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da Vinci catheterized? See below for details. Click to enlargeReaders interested in more of the science-art boundary should check out the review by Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles in the May 2007 Scientific American. Titled The Interplay of Art and Science,the piece is an in-depth look at two books by Martin Kemp:
Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment and Design
and
Seen/Unseen: Art, Science, and Intuition from Leonardo to the Hubble Telescope
(Note: Kemp is a frequent contributor to the Science in Culture column in Nature. A leading expert on da Vinci, he is professor of art history at Oxford.)
According to Kevles, a common theme in both books is how art affects imagery in science and science affects imagery in art, which leads to some very interesting and provocative ideas about digital imagery.
Two parts of the review are of particular interest. In one, Kevles describes how Kemp relates D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's analysis of the shape and size of living organisms spelled out in his famous work On Growth and Form to the "visual mathematics of fractals, chaos theory and machine-made images."
Continuing with the idea of the connection between visual imagery, art, science, and life, Kevles closes with some of Kemp's concerns about the imagery produced by science (e.g. in the form of medical imaging technology) and the reality behind it. The following is an excerpt: (See Kevles' full review for much more)
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