Leonard Shlain, MD

Leonard is Chairman of Laparoscopic surgery at California Pacific Medical Center and Professor of Surgery at UCSF. He is also the author of two critically acclaimed books. Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light is presently used as a textbook in many art schools and universities. His recent work, Alphabet
versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image was on the national bestseller list.

Leonard has won several literary awards for his visionary work and holds several patents on innovative surgical devices. Sex, Time and Power: How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution explores the reasons why Homo Sapien evolved so far away from other animals in several key attributes.

To discover more about Leonard Shlain, visit his latest website at http://www.sextimeandpower.com/b_main.html
Keynote: Sex, Time and Power — How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution —
Why did humans diverge so far from the reproductive life cycles of the other three million sexually reproducing species, especially the female? Life threatening childbirth, florid menses, early menopause, cryptic ovulation, year round sexual receptivity, fulsome orgasms, menstrual harmony among women, and entrainment with the moon are all reproductive features that distinguish women from nonhuman females. Dr. Shlain will place these features (and many more) within the context of evolutionary theory and explain why they were an incontestable plus propelling the human species far ahead of the others.
You will learn how human mating evolved, understand the function of menses in humans, the roots of patriarchy, and the source of misogyny.
Workshop: Art, Sex and Physics: The Zeitgeist Flip-flop from Masculine to Feminine
Both art and science are social constructs arising out of the creative impulses of the men and women alive in any particular historical period. The zeitgeist of an age profoundly affects both endeavors. In this image filled presentation, Leonard explores the relationship between the scientific ideas of a time and how they relate to gender. From the extraordinary virile scientific ideas of early Greek science to the cog and gear majestic clockworks of the Renaissance, a masculine mechanical concept of reality reigned supreme.

Beginning with the discovery of electromagnetism in the early nineteenth century and continuing through relativity, quantum, chaos, and superstring theories in the twentieth, scientists made discoveries that increasingly required a feminine, holistic approach. Throughout all these periods, visionary artists using image and metaphor created works of art that anticipated the changes that were to come in physics before the physicist expressed these paradigm shifts using number and equations. These revolutions in both art and science profoundly affected the relationship between ordinary men and women.

Objectives:
1) Participants will be able to identify the meaning of the concept of a Zeitgeist: a paradigm shift that occurs across the spectrum of culture affecting arts, politics, and science of the times.
2) Participants will understand and be able to list three examples of how the artist serves in the words of Ezra Pound, the function of “the antennae of the race.” The visionary artist being the first to anticipate a new way to see the world.
3) Participants will be able to list at least three connections between the metaphors used in modern physics and their impact on gender relations.
4) Participants will gain an understanding of the metaphors of art, science, and sexuality.