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01:10Point being, of course, it would have looked exactly the same.
01:15You see what your knowledge tells you you're seeing.
01:27Well, that's what this series is going to be about.
01:29How, what you think the universe is, and how you react to that in everything you do, depends
01:35on what you know.
01:36And when that knowledge changes, for you, the universe changes.
01:42And that is as true for the whole of society as it is for the individual.
01:46We all are what we all know today.
01:49What we knew yesterday was different, and so were we.
01:52So that's why this series is also going to look at the past, at the way we were, because
01:57of what we knew that was different from today.
01:59And at how, through history, every time our view of the universe changed, and us with it,
02:06something was created that would help to make us the way we are in the modern world, with
02:11a distinctive way of thinking that makes us, us, and not some other bunch, with a different view.
02:26Not some other bunch, thinking and acting differently.
02:30Us.
02:31The end product of centuries of change, that thinks it's the best there is.
02:36Just like all the others do.
02:37Every group, nation, tribe, cult, ideology, each one certain of its version of the truth.
02:45Prepared, if necessary, to defend that version to the death, to keep it alive.
02:50And we are no different.
02:51We defend ours.
02:53A thousand feet down, here, below me, under that mountain.
03:17It doesn't matter whether it's a hermetically sealed, radiation-proof, high-tech place like
03:22this, or a stack of bows and arrows in a jungle hut.
03:27Every culture has one of these.
03:29It's where the truth is protected.
03:34This is what's meant by putting your money where your mouth is.
03:37It shows just how far you're prepared to go, to defend your view of things.
03:42Here, as you can see, the attitude is quite far.
03:46It's the North American Air Defence Centre, inside Cheyenne Mountain.
03:58Any defence command centre is where we define our boundaries, within which our view operates
04:04and across which any threatening movement will start a war.
04:08Here, those boundaries extend far beyond national frontiers.
04:13They reach out into space.
04:15If how right your view is can be measured by the territory you defend, then this global
04:21defence makes this view about as right as you can get.
04:25But then we would think that, wouldn't we?
04:28So do all the others in their war rooms or jungle hunts.
04:32And for everybody, the amount of effort you expend on defence enhances the value of your
04:39way of life.
04:41That effort here is maximal.
04:56A single, multi-megaton nuclear warhead would wipe this place out, and the Russians could
05:02put one through the front door if they tried.
05:05Should it come from an offshore submarine, its flight time will be ten minutes.
05:09Three to identify it as incoming, seven to react, to get countermeasures off the ground
05:16to handle whatever else follows the missile.
05:19All over the Western world, military forces train for what they would have to do in those
05:24first seven minutes.
05:26The numbers are massive.
05:27Four and a half million troops, 25,000 battle tanks, over 11,000 aircraft, an unknown number
05:34of nuclear warheads.
05:36The Soviet Union test launches 500 missiles a year.
05:40The next one could be real.
05:43Readiness is unquestioning.
05:44The entire system poised to go, perhaps for the first and last time, in reaction to the
05:49words nobody wants to hear.
05:51Unknown track.
05:55This is the command of force, prepare to copy encrypted traffic for missile warning.
05:59Time is 1934, message follows, Juliet, Sierra, Whiskey, Quebec.
06:10I'll check, sir.
06:11Uniform.
06:15Here it depends to the operation center, but an unknown track.
06:18Track number is Zulu 462.
06:19Time unknown, 1930 Zulu.
06:22Force 130 degrees, speed 420 knots.
06:25Altitude 28,000 feet.
06:27Identification none.
06:29F-15, Scrabble to a time of 1930 Zulu.
06:40All right.
06:56Let's go.
06:58Let's pray.
06:59Let's pray.
07:01I don't know.
07:37So, why are we so attached to being the way we are, so attached that all these people
07:42are prepared to die for it?
07:44Well, if you asked nine out of ten people in the West, they'd probably use the word
07:48freedom, wouldn't they?
07:49Freedom of speech, freedom of movement, freedom of self-expression.
07:53Or maybe life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
07:58That, and the fact that we think our version of things is the best version there is.
08:04Look back, as I'm going to in this series, to the moments when what we were changed, because
08:09what we knew changed, and you see how far we've come.
08:13And also how each of those stages in the growth of our knowledge also brought into existence
08:19a vital bit of what it is we are today.
08:21Look.
08:31In 11th century Arab Spain, these Christian crusaders made a discovery that led directly
08:37to the invention of the modern university degree.
08:55In 1420, we found a new way of painting that helped to give us, in the modern world, the
08:59ability to navigate our ships to a precise landfall, anywhere on earth, or on another planet.
09:17Up to the 15th century, we memorised our knowledge in song or poetry.
09:21Then we invented a way to do without memory, and as a result, ushered in today's standardised
09:26technological existence.
09:38MUSIC PLAYS
09:39300 years ago, we believed the sky was made of crystal spheres.
09:43Then, around 1600, these gunners destroyed that glass universe and triggered the beginnings
09:48of modern science.
09:56For centuries, we handcrafted everything we needed.
09:59Then, an 18th century religious misfit invented the power to move mountains, and turned us all
10:04into compulsive consumers.
10:23The French Revolutionary Wars brought into existence an obsession with gambling.
10:27It was to make every 20th century Western citizen a healthy, long-living number.
10:38In the 19th century came discoveries about nature that generated our belief ever since in the inevitability
10:44of progress.
10:55And in 1844 came the invention that would give us computers.
11:06So why did all that happen to us, and not to the other cultures on the planet?
11:10Why did we keep on changing?
11:12Well, because of the kind of people we are.
11:15Let me try and show you what I mean.
11:17Look.
11:20You don't know what that is, do you?
11:21But you want to, don't you?
11:23OK.
11:24I'll show you.
11:32That enough?
11:33No?
11:35OK.
11:36Try this.
11:46There.
11:46It's a lock.
11:48See?
11:49That's the kind of thing we do.
11:51We try to take the universe apart to see how it works.
11:55We can't leave anything alone without knowing what it is.
11:57We are insatiably curious.
12:00And that's what we defend here with all this military hardware.
12:03The right to be curious.
12:05To ask questions and get answers.
12:07To question authority and to remove it from power if we don't like what it's telling us.
12:12And that's why we've changed constantly throughout history to become what we are today.
12:17Because we've never stopped asking questions.
12:19And what have we got as a result?
12:22Answers.
12:23A mountain of them gathered over the centuries.
12:26So much we've had to invent systems just to handle it.
12:31So big information processing itself is now a science.
12:35So total it's generated the full entire complex of the modern western world.
12:40A world based on information that we can defend from a hole inside a mountain.
12:46Thanks to the knowledge we've accumulated.
12:48And that we want to go on being free to accumulate.
12:52So why are we so uniquely curious like that?
12:55Why did we first start asking questions?
12:58And why did we start?
13:01There.
13:03Why know of them.
13:17If as I said earlier.
13:19We are what we know.
13:20And we know a lot.
13:22Then we have Greece to thank for it.
13:52ORCHESTRA PLAYS
13:53The Western view of things varies a certain amount from one place to another,
13:58but basically it's a dynamic view we all share,
14:01a highly individualistic approach to things.
14:03And we all keep order in the same way, with the same common beliefs,
14:07and the understanding that to hold it all together
14:09you have to compromise between doing your own thing
14:12and sticking to a minimal number of rules everybody agrees on
14:15if you're going to avoid chaos.
14:22If you landed here from another planet, came from another time,
14:26all this agreement, all the symbols, the way we all do what we do as a group,
14:30would be like a kind of message that you could read
14:33to find out what kind of civilisation we are now.
14:37Because, like everything else,
14:38this unspoken agreement is based on what we all know.
14:42And we're unique in the way we learn that.
14:44It's not genetic.
14:46You pick it up as you go along,
14:47the order things are supposed to be in,
14:49the way things are done.
14:51And when you get down to the individual level,
14:53the rules of the game are there too,
14:55much more subtle.
14:57But in spite of the fact that, in one sense,
15:00this is all Greek to me,
15:01the agreement is so common to all of us in the West
15:04that wherever you're watching us from now,
15:06it'll make sense.
15:08Even if you don't speak the language,
15:09you know the code.
15:11Look.
15:24You know the code.
15:58The way we are began on the coast of Turkey
16:01about 2,700 years ago
16:03with a group of Greeks looking for somewhere to settle
16:06after centuries of war and confusion
16:09had forced this particular lot
16:10to jump in their boats
16:11and head east
16:12for a bit of peace and quiet.
16:20Just as well these Ionians,
16:22as they were called,
16:23were a hardy, adventurous pioneering lot
16:25because they all fetched up
16:26in a part of the Eastern Med
16:28not exactly known for its five-star accommodation.
16:31You could see
16:32that this wasn't going to be milk and honey,
16:33for instance.
16:34Everywhere they looked,
16:35it was the same story.
16:36mountains inland,
16:38hemming in a bit of scrubby coastal strip
16:40good for olives, wine, and getting out of.
16:44But since they had just arrived,
16:46the Ionians did the next best thing.
16:47They went into shipping.
16:49By 800 BC,
16:51this intrepid lot had gone
16:52north to the Russian steppes,
16:54south to the Sahara,
16:56west to the Atlantic.
16:57And the little Ionian ships
16:58were like floating bazaars.
17:00Wine, oil, corn,
17:02silk, salt, millstones.
17:04You wanted it.
17:05They'd find it for you somewhere.
17:07Now, the thing about people like that
17:09is that they have always been after one thing
17:11above all else, haven't they?
17:13They're always looking for a better deal.
17:15Same with the Ionians.
17:17That's why they left Greece in the first place.
17:19And why, once ashore,
17:20in this inhospitable dump,
17:22they started doing something
17:23nobody else had ever done before.
17:28They started looking around
17:30to see what they could make of the place
17:33to make life a shade better than dreadful.
17:36Now, I know it sounds strange
17:38that I make such a big deal
17:40out of something
17:40that seems perfectly common sense,
17:42taking a practical view of things.
17:44But you have to remember
17:45that at the time,
17:473,000 years ago,
17:48the rest of the world
17:49was heavily into myths,
17:51gods, mysteries,
17:53and other views of nature
17:54not designed to tell you
17:55very much about the world around,
17:56except that nature
17:58was none of your business.
18:03So when one of these Ionians,
18:05a guy called Tales,
18:06started asking practical questions
18:08about his environment,
18:10he was really breaking all the rules.
18:12Tales looked at nature
18:13with mechanisms in mind
18:14rather than magic,
18:15and he noticed how everything
18:17came in opposites.
18:18Hot, cold, wet, dry,
18:20up, down, opposites.
18:22Just like the two sides of a deal,
18:24a crafty business like Ionian,
18:26like Tales would have said.
18:29This business of opposites
18:30in nature and argument
18:31was to go meaningfully well
18:33with something else Tales did,
18:35which was to nip off to Egypt
18:36and bring back their geometry.
18:40Now, in the laid-back opulence
18:42of life up the Nile,
18:43where the local conditions
18:44produced the world's
18:45most regular good times,
18:46they lived kind of
18:48feet up and mind in neutral,
18:50so to speak.
18:51Problem solving was very much
18:52not their thing,
18:53so geometry got used
18:55for building pyramids
18:56and measuring land
18:57and nothing else.
18:59Tales, with practical needs in mind,
19:02tipped the pyramid on its side
19:04and used the triangle
19:05so that two people,
19:07one here and here,
19:08could get a cross-bearing
19:09on a ship out at sea here
19:11and work out how far
19:12from land it was.
19:14Good, eh?
19:16But he did something
19:17much more clever.
19:18He took the circle
19:20with its 360 degrees
19:21and halved it,
19:23so this line
19:24had to contain 180 degrees,
19:26halved the 360, right?
19:30OK, try this.
19:31Here's a straight line.
19:33Here's another one.
19:34Now, these angles here and here
19:36must add up to 180, mustn't they?
19:38Let's call them A and B.
19:40And these angles here and here
19:42add up to 180 too.
19:44Call them B and C.
19:46Now, if A and B make 180
19:48and B and C make 180,
19:51then A and C must be the same.
19:54Opposite angles are equal.
19:56From a self-evident thing,
19:57like a circle,
19:58Thales had gone
19:59to a non-self-evident thing,
20:01like this.
20:01That's the basis of geometry,
20:03going from something you know
20:04to discover something you don't.
20:07And all this was to turn out
20:08to go very well
20:09with that business
20:10of reconciling opposites
20:11I was on about,
20:12because by about 500 B.C.,
20:15that's how they were
20:16running their cities.
20:22In the town squares,
20:23they'd settle things
20:24by the first ever public debates,
20:26well, shouting matches,
20:27called politics.
20:28And that kind of arguing
20:30opposite points of view,
20:31plus their new geometry,
20:33went together to produce
20:34an entirely original kind
20:36of structure for thinking,
20:37with which you could tackle
20:39any subject.
20:40So, being an adventurous lot,
20:42they did.
20:44The Greeks were into questions like,
20:47what's it all made of?
20:48Where did it all come from?
20:49And what's this constant change
20:51in nature all about?
20:52And the technique they'd developed
20:54for reconciling opposites
20:56to reach political solutions
20:57was also a kind of way
20:59of thinking things through
21:00in general to reach new ideas.
21:03And so, in a physical sense,
21:05was the geometry.
21:06Remember?
21:19Whatever happened in nature,
21:21lines and angles never changed.
21:24And that's where we began.
21:25I mean, the rational way
21:27we in the West look at things.
21:29The rationalism that is the bringing together
21:31of logic and geometry.
21:34That's our way.
21:35Driven, since the questioning Greeks,
21:38to look for the order in nature
21:39without which there would be chaos.
21:45ORCHESTRA PLAYS
22:13Today, the rationalist Greek way has brought us to the stage
22:17where our search for order, our questioning,
22:20reaches out even across the depths of intergalactic space.
22:29The answers we get from this antenna come from millions of light years away.
22:33And if you look around, here or wherever you are now,
22:37you see how the modern world is made up of answers,
22:40answers to questions in the past that were so good we hung on to them.
22:55They're all around us, influencing the way we are.
22:58Well, this is an 18th-century answer.
23:02I mean, being able to build a gigantic metal structure like this radio telescope.
23:07Because the answer to a question being asked in the 18th century
23:10showed how to generate the power to make things like that.
23:15And when you can cut metal on an industrial scale,
23:18you can make machines on an industrial scale
23:20and manufacture on an industrial scale
23:22to solve the problems of a rising population.
23:31Steam power was the answer to that 18th-century problem.
23:34They produced enough to feed themselves all right,
23:37and in doing so, started things we still live with.
23:41Regular work for regular wages, factories and unions,
23:44the expectation of a steadily rising standard of living
23:47and the problem of unemployment.
24:00The telescope here maps the sky.
24:04You feed in the coordinates, and it gives you that.
24:09It's a radio map of a galaxy.
24:11Two million light-years, straight out, that way.
24:16This is a map of our galaxy.
24:18There's Andromeda.
24:21There's the galactic centre.
24:23That use of coordinates to map the sky or where you live or anywhere
24:28is another answer we found and kept in the 15th century.
24:40Back then, the question was,
24:42how does the newly affluent Florentine merchant get a bit of class into his life?
24:47The answer was to go to Greece and pick up some classical culture,
24:50which they did,
24:52together with an entirely new way of measuring things,
24:55things like the world,
24:57with a system that used grid lines,
24:59the kind of technique we use today for town planning
25:02or placing an intercontinental ballistic missile within 10 feet of its target.
25:09But we live with more than just physical answers from the past.
25:13When any good attitude or concept or system worked well,
25:18we hung on to it.
25:19We preserve representative democracy,
25:22intended for a time when only a few could get to the capital to speak for the many.
25:27Modern finance was designed in the 17th century.
25:30Literacy as a test of intelligence came in the 15th century.
25:34The idea of progress is 19th century.
25:37And yet all those things are part of our mental furniture today,
25:40because when the answer to a question,
25:43the solution to a problem, suits us,
25:45we kind of institutionalise it,
25:47so that it won't change even when we do.
25:49The business of questioning itself has been institutionalised like that,
25:54in the kind of place Jodrell Bank Telescope belongs to,
25:58a university.
26:17If we are what we know,
26:19then this is where we pass on what we are to the next generation.
26:31And in the interest of safety,
26:33to keep the boat from being rocked too much,
26:35we teach the young to ask questions
26:37that have in the main already been answered.
26:39Tristram Shandy asks us to help write the novel,
26:41but in so doing we write ourselves.
26:44Good, I like that.
26:46Particularly, I think, what you said about time.
26:51And to make sure we've passed on the view
26:53of how things are unmistakably, we test.
26:56After all, that's the only way you can be sure
26:58they know what they're supposed to know.
27:02And the system's worked well for hundreds of years.
27:05You can see how much we value this answer from the past
27:07in the way all education is conservative, cautious.
27:11It is as if we wanted to reassure ourselves
27:14that in the risky business of asking questions about knowledge,
27:17we were confidently operating with tried and tested ideas
27:20that hadn't failed us
27:22since when people dressed and talked, like this.
27:26In nomine domini patris fili et spiritus sanctus.
27:53The oldest answers to the most basic questions
27:56about how to operate
27:57are common to virtually every culture on the planet.
27:59because, at the simplest level, every culture needs to keep order,
28:04especially this kind.
28:05Oui, oui, oui.
28:07LÃ , c'est bien, c'est bien.
28:08D'accord, c'est bien, c'est bien, c'est bien.
28:15...
28:15...
28:19...
28:25This is one of the things in life we protect most
28:28against being changed when knowledge changes us.
28:31We protect it by turning it into a ritual.
28:43When you get married, or buried, get christened, or anything else too important to play by
28:48ear, the event is turned into a kind of play, where everybody gets a role they act out.
28:54It's a kind of public agreement to stick to the general rules about whatever it is.
28:58The people doing it are effectively saying, no matter what else may change, we won't rock
29:04the boat.
29:05We're not Maverick.
29:06You can trust us.
29:08Expressions of approval followed.
29:29Most of these ritual ways of answering a social need that we got from the past look like it.
29:35But they include something from an ancient rite, in this case, the old symbol of fertility,
29:40the ring.
29:41And then it's all done in the presence of a supernatural being, a god.
29:45So the agreement is also made under what was once a real threat of heavenly retribution
29:50if you broke your promise later on.
30:13Rituals, if you like, permit change to happen, like the change in the status of the two people
30:18involved here. But it's changed strictly by the book. Ceremonial. Formal. Nerve-racking.
30:28Phew, is usually the feeling at this point. Well, a ritual wouldn't be much of a ritual
30:32if you didn't feel you'd been put through the ringer, would it? So, now it's official
30:36in every sense, the new order of things, two are now one, gets public recognition. And for
30:42just a few minutes, limited disorder is permitted. Mind you, most of the rituals in life don't
30:51involve a booze-up. In most cases, if something becomes common enough to turn into a ritual,
30:56and then starts to involve really large numbers of people, that's when the ritual becomes something
31:02else.
31:11It becomes widespread enough to affect that general agreement we all share. So that's when
31:16the responsibility for running it goes out of your hands.
31:22To be taken over by the institutions set up to run the rituals that matter on a regular basis.
31:28So that people can have clear rules and regulations to follow if they decide to get up to that particular
31:33ritual. The institutions take the admin out of daily life and run it for you. Banking, government,
31:42sewage, tax collecting. Or, if you break the rules and regulations, one institution could take
31:49you out of daily life. This one.
32:07In every community, the law, whether it's dressed up like this, or the village elders telling you what
32:13the local custom is, the law is all those rules I was on about earlier.
32:28This may be double dutch to you, but you get the point.
32:35I suppose what institutions like this do, most of all, is the dirty work. While they're putting
32:42them away here in the law court, for instance, that leaves us free ticket on with making money,
32:47having a career, and avoiding the social responsibility stuff these people have to deal with.
32:52And after a few centuries of this buck passing, the institutions get big and powerful, and reach
32:58into everybody's life so much, they become hard to alter, and virtually impossible, to get rid of.
33:23The name of the game here, and in all the institutions that run your life, is keeping order. Because if
33:31the
33:31institutions didn't do that, it would be the end of civilization as we know it, wouldn't it?
33:37So, the institutions are usually old-fashioned, don't like change.
33:43Well, we all like to know where we stand, don't we? I mean, you wouldn't want this place to make
33:48up
33:48the rules as it went along, would you?
34:17The extreme way to protect yourself against change, and keep total order in the face of
34:23awkward questions, is to do it the way they do it in Eastern communities, where, say,
34:28Buddhism is a way of life. In that case, you're not bothered by questions, because you're not
34:33looking for answers. Basically, all the answers of Buddhist needs were found over 2000 years ago.
34:39Their explanation of the universe is set in theological concrete. And in any case, it's a universe
34:46that doesn't change, so there's no need to go looking for change in it.
35:14So, the reason this culture is not like ours is because, like us, they are what they know.
35:22But since what they know doesn't change, they don't. The symbols and monuments that surround
35:27them are a part of their daily living. To our way of looking at it, they don't live with bits
35:33of
35:34the past affecting them. They live in the past.
35:49The Nepalese way of life reflects their lack of interest in novelty. They don't change, not because
35:55they're backward, but because they don't want to. We, on the other hand, do. And that gives us a problem.
36:11In spite of the way institutions can act like a safety barrier against the effects of change,
36:17because of the way we've made asking questions one of our institutions,
36:21we do something that doesn't appear to make sense. Where other societies do things,
36:28organise themselves to keep things the way they are, we, because of our rationalist beginnings back in
36:34Greece, create places like this to do exactly the opposite, to make waves, to rock the boat,
36:41to ask questions, knowing that the answers will change things. It's a scientific research lab.
36:48Through this inverter, which has to drive the signal up to about 5,000 microns of metal,
36:56and about 2,000 of poly. Right here we had to get a calcon.
37:01The difference between the modus simulation and the advice modus isn't quite as accurate.
37:04It will not latch this data in time. In places like this,
37:08we've institutionalised the business of change itself.
37:20And as with the other institutions, this kind has taken root,
37:23ever since science first started affecting our daily lives.
37:28Today, the mysterious world of the research lab comes up with so many answers so fast,
37:34that only a few insiders know what the question was.
37:39If, as I said earlier, we are what we know, then this particular kind of institution
37:45spends its working hours finding ways to make things that will sooner or later change what we are.
37:51Our view.
37:58Once it took decades, even centuries, for us to change.
38:02Now, it could happen with every new discovery.
38:08But these places aren't just here to design fancy new gizmos.
38:12These semi-independent scientific communities spend as much of their effort involved in the kind of
38:17abstract theoretical thinking that may never have an application.
38:25What they produce is ultimately approved by us or not when it gets onto the market.
38:31If what they make doesn't sell, then the kind of change it would have brought wasn't the kind
38:36of change we wanted. Problem is, we often don't know what they produce because it's not the kind
38:41thing you'd know about unless you read scientific magazines.
38:49As often as not, the product changes the way we do things rather than the things themselves.
38:56They modify the world around us. Like you still go on using lifts, they just work differently.
39:01The buildings still go up. They're just built with different construction techniques.
39:09The phone looks just the same, only it does more things for you than it did before.
39:15Thanks to research labs like this, that kind of change happens every day, everywhere.
39:47The point about all this technological
39:50pizazz isn't the gee whiz high tech stuff. It's the secondary effect of using it.
39:56Take, say, what this chip could do to change the pattern of work. With this, you could have
40:01telecommuting. That's where you work at home from a screen and you never go into the office.
40:06Great. No more rush hour. But what does that do to the public transportation system and the taxes
40:11it uses? Or to the car manufacturers and their workers' jobs and the rest of the economy that
40:17depends on their output. Or to the concept of the city itself with its support systems and businesses.
40:23Or to the downtown property values where maybe your pension funds invested. Not to speak of working
40:29at home day in day out and what that might do to a marriage. And what do you get out
40:33of work when it's
40:34only you? What would be the effect of isolating and fragmenting the community like that from just
40:41one application of this microchip?
40:47And every innovation modifies life like that. And our culture has been doing it for a thousand years.
40:53That's the way we are. And it shows. Look at any Western city and you'll see a culture trying to
41:00come to terms with constant change. Look at the detail of your hometown or this place and you see
41:14the way people saw things in the past and how different their views were to ours. You can still
41:20see those attitudes because of what they left behind them. Some of those past views lasted long enough and
41:28were so certain of themselves that they left behind really major bits of evidence of what they thought
41:32was important.
41:38Look at this for instance. 19th century San Francisco built churches. And believed in heroes. How many
41:46statues do we build to honour great men today? And look at the public buildings of the period. Almost imperial.
41:53And they obviously didn't think things were going to change much or they wouldn't have built like
41:57this for a view that obviously thought it would last as long as the Greeks did.
42:03Today power lies with the quick fix, with the marketplace and big business. And where once a home
42:10was a house, today it's a box in a skyscraper. We've gone from this way of looking at things to
42:17this in a generation.
42:34We've found options for many a few years before a wave. And as I realized her feeling they were
42:35Why are most of them still them? And people find anallenwegians in the height of the earth.
42:44How it can do, refers to me.
42:58Now people work at night, because somewhere else on the planet, it's not night.
43:05Train 238 Central. That's 10-4. Your route is coming up.
43:08I'm receiving the train now.
43:13The public transit system exists to deliver millions of people to their work every day,
43:17like an extension of the production line process that runs the modern world
43:21and that everybody has to fit into,
43:23and that changed the meaning of work 200 years ago when it first happened.
43:27Life now is working to buy this year's model, because last year's is last year's.
43:36KFRC.
43:37Good morning and welcome to the absolute ultimate radio program.
43:40And everywhere, freeways, expressways, throughways,
43:43all to make it easier for everybody to go places faster and in greater comfort
43:47than they were able to, only yesterday.
43:53We live caught between more and more change, and less and less time to adapt to it.
43:58We believe in the right of the individual to do his thing,
44:02but at the same time, we change what that thing is all the time.
44:11So, this is what questioning has brought us.
44:14If we are what we know, then what we are in the modern West
44:18is unsure about how long it'll be before what we know is out of date.
44:32See how a culture reveals itself by what it does?
44:36All that evidence about ours, down there.
44:40You can read it like a book,
44:41and in our case, the message you get is
44:43that the only constant in life is change.
44:47Not just in the physical shape of the world around,
44:49in standards, attitudes, ethics, values, morals, all shifting.
44:56The inevitable end product of that Greek rationalism I talked about earlier
45:01is all around you.
45:02It's our world of here today and gone tomorrow.
45:14I said at the beginning,
45:15all cultures think their view is worth defending to the death.
45:19But we, more than most, are split between yesterday and tomorrow,
45:23defending a way of life that is, by definition, a question mark.
45:44I said at the beginning,
46:05So here we are, committed by our Greek origins
46:07to a life of asking questions that provide answers
46:10that turn out to create more questions.
46:13And no end in sight.
46:15And as our amazing abilities grow more amazing,
46:18the more questions we ask,
46:20we're reaching the stage where it's not a matter
46:22of what novelty and change the future will bring next,
46:25but what kind of future we care to invent, make happen.
46:28We can make deserts bloom, or make deserts, move mountains,
46:33maybe create life,
46:35all because we can't leave things alone.
46:47But why do we go on asking questions?
46:50If the only point has ever been to find the right answer
46:52to explain all this lot,
46:55what was wrong with the one the Greeks found?
46:57Why didn't we stick with their view of the universe?
47:00Or any of the other views that have come along since the Greeks?
47:02Why didn't we stick with one of them?
47:05Well, in a sense, we did.
47:07Part of the way we view things now does come from the past.
47:11Many of the institutions and attitudes we have originated in the past,
47:16born of different answers to different questions,
47:19in different times, with different problems.
47:21But they continue to exist, still operate,
47:25modified, but basically the same,
47:27still affecting us like living fossils.
47:31Even in a world of constant change like ours,
47:34many of those systems that control,
47:36organise our view of things,
47:38the way we do what we do,
47:39are outdated.
47:42So why do we keep them?
47:46Well, that's also what this series is going to look at,
47:49the changes in knowledge
47:50that brought them into existence in the first place,
47:53the problems they were designed to solve,
47:55and the way they made us what we are today.
47:59It was the earliest of those changes in the past,
48:01the one that gave birth to one of the most powerful institutions
48:04in the modern world
48:06that I want to look at first,
48:07in the next programme.
48:09Because the knowledge generated then
48:12gave us the idea, basic to life ever since,
48:15that we could shape the future.
48:18That change I'm talking about
48:20happened, oh, 900 years ago in Spain,
48:24almost by accident.
48:25And funnily enough,
48:27given the fact that it made us all think
48:28that we could shape the future,
48:30and I'll leave you with this thought till next time,
48:33it actually involved people looking in crystal balls.
49:05PIANO PLAYS
49:31VIOLIN PLAYS
49:50VIOLIN PLAYS
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