Conversations: Tilden's Fifth Principle

摘要

In our field, "interpretation" is everything, so it should be no surprise that we often "interpret" guiding principles differently. The following will begin a series of articles in the In My Opinion section of the Journal titled "Conversations." You've asked a great question. What did Tilden mean in his fifth principle about "presenting a whole"? I don't claim to have any definitive answers, but I do have an opinion that I hope is somewhere in the ballpark of reason. You know, interpreting Tilden himself has been not only a task (since I taught interpretation courses for decades) but also a scholarly avocation. Despite the inevitable impossibility of 100% success, I've tried over 30 years to try to put myself between his ears in order to (try to) understand what he was thinking, and therefore, what he probably meant when he wrote Interpreting Our Heritage.