Conception to Birth Visualized

in Art, Video - Science | November 17th, 2011 3 Comments

Alexan­der Tsiaras has made a career of using advances in visu­al­iza­tion tech­nol­o­gy to offer vivid tours of the human body. His books have tak­en read­ers inside the human heart, the kid­neys and vas­cu­lar sys­tem, and also human repro­duc­tion. Back in 2002, Tsiaras pub­lished From Con­cep­tion to Birth: A Life Unfolds, a book that offers a “visu­al diary of fetal devel­op­ment.” Now, near­ly a decade lat­er, he brings that visu­al diary to video at a con­fer­ence affil­i­at­ed with TED. The visu­als are impres­sive. There’s no deny­ing that. But what might leave you cold (or not) is his will­ing­ness to talk about human devel­op­ment in terms of “mys­tery, mag­ic, and divin­i­ty” rather than try­ing to grap­ple with any sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis. Is this a nod to “Intel­li­gent Design”? Or an unfor­tu­nate byprod­uct of the short talk for­mat? Who knows.…


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  • Karen Sampson Hudson says:
    November 17, 2011 at 4:20 pm

    The best sci­en­tists have always acknowl­edged the mys­ti­cal, whether in the devel­op­ment of life, the nuclei of atoms, or the span of the uni­verse.

    Reply
  • Evan Mullins says:
    November 18, 2011 at 6:56 am

    I’d say a strong nod to intel­li­gent design since he says“hard not to attribute divin­i­ty to it” 1:22

    Reply
  • Nathan Rinne says:
    November 18, 2011 at 11:50 am

    From a fer­vent Chris­t­ian who real­ly appre­ci­ates your site.…

    “There’s no deny­ing that. But what might leave you cold (or not) is his will­ing­ness to talk about human devel­op­ment in terms of “mys­tery, mag­ic, and divin­i­ty” rather than try­ing to grap­ple with any sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis.”

    Good grief. I’m sure he’s not opposed to sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis, but I get the feel­ing that you are hes­i­tant to do speak of any­thing but that…

    What real­ly leaves us cold?

    My take: http://infanttheology.wordpress.com/2010/09/30/this-is-personal/

    Reply

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