Science’s Revelations

29 Oct, 1998 500 Science

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.

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Guests

  • Richard Dawkins 4 episodes
    Reader in Zoology and Fellow of New College, Oxford
  • Charles Simonyi No other episodes
    Chair of Public Understanding of Science, Oxford University
  • Ian McEwan No other episodes

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Programme ID: p005454c

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005454c

Auto-category: 500 (Natural Sciences and Mathematics)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello, my guests today are Richard Dawkins, whose book Unweaving the Rainbow has just been published, and Ian McEwan, whose novel Enduring Love, a tale of rationalism, romanticism and religion at odds with one another, has recently been successfully launched in paperback.