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BBC Radio 4

In Our Time: Science

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Social Darwinism. After the publication of Charles Darwin's masterpiece On the Origin of Species in 1859, some thinkers argued that Darwin's ideas about evolution could also be applied to human society. One thinker particularly associated with this movement was Darwin's near-contemporary Herbert Spencer, who coined the phrase 'survival of the fittest'. He argued that competition among humans was beneficial, because it ensured that only the healthiest and most intelligent individuals would succeed. Social Darwinism remained influential for several generations, although its association with eugenics and later adoption as an ideological position by Fascist regimes ensured its eventual downfall from intellectual respectability.

With:

Adam Kuper
Centennial Professor of Anthropology at the LSE, University of London

Gregory Radick
Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds

Charlotte Sleigh
Reader in the History of Science at the University of Kent.

Producer: Thomas Morris.

Social Darwinism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 2000-year-old device which transformed our understanding of astronomy in ancient Greece. In 1900 a group of sponge divers found the wreck of a ship off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. Among the items salvaged was a corroded bronze object, the purpose of which was not at first clear. It turned out to be one of the most important discoveries in marine archaeology. Over time, researchers worked out that it was some kind of astronomical analogue computer, the only one to survive from this period as bronze objects were so often melted down for other uses. In recent decades, detailed examination of the Antikythera Mechanism using the latest scientific techniques indicates that it is a particularly intricate tool for showing the positions of planets, the sun and moon, with a complexity and precision not surpassed for over a thousand years.

With 

Mike Edmunds 
Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at Cardiff University

Jo Marchant 
Science journalist and author of 'Decoding the Heavens' on the Antikythera Mechanism

And 

Liba Taub 
Professor Emerita in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and Visiting Scholar at the Deutsches Museum, Munich

Producer: Simon Tillotson
In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Reading list:

Derek de Solla Price, Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism (American Philosophical Society Press, 1974)

M. G. Edmunds, ‘The Antikythera mechanism and the mechanical universe’ (Contemp. Phys. 55, 2014) 

M.G. Edmunds, ’The Mechanical Universe’ (Astronomy & Geophysics, 64, 2023)

James Evans and J. Lennart Berggren, Geminos's Introduction to the Phenomena: A Translation and Study of a Hellenistic Survey of Astronomy (Princeton University Press, 2006)

T. Freeth et al., ‘Calendars with Olympiad display and eclipse prediction on the Antikythera mechanism’ (Nature 454, 2008)

Alexander Jones, A Portable Cosmos: Revealing the Antikythera Mechanism, Scientific Wonder of the Ancient World (Oxford University Press, 2017)

Jo Marchant, Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World’s First Computer (Windmill Books, 2009)

J.H. Seiradakis and M.G. Edmunds, ‘Our current knowledge of the Antikythera Mechanism’ (Nature Astronomy 2, 2018)

Liba Taub, Ancient Greek and Roman Science: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2022)

The Antikythera Mechanism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the great unanswered questions in science: how and where did life on Earth begin, what did it need to thrive and could it be found elsewhere? Charles Darwin speculated that we might look for the cradle of life here in 'some warm little pond'; more recently the focus moved to ocean depths, while new observations in outer space and in laboratories raise fresh questions about the potential for lifeforms to develop and thrive, or 'habitability' as it is termed. What was the chemistry needed for life to begin and is it different from the chemistry we have now? With that in mind, what signs of life should we be looking for in the universe to learn if we are alone?

With 

Jayne Birkby
Associate Professor of Exoplanetary Sciences at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow in Physics at Brasenose College

Saidul Islam
Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Kings College, London

And 

Oliver Shorttle
Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Clare College

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list: 

David Grinspoon, Venus Revealed: A New Look Below the Clouds of Our Mysterious Twin Planet (Basic Books, 1998)

Lisa Kaltenegger, Alien Earths: Planet Hunting in the Cosmos (Allen Lane, 2024)

Andrew H. Knoll, Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth (‎Princeton University Press, 2004)

Charles H. Langmuir and Wallace Broecker, How to Build a Habitable Planet: The Story of Earth from the Big Bang to Humankind (Princeton University Press, 2012)

Joshua Winn, The Little Book of Exoplanets (Princeton University Press, 2023)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

The Habitability of Planets

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss slime mould, a basic organism that grows on logs, cowpats and compost heaps. Scientists have found difficult to categorise slime mould: in 1868, the biologist Thomas Huxley asked: ‘Is this a plant, or is it an animal? Is it both or is it neither?’ and there is a great deal scientists still don’t know about it.
 
But despite not having a brain, slime mould can solve complex problems: it can find the most efficient way round a maze and has been used to map Tokyo’s rail network. Researchers are using it to help find treatments for cancer, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease, and computer scientists have designed an algorithm based on slime mould behaviour to learn about dark matter. It’s even been sent to the international space station to help study the effects of weightlessness.
 
With

Jonathan Chubb
Professor of Quantitative Cell Biology at University College, London

Elinor Thompson
Reader in microbiology and plant science at the University of Greenwich

And

Merlin Sheldrake
Biologist and writer

Producer: Eliane Glaser 

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Slime Moulds

Since plants have to mate and produce offspring while rooted to the spot, they have to be pollinated – by wind, water, or animals – most commonly insects. They use a surprising array of tricks to attract pollinators: striking colours, iridescent light effects, and enticing scents, to name but a few. 

Insects, on the other hand, do not seek to pollinate plants – they are looking for food; so plants make sure it’s worth their while. Insects are also remarkably sophisticated in their ability to find, recognise and find their way inside flowers. 

So pollination has evolved as a complex dance between plants and pollinators that is essential for life on earth to continue. 

With 

Beverley Glover, Director of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden

Jane Memmott, Professor of Ecology at the University of Bristol

And

Lars Chittka, Professor of Sensory and Behavioural Ecology at Queen Mary, University of London.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Reading list:

Stephen L Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan, The Forgotten Pollinators (Island Press, 1997)

Lars Chittka, The Mind of a Bee (Princeton University Press, 2023)

Steven Falk, Field Guide to the Bees of Britain and Ireland (British Wildlife Publishing, 2015)

Francis S. Gilbert (illustrated by Steven J. Falk), Hoverflies: Naturalists' Handbooks vol. 5 (Pelagic Publishing, 2015)

Dave Goulson, A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees (Vintage, 2014)

Edwige Moyroud and Beverley J. Glover, ‘The evolution of diverse floral morphologies’ (Current Biology vol 11, 2017)

Jeff Ollerton, Birds and Flowers: An Intimate 50 Million Year Relationship (Pelagic Publishing, 2024)
 
Alan E. Stubbs and Steven J. Falk, British Hoverflies (‎British Entomological & Natural History Society, 2002)

Timothy Walker, Pollination: The Enduring Relationship Between Plant and Pollinator (Princeton University Press, 2020)

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Pollination

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the decisive role of one of the great 20th Century physicists in solving the question of nuclear fission. It is said that Meitner (1878-1968) made this breakthrough over Christmas 1938 while she was sitting on a log in Sweden during a snowy walk with her nephew Otto Frisch (1904-79). Both were Jewish-Austrian refugees who had only recently escaped from Nazi Germany. Others had already broken uranium into the smaller atom barium, but could not explain what they found; was the larger atom bursting, or the smaller atom being chipped off or was something else happening? They turned to Meitner. She, with Frisch, deduced the nucleus really was splitting like a drop of water into a dumbbell shape, with the electrical charges at each end forcing the divide, something previously thought impossible, and they named this ‘fission’. This was a crucial breakthrough for which Meitner was eventually widely recognised if not at first.

With

Jess Wade
A Royal Society University Research Fellow and Lecturer in Functional Materials at Imperial College, London

Frank Close
Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics and Fellow Emeritus at Exeter College, University of Oxford

And 

Steven Bramwell
Director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology and Professor of Physics at University College London

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Reading list:

Frank Close, Destroyer of Worlds: The Deep History of the Nuclear Age, 1895-1965 (Allen Lane, 2025)

Ruth Lewin Sime, Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics (University of California Press, 1996)

Marissa Moss, The Woman Who Split the Atom: The Life of Lise Meitner (Abrams Books, 2022)

Patricia Rife, Lise Meitner and the Dawn of the Nuclear Age (Birkhauser Verlag, 1999) 

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Lise Meitner

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss whether the mass of scientific understanding and knowledge we have accumulated has destroyed our sense of poetic wonder at the world. Has our sense of awe at how the world works obscured our desire to know why it works the way it does? With Richard Dawkins evolutionary biologist, reader in Zoology and Fellow of New College, Oxford, Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science, Oxford University and author of Unweaving The Rainbow: Science, Delusion and The Appetite For Wonder; Ian McEwan, novelist, and author of the Booker prize winning novel Amsterdam.

Science's Revelations

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how perceptions of science and the power of science have changed in the 20th century. Does scientific endeavour increasingly concern itself with doubt rather than certainty, and is it coming any closer to integrating with other disciplines - philosophy or the social sciences? How much does the scientific explanation of the world owe to a wish for coherent understanding we all have, rather than objective observation, and why are we alternately disapproving of, then obsessively over-enthusiastic about new scientific theories? How far has specialisation in the sciences obscured our view of the world in its entirety, and if scientists want to operate within a social framework, can they do so and still claim to be objective and value-free in their findings?With John Gribbin, Visiting Fellow in Astronomy, University of Sussex and consultant to New Scientist; Mary Midgley, moral philosopher and former Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Newcastle.

Science in the 20th century

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain and the mechanisms of memory in the 20th century has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.Many questions have been thrown up this century by our growing knowledge about how the brain and the mind function. How easy is it to establish the relationship between the two, and what light can this relationship throw on our understanding of our own and others natures? With Steven Rose, Professor of Biology and Director of the Brain and Behaviour Research Group, Open University, Dan Robinson, Distinguished Research Professor, Georgetown University and visiting lecturer in Philosophy and Senior Member of Linacre College, Oxford University.

The Brain and Consciousness

Melvyn Bragg and guests marvel at our brains and discuss how at the end of a century of research we still understand so little about how they work.Developments in the understanding of the brain represent one of the major leaps forward in science in the 20th century, and the research is gathering pace and intensity. It’s a subject which captures the imagination, particularly the search for consciousness whatever that might be, and brings together some of the newest technology and the oldest belief systems. What a piece of work is the brain - a grain-of-sand-sized piece contains one hundred thousand neurons, two-million axons and one billion synapses which all talk to each other. How far we have got with our understanding of the brain and what can it tell us about ourselves and the world we live in?With Professor Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, Professor of Pharmacology, Oxford University and Professor of Physics at Gresham College; Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology, Director of the Brain Perception Laboratory, University of California in San Diego and Professor at the Salk Institute.

Neuroscience in the 20th century

Melvyn Bragg discusses the origin of the Earth. Ideas used to be very clear about its origins. Bishop Ussher, in 1654 arrived at an exact figure and specified it in his work Annalis Veteris et Novi Testamenti: He deduced that work on Planet Earth began at exactly 9am, on Monday 23rd October 4004 BC. The date was then printed in the margin of The Bible and preached from the pulpit, and right up to the nineteenth century to the left of ‘In The Beginning…’ was specified ‘Before Christ 4004’.Christian believers thought the creation story was solid as a rock…until the geologists arrived. First Hutton, then Smith, and then Lyell smashing away at orthodox belief in a way that made poor Ruskin quail, but in doing so they created a science. With Simon Winchester, author of The Map That Changed the World: the Tale of William Smith and the Birth of A Science; Cherry Lewis, geologist and author of The Dating Game: One Man’s Search for the Age of the Earth; John Cosgrove, Structural Geologist from the Royal School of Mines at Imperial College, London.

The Earth's Origins

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