Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment
In Our Time10 Feb 2000

Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the great poet and dramatist, famous for Faust, for The Sorrows of Young Werther, for Storm und Drang and for being a colossus in German literature. Born in the middle of the eighteenth century he lived through the first third of the nineteenth. He wrote lyric and epic verse, literary criticism, prose fiction, translations from 28 languages, he was a politician as well and was hailed by Napoleon as the boundless measure of man; but for much of his time, often to the exclusion of everything else, Goethe was a scientist. That was also part of this late flowering Renaissance man. Some say he paved the way for Darwin, some say he pre-dated the chaos theory, that he foreshadowed Gaia. In an age of romantic giants he was certainly a titan. He gave us the term morphology and sometimes he is even credited with inventing biology itself. How important were Goethe’s discoveries, and where does he really stand in the history of science? With Nicholas Boyle, Reader in German Literary and Intellectual History, Magdalene College, Cambridge, and biographer of Goethe; Simon Schaffer, Reader in the History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University and Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge.

Episoder(1086)

Little Women

Little Women

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Louisa May Alcott's 1868 novel, credited with starting the new genre of young adult fiction. When Alcott (1832-88) wrote Little Women, she only did so as her publisher ...

21 Nov 202448min

Hayek's The Road to Serfdom

Hayek's The Road to Serfdom

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian-British economist Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944) in which Hayek (1899-1992) warned that the way Britain was running its wartime economy would...

14 Nov 202453min

Robert Graves

Robert Graves

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the author of 'I, Claudius' who was also one of the finest poets of the twentieth century. Robert Graves (1895 -1985) placed his poetry far above his prose. He once de...

7 Nov 202454min

The Haymarket Affair

The Haymarket Affair

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the notorious attack of 4th of May 1886 at a workers rally in Chicago when somebody threw a bomb that killed a policeman, Mathias J. Degan. The chaotic shooting that f...

31 Okt 202451min

Wormholes

Wormholes

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the tantalising idea that there are shortcuts between distant galaxies, somewhere out there in the universe. The idea emerged in the context of Einstein's theories and ...

24 Okt 20241h

Benjamin Disraeli

Benjamin Disraeli

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the major figures in Victorian British politics. Disraeli (1804 -1881) served both as Prime Minister twice and, for long periods, as leader of the opposition. Bo...

17 Okt 202451min

Bacteriophages

Bacteriophages

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the most abundant lifeform on Earth: the viruses that 'eat' bacteria. Early in the 20th century, scientists noticed that something in their Petri dishes was making ba...

1 Aug 202450min

Monet in England

Monet in England

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the great French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) in London, initially in 1870 and then from 1899. He spent his first visit in poverty, escaping from ...

25 Jul 202450min

Populært innen Historie

rss-dette-ma-aldri-skje-igjen
med-egne-oyne
historier-som-endret-norge
henrettelsespodden
rss-benadet
historier-som-endret-verden
rss-katastrofe
sektledere
rss-nadelose-nordmenn-gestapo
aftenposten-historie
rss-gamle-greier
rss-strid-de-norske-borgerkrigene
rss-frontkjemperne
rss-bisarr-historie
rss-historiske-romanser-svik-drap-og-kjarlighet
historiepodden-ww2
liberal-halvtime
historiepodden
rss-historiepodden-ww2
vare-historier