Research Catalog

Title

Crossing over : where art and science meet / Stephen Jay Gould and Rosamond Wolff Purcell.

Author

Gould, Stephen Jay.

Publication

New York : Three Rivers Press, 2000.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

Purcell, Rosamond Wolff

Description

159 p. : ill. (some col.); 28 cm.

Summary

This work, the third collaboration between scholar Stephen Jay Gould and artist Rosamond Wolff Purcell, brings together thought-provoking essays and photographs to disprove the popular notion that art and science exist in an antagonistic relationship. The essays and photographs collected here present art and science in conversation, rather than in opposition. As Gould writes in his preface, although the two disciplines may usually communicate in different dialects, when juxtaposed they strikingly reflect upon and enhance one another. Working together, Purcell's photographs and Gould's scientific musings speak to us about ourselves and our world in a hybrid language richer than either could command on its own. In an essay on individuality, for instance, Gould looks through the lens of evolutionary theory to address the controversial issue of cloning and the often misguided fears it evokes. As a society that exalts the concept of the individual, Gould argues, we sometimes fail to recognize that clones walk among us. Identical twins represent "the greatest of all challenges to our concept of individuality." Rosamond Purcell's photograph depicting the famous Siamese conjoined twins Eng and Chang conveys an eerie feeling that cannot be captured in words.

Subject

• Science
• Art and science
• Art

Genre/Form

Popular works

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Form and time -- Time and nature.

ISBN

060980586X (pbk.)

LCCN

^^^99058304^

OCLC

• 42863066
• SCSB-10488706

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library