Historian Justin Champion on Francis Bacon

Historian Justin Champion on Francis Bacon

Historian Justin Champion on Francis Bacon's anxieties about the fallibility of technological innovators. The 17th century polymath Francis Bacon blew a fanfare for the new scientific age: where man would dominate, understand and improve the world and use technology to achieve this. Optimistic about man's ingenuity and the potential perfectibility of human society he saw also that men were weak. Nature might have been laid out by God as a kind of book for man to read but individual humans were as likely to be motivated by greed, folly and pride as good intentions. He explored this idea in his book of 1609, The Wisdom of the Ancients, where he used the example of Daedalus, the most ingenious of inventors from Greek Myth to consider the ambiguities of technical progress. Daedalus inventions were truly marvellous but his pride and lack of forethought led to disaster for all around him, not least his son Icarus who perished testing out one his father's extraordinary inventions.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(60)

Writer Tom Chatfield: Has technology rewired our brains?

Writer Tom Chatfield: Has technology rewired our brains?

Is technology making us less human? Writer, Tom Chatfield is an enthusiastic downloader of the latest apps, an early adopter of anything small and shiny that promises to smooth his path through life. ...

27 Jan 201512min

How Has Technology Changed Us?

How Has Technology Changed Us?

A new history of ideas presented by Melvyn Bragg but told in many voices.Melvyn is joined by four guests with different backgrounds to discuss a really big question. This week he's asking how has tech...

26 Jan 201512min

Giles Fraser on Wittgenstein and Blade Runner

Giles Fraser on Wittgenstein and Blade Runner

Giles Fraser thinks being human isn't a matter of biology or some unique attribute like language. It's not to do with what we are but about how we treat each other. Taking the work of the philosopher ...

23 Jan 201512min

Barry Smith on Noam Chomsky and Human Language

Barry Smith on Noam Chomsky and Human Language

Barry Smith argues that language is our most important uniquely human attribute. It doesn't just help us communicate, it helps us to think. He makes the case for the distinctiveness of human language ...

22 Jan 201512min

Catharine Edwards on Seneca and facing death.

Catharine Edwards on Seneca and facing death.

Catharine Edwards wants to introduce you to the Roman Philosopher Seneca. But he's dying. Towards the end of his life Seneca became interested in the idea that only human beings had foreknowledge of t...

21 Jan 201512min

Simon Schaffer on humans, apes and Carl Linnaeus

Simon Schaffer on humans, apes and Carl Linnaeus

Simon Schaffer is interested in the human species in general and one member of it in particular. Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist and zoologist who set out the basic structure of how we name and u...

20 Jan 201513min

What Makes Us Human?

What Makes Us Human?

A new history of ideas presented by Melvyn Bragg but told in many voices. Melvyn is joined by four guests with different backgrounds to discuss a really big question. This week he's asking What make...

19 Jan 201512min

Populärt inom Historia

motiv
massmordarpodden
kod-katastrof
historiska-brott
olosta-mord
p3-historia
historiepodden-se
rss-historiska-brottslingar
rss-massmordarpodden
rss-seriemordarpodden
historianu-med-urban-lindstedt
rss-brottsligt
harrisons-dramatiska-historia
krigshistoriepodden
rss-historien-om-2
bedragare
vetenskapsradion-historia
rss-folkets-historia
palmemordet
militarhistoriepodden