What is a human being? What makes us different from other species? Our body? Our genes? Our imagination? Our empathy? How do we as humans see ourselves, study ourselves and explain ourselves?
To answer these questions, the first part of the visit explores our identity based on a number of possible criteria for pinning down what makes a human being. Are we: beings of flesh and blood? Beings of thought? Social beings? Beings of speech?
No single criterion, however generally accepted, can suffice to characterize humans. An across-the-board approach that combines anatomical, cultural and artistic considerations is always necessary.
We are one species among millions. Like our fellow species, we descend from an age-old evolutionary process. On the scale of life itself, our appearance on earth is very recent. Yet we are a singular species in the way we think, in the way we envision our world and in the way we shape it… to the point that we even created a museum where we are both the observer and the observed.
