Director's Colloquium Aug. 3 focuses on the conflict between words and images

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LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 28, 1999 ­ The conflict between words and images is the focus of a Director's Colloquium by Dr. Leonard Shlain, Tuesday, Aug. 3 at the Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Shlain is chief of endoscopic surgery at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco.
The colloquium begins at 8:10 a.m., in Los Alamos' Physics Building Auditorium at Technical Area 3. The talk is open to the public.

Shlain's talk, "How the Conflict Between Words and Images has Affected the Human Mind," also was the focus of Shlain's 1997 book, "The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image." In the book, Shlain proposed that the invention of writing, particularly its alphabetic form, rewired the brains of all who learned this skill.

Shlain attended the University of Michigan where he never completed his undergraduate coursework. Instead, he was accepted to medical school at Wayne State University while a junior at Michigan.

Shlain conducted his medical internship at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco and also was in general practice in Michigan and New York.

Shlain is a U.S. Army veteran, serving as a commanding officer and general medical officer in Saumar, France from 1962 through 1964. He also served in the U.S. Army Reserve from 1964 through 1970.

He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a member of the Society of American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic surgeons and the San Francisco Surgical Society. He currently holds a teaching appointment as an associate clinical professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco.

He is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a member of the Society of American Gastrointestinal Endoscopic surgeons and the San Francisco Surgical Society. He currently holds a teaching appointment as an associate clinical professor in the Department of Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco.

In 1991, Shlain authored "Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light." The book is used as a college textbook by the Engineering Department at Stanford, the Bioengineering Department at the University of Utah, the Physics Department at Boston University and the Art Department of the University of Oregon among others.

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