Germinal (Archive Episode)

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the significance of fossils. In the middle of the nineteenth century the discoveries of the fossil hunters used to worry poor Ruskin to death, he wrote in a letter in 1851, “my faith, which was never strong, is being beaten to gold leaf…If only those Geologists would let me alone I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.”The testimony of fossils over the ages has been remarkably eloquent when we have wanted to listen; and now with mass spectrometers, electron microscopes and secondary X-ray detectors, these long dead organisms can speak to us of the past in ways they never could before.With Richard Corfield, Research Associate in the Department of Earth Sciences at Oxford University; Dianne Edwards, Distinguished Research Professor in Palaeobotany at Cardiff University; Richard Fortey, Senior Research Palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum.

22 Mars 200142min

Melvyn Bragg examines what we know about the life of William Shakespeare. Charles Dickens said of the deeply enigmatic Shakespeare, “It is a great comfort…that so little is known concerning the poet. The life of William Shakespeare is a fine mystery and I tremble every day lest something should turn up”. The mystery may have been a pleasure to Dickens but for forgers, conspiracy theorists and Shakespeare scholars it is a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died. How was the low born son of an illiterate craftsman, with a meagre education, able to write with such skill and erudition? How did a provincial man manage to become so attuned to the politics of kings? And how do we know that the plays that we have are the right plays, written by the right man and published in the form they were written?With Katherine Duncan-Jones, Professor of English at Somerville College, Oxford; John Sutherland; Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English at University College, London and textual scholar Grace Ioppolo, lecturer in English at the University of Reading.

15 Mars 200128min

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the power of Money. In the Bible the Old Testament and the New Testament appear to agree about the power of money: Ecclesiastes says “Money answereth all things” and Timothy says “The love of money is the root of all evil”. It is a theme that seems to echo down the centuries with seemingly everyone from Karl Marx to the cast of Cabaret crying out “Money makes the world go around”. But are economic factors really the invisible hand behind all historical events? Can everything in the end be brought down to the influence of money? With Niall Ferguson, Professor of Political and Financial History at the University of Oxford; Richard J Evans, Professor of Modern History at the University of Cambridge; Jane Humphries, reader in Economic History at Oxford University.

1 Mars 200128min

Melvyn Bragg examines Quantum Gravity. Early in the 20th century physicists were startled by the realisation that the smallest things in the universe do not obey Newton’s laws of gravity. Ripe apples fall from trees, billiard balls roll mostly on the table and the moon orbits the Earth in thrall to its gravitational pull, but there is no such force of gravity at work in the world of very small things. It seems there is one set of rules for the realm of every day objects, and a very different set of laws for the quantum world - where tiny particles actually form the building blocks of all those larger things.But how can this be? It doesn’t appear to make sense. Physicists decided that there must be another theory - a much larger theory - that unites, incorporates and finally makes sense of these divided realms. And this has been the Holy Grail of physics ever since. With Dr John Gribbin, Visiting Fellow in Astronomy, University of Sussex; Lee Smolin, Professor of Physics, Centre for Gravitational Physics and Geometry, Pennsylvania State University and Visiting Professor of Physics at Imperial College, London; Dr Janna Levin, Advanced Fellow, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Cambridge University.

22 Feb 200128min

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Restoration. On 29th May 1660, on his thirtieth birthday, Charles II rode into London on horseback and was restored to the thrones of England and Wales, of Scotland and of Ireland. A ‘golden age’ descended on a people that had been ravaged by civil war, religious division, Cromwellian tyranny and puritanical laws: suddenly the theatres were re-opened, Christmas was celebrated once again, all Orange-sellers were beautiful and peace and prosperity reigned across the land. Or at least that’s one version of the Restoration story. But despite the architecture of Wren, the literature of Dryden, and the philosophy of Hobbes, can an era that is suffused in Plague and in Fire, and culminates in something called The Glorious Revolution, ever really have had it so good?With Dr Mark Goldie, lecturer in History, Churchill College, University of Cambridge; Richard Ollard author of The Image of the King: Charles I and Charles II; Dr Clare Jackson, lecturer and Director of Studies in History, Trinity Hall, Cambridge.

15 Feb 200128min

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Humanism. On the 3rd January 106 BC Marcus Tullius Cicero, lawyer, politician, Roman philosopher and the founding father of Humanism was born. His academy, the Studia Humanitas taught ‘the art of living well and blessedly through learning and instruction in the fine arts’, his version of ‘humanitas’ put man not God at the centre of the world.Centuries later, Cicero’s teachings had been metamorphosed into ‘Classical Humanism’, a faith in the soft arts of the Greek world. But how did Cicero’s ideas become Renaissance ideals? How did a small Greek curriculum later become a world philosophy? The human centred creed is credited with giving us human rights and democracy but has also been blamed for the most unspeakable horrors of the modern age. Have his ideas been distorted through the centuries for political ends? And why do some contemporary thinkers think the Humanist tradition is responsible for Elitism, Sexism and even Nazism? With Tony Davies, Professor and Head of the Department of English, University of Birmingham and author of Humanism; Lisa Jardine, Professor of Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary College, University of London and Honorary Fellow of Kings College Cambridge; Simon Goldhill, Reader in Greek Literature and Culture at Kings College Cambridge.

8 Feb 200128min

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what drove the British Empire, especially in Victoria’s century. Was it science, more specifically, the science of plants, of agriculture, a scientific notion of nature and the improvement of nature? Was this seemingly rather adjacent notion - that the source of Empire can be found in Kew Gardens, Royal, Botanical, rather than in the muzzle of a gun or in the purse of a plunderer or in the consciousness of a conqueror - was science “the force that was with us?” Francis Bacon said of the Irish in 1603, “We shall reclaim them from their barbarous manners…populate plant and make civil all the provinces of that kingdom ..as we are persuaded that it is one of the chief causes for which God hath brought us to the Imperial Crown of these Kingdoms”. Centuries later, at the height of the Empire, John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty: “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement”. But - despotism aside - was this notion of ‘improvement’ really the driving force behind the Empire? And did the British Empire have any firm basis in believing that the ‘light of pure reason’ that it brought to its colonies was any brighter than the knowledge that existed before they came? With Richard Drayton, Professor of History at the University of Virginia and author of Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain and the ‘Improvement’ of the World; Maria Misra, Lecturer in Modern History and fellow of Keble College Oxford; Ziauddin Sardar, Professor of Science and Technology Policy, Middlesex University.

1 Feb 200128min

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the areas of conflict and agreement between science and religion.What space should science leave to religion? What ground should religion give to science? Do they need to give ground to each other at all? The American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould tackles the old problem in his book Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. In it he writes: “Science tries to document the factual character of the natural world, and to develop theories that co-ordinate or explain these facts. Religion, on the other hand, operates in the equally important but utterly different realm of human purposes”. In other words ‘science studies how the heavens go, religion how to go to heaven’. But do the two realms really exclude each other? Can religion and science be so easily divided?With Stephen Jay Gould, Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology, Harvard University; John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy, University of St Andrews and Stanton Lecturer in Divinity, Cambridge University; Hilary Rose, sociologist and Visiting Professor of Social Policy, Bradford University.

25 Jan 200142min