*Toward a Fluid Dance in Seamless Dress: The Field of Pre- and Perinatal Development Challenges Researchers to Integrate Scientific and Spiritual Orientations

Under exploration is the response of humankind to mystery relative to the
historically sharp distinction between scientific and spiritual ways of knowing. The evolving image of a dancer in
a half-male/half-female costume serves as a metaphor for the rapport between these two basic research
orientations, and for how they might be reconciled-in the interest of both research and the researcher. Findings
from the highly interdisciplinary field of prenatal and perinatal development illustrate the need for an integrated
approach to understanding “reality”. As Sir Ian McKellan notes, “With the eclipse of God by the advent and
ascension of reason and science, there is no seeming tolerance for the unexplained, which in earlier centuries
would have been relegated to ‘the work of God’. Religion is the answer given in various cultures to those
vulnerable areas of life that are not understood, the so-called Divine Mysteries.” There is a tango-dancer
costume I have seen in which the wearer bears all evidence of being a man when seen from one perspective
(sporting a dashing tux) and all evidence of being a woman when regarded from the opposite side (in her exotic
red dress and stockings). I find this costume, and the dance made inside of it, a good working image for my
understandings of the rapport between scientific and spiritual conceptual frameworks.