Main topic articles
Communication (from Latin: communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is "an apparent answer to the painful divisions between self and other, private and public, and inner thought and outer world." As this definition indicates, communication is difficult to define in a consistent manner, because in common use it refers to a very wide range of different behaviours involved in the propagation of information. John Peters argues the difficulty of defining communication emerges from the fact that communication is both a universal phenomenon (because everyone communicates) and a specific discipline of institutional academic study.
10 episodes
Episodes in this category also belong to the following categories:
Education
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history education and examines whether its modern purpose is to teach us the nature of reality, or to give us the tools to deal with it.
4 November 1999
Featuring: Mary Warnock, Ted Wragg
History and Understanding the Past
Melvyn Bragg examines whether we can ever predict the future by understanding the past. What kind of lessons is it possible for leaders, governments or people to take from history?
30 March 2000
Featuring: Richard J. Evans, Eric Hobsbawm
Language and the Mind
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the formation of language is innate or cultural and examines how ideas about language are being radically challenged and altered in the 20th century.
11 February 1999
Featuring: Jonathan Miller, Steven Pinker
Mathematics
Melvyn Bragg examines the way perceptions of the importance of mathematics have fluctuated in the 20th century and what mathematics can reveal about how life began, and how it might continue.
6 May 1999
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Brian Butterworth
Mathematics and Platonism
Melvyn Bragg discusses whether mathematics is a process of invention or of discovery. And if it is a discovery, how can we be sure that the mathematic we think we have discovered is the right one?
11 January 2001
Featuring: Ian Stewart, Margaret Wertheim, John D. Barrow
Maths and Storytelling
Melvyn Bragg discusses the similar origins of mathematics and storytelling which both require a shape and structure to make any sense. But is it possible to apply mathematical logic to literature?
30 September 1999
Featuring: John Allen Paulos, Marina Warner
Nature
Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of man’s attempt to define nature, including the Ancient Greek’s quest to demonstrate the wrath of the gods and the Romantics who set out to philosophise it.
10 July 2003
Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Roger Scruton, Karen Edwards
Politics in the 20th Century
Melvyn Bragg talks to Gore Vidal and Alan Clark about political morality and the future of the nation state, and examines the impact of the individual on the story of the 20th century.
22 October 1998
Featuring: Gore Vidal, Alan Clark
Science in the 20th century
Melvyn Bragg discusses how perceptions of science have changed in the 20th century and examines whether it is coming any closer to integrating with philosophy or the social sciences.
5 November 1998
Featuring: John Gribbin, Mary Midgley
Time
Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?
30 December 1999
Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin