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| Heart & Lungs (Gray's Anatomy) |
Although many like to call anything from a castle to a shack "home," what is actually a home to every living person is the human body.
According to Hugh Aldersey-Williams, we nevertheless tend to view this body as "a strange appendage: not really us at all, more
like one of our plug-ins – a car or computer." Aldersey-Williams - whose latest book is Anatomies: The Human
Body, Its Parts and the Stories They Tell
– therefore thinks "it is more important than ever that we learn to appreciate the bodies we inhabit."
Aldersey-Williams asserts that we know so little about our body parts, their relationship with one another, and their interconnection
with the whole human organism. His book is an attempt to breach that information gap with a potpourri of scientific/cultural stories.
The themes of these presentations range "from Einstein's brain to the dancer's leg" – and "from Rembrandt's anatomy paintings to Shakespeare's lily-livered Macbeth…" The thrust of this work is to present the human body as we have experienced it, rather than as we have examined it.
Aldersey-Williams also mentions the "wild talk of uploading human consciousness into a computer 'cloud'" – and asks about "the location of the soul."
He also points out that the heart, which we love to extol as the symbol of love, is actually far less noticed by us than, say, the sex organs.
Resources
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/anatomies-by-hugh-alderseywilliams-8558944.html
http://www.hughalderseywilliams.com/books-anatomies.php
Copyright June 14, 2013 by Linda Van Slyke All Rights Reserved
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