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Nature

Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of man鈥檚 attempt to define nature, including the Ancient Greek鈥檚 quest to demonstrate the wrath of the gods and the Romantics who set out to philosophise it.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the attempt to define humanity鈥檚 part in the natural world. In Childe Harold鈥檚 Pilgrimage Lord Byron wrote:鈥淭here is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore,There is society where none intrudes,By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:I love not man the less, but Nature more.鈥 In the Bible鈥檚 book of Genesis, 鈥榥ature鈥 was the paradise of Eden, but for the philosopher Thomas Hobbes it was a place of perpetual war, where the life of man was 鈥渟olitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short鈥. The defining of Nature, whether 鈥渞ed in tooth and claw鈥 or as the fount of all innocence, is an attempt to define man鈥檚 origins and purpose and humanity鈥檚 part in the natural world. With Jonathan Bate, Professor of English Literature at the University of Warwick; Roger Scruton, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buckingham; Karen Edwards, Lecturer in English at the University of Exeter.

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45 minutes

Last on

Thu 10 Jul 2003 21:30

Broadcasts

  • Thu 10 Jul 2003 09:02
  • Thu 10 Jul 2003 21:30

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