The "total" museum, a tool for social change

Science museums encourage not only scientific knowledge and methodology, but also people's opinion about scientific issues. This has been the main concern of Barcelona's Museo de Ciência de la Fundación "la Caixa" throughout its twenty years of existence. According to the author of the present article, the goals of "total museology" comply with the new trend some museums have been following. So that this new trend becomes more sound and widespread, it is necessary to create new concepts for museology. The first science museums were natural history and tools and machinery museums, which displayed artifacts in glass cases to visitors. Their mission was also that of preserving collections for the use of scientists. Science museums of today display real phenomena and provide visitors' interaction with them. Whatever the topic it focus, a science museums is "concentrated reality" either of objects or phenomena. This is probably the main distinctive feature of museology and of other forms of scientific communication. For teachers and lecturers, words are the basic element of communication, for books and magazines, the written language. There are no films without images, as there is no radio with sounds. In a museum, there are no restrictions as to the use of stimulation, models, graphic images or new technology, but just as accessories to reality, never as reality itself.