Pointy fingers and the case for impermanence

I wonder which of Galileo's fingers are on display: the one he used for pointing at the stars; the one he may have wagged when insisting that we're not the centre of the universe, or perhaps; the one he gave them when they continuously refused to listen? Don't matter I suppose, but it may influence any reception of the object as artefact (arti-fact or arte-fict?)

In Topkapi Palace, Istanbul, they have Muhammad's finger (which of the ten possible, I cannot remember at the moment). They also hold -- and hold dear, encased in gold and bedecked with jewels -- the right arm of St. John the Baptist as well as a bit of his decapitated skull. Perhaps it would be possible, if looking hard enough in the basement of museum collections world wide - to find enough material to re-compose a democratic and all-culture-encompassing arte-factual person as the absolute and final material evidence to a reality base of every common myth and history ever told?

Of course that would never happen, but wonder (as a now fully-fledged hypnagog) what the re-composition of 'common man' would look like if constructed and re(de)-constructed by distinct expert groups? Librarians would utilise a particular system of indexing, Italian mothers - another (perpendicular to that of Italian friends who are sons of Italian mothers?).
Perhaps, it would be simplest yet, to consider that of a Material Scientist at last nights talk on Fugitive Materials (yes, another talk! I'm trying to get out more as end of year and end of term syndrome leaves me unable to have a single fully formed and independent thought by myself but too wired to relax!). He, the scientist, approached the problem of speaking about impermanence from an scientific viewpoint by arranging and approaching all and everything in terms of scale: moving from small (the atom) to large (the stuff). Obviously and in turn, he eventually became the one who made the most sense of all.