Historians debate whether war is essentially destructive or constructive for the development of science. Certainly both world wars used scientists and science – with ever more destructive results. As for science, the result was the largest cooperative groups of scientists in history, something that is now labelled as Big Science.
Producers: Broadview Press Inc.
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What is Science?
What are the underlying assumptions, good and bad, we have about science and scientists? What is the relationship between science and technology, science and religion, science and society? This program gets to the roots of what science is.
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Why the Greeks?
Why did the thinkers and society of pre-Christian Era Greece have such a profound effect on the development of rational thought and “scientific” reasoning? Why does the name Aristotle still ring down through the ages although his work is now over 2,500 years old? This program will talk about the interconnection between an ordered, somewhat democratic, and highly competitive society, and the development of rules of nature, separate from the workings of the gods.
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The Great Bazaar of Science
The importance of Arabic thinkers has long been overlooked, and considered merely as an interlude and repository for Greek and Roman knowledge, but such scholars as Al-Hazen made major contributions to scientific development. Has the history of science been appropriated by the Euro-Centric view?
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Science in the Renaissance
Using Galileo as an example, this program delves into the ongoing relationship between science and power, and how first the Church, then the nobility and now the state and commerce, drives the direction and value of scientific research.
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Was There a Scientific Revolution?
Exactly what was the scientific revolution? Common wisdom would have us believe a progression of thought from the obscurantist “Dark Ages” to the Enlightenment, but was this period of time a revolution at all, or just a convenient intellectual construct?
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Purpose and Construction of Maps
When a map is built, are we showing the physical world, or are we merely projecting our world view onto a piece of paper? Each map has a hidden set of assumptions and ideologies, giving power to some and taking it from others.
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The Age of Empire
As European nations ventured out to grab other lands – and to fight their European rivals in other theatres – they believed they had the right and responsibility to name everything, producing an amazing series of classificatory systems, some of which are still with us today and still greatly disputed.
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The Origin of Species
Who was Darwin? What is his argument? And what is its relationship to the brutal social Darwinism that, in some ways, led to the First World War?
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Science and War
Historians debate whether war is essentially destructive or constructive for the development of science. Certainly both world wars used scientists and science – with ever more destructive results. As for science, the result was the largest cooperative groups of scientists in history, something that is now labelled as Big Science.