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Saturday 06 March 2010

In defence of the Enlightenment

The Enlightenment, that great ferment of ideas in eighteenth-century Europe, has its enemies today on both left and right. This week, we hear a talk from the Franco-Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov, author of the recently published 'In Defence of the Enlightenment', who argues for an Enlightenment approach to developing and understanding an open and just modern society.  Read Transcript

Saturday 27 February 2010

Seeing Red - Perception, sensation and consciousness

You are in a darkened lecture hall looking at a patch of red projected onto a screen in front of you. What's involved in "seeing red"? This week, we meet the philosopher and psychologist Nicholas Humphrey who uses the phenomenon of seeing red as way into the mystery of consciousness.  Read Transcript

Saturday 20 February 2010

Kurt Gödel and the limits of mathematics

Kurt Gödel was one of the foremost mathematicians and logicians of the 20th century, best known for his famous incompleteness theorem, which tells us that there are mathematical 'blind spots': parts of mathematics that traditional methods of proof cannot access. The theorem has far-reaching consequences for computing and even for our understanding of the nature of the human mind. This week, Mark Colyvan from the University of Sydney introduces us to this strange and paradoxical result.  Read Transcript

Saturday 13 February 2010

Alexander McCall Smith and the philosopher detective

This week, a conversation with writer Alexander McCall Smith. He's best known for his series of novels about Precious Ramotswe and her No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Botswana. However, McCall Smith is also the creator of Isabel Dalhousie, a trained philosopher and editor of The Review of Applied Ethics, who solves mysteries in her native Edinburgh and contemplates the ethical problems behind them.  Read Transcript

More Past Programs...