What if hope lies in doubt?

We often think of doubt as destabilizing, paralyzing, even dangerous. But I am persuaded, and our museum is built entirely on this premise, that doubt is one of the most powerful imaginative acts we have. Doubt cracks open the world just enough for new possibilities to enter. 

1. A museum built on a question, not an answer 

Five years ago, when we opened the GUM, we embraced a provocative idea: 
What if a museum, and in our case a science museum in particular, were not a house of certainties, but a stage for doubt? 

Rather than presenting scientific knowledge as fixed, polished, or complete, we wanted to show science as it actually unfolds: as a deeply human process of searching, failing, recalibrating, and evolving insight. We wanted to make room for nuance, for polyphony, for shifting perspectives, and for the delicate beauty of inquiry itself. 

We also chose to embrace the full spectrum of disciplines, from the humanities to the exact sciences, and to recognise artistic research as an equally valid form of knowledge creation. Because navigating the human condition requires many ways of knowing. 

2. Doubt not as hesitation, but as imagination 

Doubt is not an obstacle to experimentation, nor an excuse for indecision, it is a compass for interpreting results and looking at the world. 

This is why our motto is: 
Always doubt. Never hesitate. 

For us, doubt is not the opposite of action, it is the opposite of dogmatism. It invites us to reconsider, to shift perspective, to imagine what might be otherwise. 

When the pandemic arrived just as we opened our doors, the fragility and visibility of science were suddenly on display for the entire world. Insights were changing daily. Trust was eroding. Certainty became an illusion. But that moment also revealed something profound: uncertainty is not the enemy of knowledge, it is the condition for growth. 

At the GUM, doubt is not a threat to truth, but a guide to meaning. 

3. A research museum, not a science showroom 

Over the past years, our museum is increasingly moving away from a traditional science museum model toward that of a research museum. We present science as a human methodology that aims for objectivity, but not as the sole form of knowledge. La condition humaine requires polyphony, ways of knowing that do not necessarily strive for objectivity, such as art and ritual. As a science museum, we are thus shifting from a giver of knowledge to a maker of meaning. That also reshapes our role as storytellers. Our gallery texts are not written from an omniscient perspective, but from a position alongside the visitor – observing and interpreting the research process together. In this, GUM resonates with Bruno Latour’s view of science as a social construct. 

We present the objects not merely as knowledge-carriers; they are actors on a stage. Through scenography, choreography, and artistic collaboration, we create multilayered readings of what is shown. Because imagination is not decoration, it is a method. 

4. Care, imagination, courage 

The theme of this panel, museums that dare, that bring care and imagination into their mission, resonates deeply with me. 

For me, the greatest hope is this: that a major knowledge institution, a university, gave a relatively young team the freedom to build a museum centred  

On nuance. 
On polyphony. 
On the delicate, human side of inquiry. 

On our vulnerability whilst looking for answers 

That is an act of institutional courage. That is an institutional act of imagination.  

And the second source of hope came even faster than I anticipated: young people claimed the museum as their own. They recognised themselves not in certainty, but in searching. In multiplicity. In the idea that knowledge is not neutral, not absolute, and never complete.  

5. Why doubt matters now 

In today’s post-truth world, where misinformation thrives on oversimplification, doubt is often misunderstood as weakness.  

Yet doubt is not cynicism.  

It is not relativism.  

It is not the abandonment of truth.  

It is the discipline of thinking. The courage to change perspective. The refusal to collapse complexity into slogans. 

And this is essential, because critical thinking is the only defence against our longing for absolutes. Critical thinking is emancipation. 
Those who avoid it will reshape the truth until it suits them. 
Truth may be contextual and incomplete, but relativism, too, is a threat. 
It weakens our confidence in science. 
We need to distinguish between constructive critique and total rejection on systems of knowledge creation. 
Critical thinking walks a line: trust without naivety, doubt without cynicism. 

Doubt helps us resist confirmation bias — that powerful human urge to see only what we already believe.  

In this sense, doubt is an ethical act. A democratic one. A hopeful one. 

6. Imaginative acts as institutional acts 

So if museums are to be sites of hope, then our imaginative acts must be structural, not symbolic. We need to rethink how we create knowledge, not just how we display it. We need to design for dialogue rather than authority. We need to hold space for scientific, artistic, embodied, contextual and lived forms of understanding. 

Because imagination is not a luxury. 
It is a practice. 
And hope is not optimism. 
It is engagement. 

If I leave you with one thought today, let it be this: 
Doubt is not the end of responsibility, it is the beginning. 

It transforms museums into spaces of activation rather than passivity. 
Places where visitors learn not what to think, but how to think. 
Not to find certainty, but to find clarity. 
Not to avoid uncertainty, but to work with it. 

And perhaps most of all: 
spaces where hope is not the absence of doubt, but the willingness to stay with it. 

Always doubt, never hesitate.