Blob
07-27-2005, 02:59 PM
Radio 4
Wednesdays 27 July to 24 August 2005 9.00-9.30pm
Listen live or listen to the archive afterwards.
In this five-part series, Jonathan Miller returns to his roots in medicine and tells the story of how we came to understand reproduction & heredity. Disposing with the idea of an external, perhaps even supernatural, vitalising force, he describes how we have arrived at the picture of ourselves and all organisms as Self-Made Things.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/selfmadethings.shtml
Programme 1
Darwinism in the second half of the 19th century provided a theoretical framework that captured in one stroke the seemingly limitless variety that zoologists, botanists and paleontologists found throughout nature.
It seemed that everything from extinctions and new species in the fossil record to the mating displays of birds of paradise, even the pattern of a butterfly's wing could now be explained scientifically. If the new feature were good for survival and propagation, it stayed. If not, it fell from Darwin's new tree of life.
And yet, at a finer level, explanations of how these variations came about, and when they occurred, were still found wanting. Indeed it became clear that we couldn't even describe satisfactorily how species bred true to type, without variation. Just why does a duck give birth to a duck rather than a platypus? Furthermore, why do termites build mounds, whilst birds build nests?
In the first part of this series, Jonathan Miller looks at organisms that make things other than themselves. Nests, webs and dams are all part of what Richard Dawkins described as the "extended phenotype" of a species. A termite mound is as much a part of the identity of a termite as its white abdomen and strong mandibles. Does looking at the way things make things give us clues as to how they make themselves?
Wednesdays 27 July to 24 August 2005 9.00-9.30pm
Listen live or listen to the archive afterwards.
In this five-part series, Jonathan Miller returns to his roots in medicine and tells the story of how we came to understand reproduction & heredity. Disposing with the idea of an external, perhaps even supernatural, vitalising force, he describes how we have arrived at the picture of ourselves and all organisms as Self-Made Things.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/selfmadethings.shtml
Programme 1
Darwinism in the second half of the 19th century provided a theoretical framework that captured in one stroke the seemingly limitless variety that zoologists, botanists and paleontologists found throughout nature.
It seemed that everything from extinctions and new species in the fossil record to the mating displays of birds of paradise, even the pattern of a butterfly's wing could now be explained scientifically. If the new feature were good for survival and propagation, it stayed. If not, it fell from Darwin's new tree of life.
And yet, at a finer level, explanations of how these variations came about, and when they occurred, were still found wanting. Indeed it became clear that we couldn't even describe satisfactorily how species bred true to type, without variation. Just why does a duck give birth to a duck rather than a platypus? Furthermore, why do termites build mounds, whilst birds build nests?
In the first part of this series, Jonathan Miller looks at organisms that make things other than themselves. Nests, webs and dams are all part of what Richard Dawkins described as the "extended phenotype" of a species. A termite mound is as much a part of the identity of a termite as its white abdomen and strong mandibles. Does looking at the way things make things give us clues as to how they make themselves?