Portrait of Lord Melvyn Bragg, host of In Our Time

Dichotomies

A dichotomy is a partition of a whole (or a set) into two parts (subsets). In other words, this couple of parts must be jointly exhaustive: everything must belong to one part or the other, and mutually exclusive: nothing can belong simultaneously to both parts.If there is a concept A, and it is split into parts B and not-B, then the parts form a dichotomy: they are mutually exclusive, since no part of B is contained in not-B and vice versa, and they are jointly exhaustive, since they cover all of A, and together again give A. Such a partition is also frequently called a bipartition.

2 episodes

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  1. Good and Evil

    Melvyn Bragg examines what the discoveries of Darwin and our knowledge of the true physiological nature and history of man has done for us in terms understanding our concepts of good and evil.

    1 April 1999

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    Featuring: Leszek Kołakowski, Galen Strawson

     
  2. The Mind/Body Problem

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?

    13 January 2005

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    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James