Art

I recently went to see the Body Worlds exhibit at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. It was unreal. If you don’t know much about this exhibit, it’s basically human bodies on display that have been “plasticized”.

Read more about it here: http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/pages/home.asp

The exhibit is truly remarkable. I thought it was going to be gross, but really it’s a testament to how unbelievably complex the human body really is.

Something that struck me, though, as I walked around the exhibit were some of the quotes (mostly hanging form banners). They had one from Descartes which I forget (wish I had brought a notepad or something) and one from Nietzsche that essentially talked about the relationship between body and soul. Both quotes were frightfully modern (not surprising given the time frame of the two philosophers). The whole half of the first exhibit was very modern. Very scientific. “Science replaces God.”

The second half was much different. The bodies started taking on other poses. Everything was “out of the box”. There is a man, all muscle, holding his own skin. And another man, with no skin who is “running out of his muscles” (they seem to be tearing away from him due to his speed). You really need to see the exhibit to understand what I mean. (there are sample photos in the link above). They had a quote from a Catholic monk that essentially said “the wondrous complexity of the human body points to a Creator”. The exhibit had taken a paradigm shift, and ended on the note of “Science points to God.” (and creatively so)