatural The book, an excellent example of Enlightenment thinking, a European intellectual movement which produced such game-changing philosophers and mathematicians as John Locke (1632-1704) and Isaac Newton ( 1643- 1727), enthusiastically connected the study of natural history with the excitement of discovery, the growth of knowledge, advanced learning and objectivity, progress and humanity’s liberation from the dark, irrationality of superstition. Natural history, Smith thought, was part of the universal study of humankind.

Manila’s newly opened Natural History Museum conveys these ideals. The Philippines, home to between 70 percent and 80 percent of the earth’s plant and animal species, is one of the world’s mega-biodiverse countries, and the museum strives to do justice to this fact. One walks through rooms dedicated to the diversity of environments and ecosystems supported by the archipelago’s forests, swamps, arid plains, rivers, lakes and seas.

I was thrilled, for instance, to see the Rafflesia plant, which grows on the wet, misty slopes of Mount Makiling, and whose Slide open the drawers in the terrestrial rooms and marvel at the

and other insects. I take a particular interest in beetles, Coleoptera, the most numerous and arguably the most important organisms on the plant. The species on show were, disappointingly, on the scanty side but more would come, our museum guide assured me. Beetles live just about anywhere — in trees, water, soil, and our homes. They range in size from the delicate and tiny, to the monstrous. I missed a

The National Museum of Natural History building with its domed glass ceiling in Ermita, Manila. preserved outside of the the museum are the sections concerned the work done by US colonial scientists Philippines, in London’s Natural with climate change, the and collectors linked to the History Museum. The Naturalists’ Bureau of Science, would also be a room gives glimpses of some great boon. Finally, I would think these astonishing endeavors that a gift shop well supplied with occurred well before the arrival of merchandise specially produced American scientists at the turn of for the museum, is a no-brainer. the 20th century. These are my own inconsequential

Manila’s Natural History Museum gripes. This museum never is a proud achievement. It is loses sight of the big picture. What also a work in progress, which is a is Life, it asks? The most important

question to humanity. to remain dynamic and relevant. Ongoing developments within work being done by conservationists to protect wild life sites.

I am looking forward to seeing more information on the collections that were amassed prior to the 20th century, as the bulk of the specimens on display date from the late 1940s. What happened to Manila’s Botanical Garden and Herbarium, for instance? Enlarging the scope of the exhibits on