Why Are We Here?- A Doco.
Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2017 3:56 pm
Who knows. Maybe there is no reason.
Brian Cox did a TV doco on this issue in 2014. Its visually pretty, complex and hard to understand. The fact that its about the most important issues in the world probably means that its viewing is in single digits and most stop watching after 10 minutes.
Its worth watching.
Weaknesses include its Foucault like circumlocution.
Strengths include its visual beauty and the way it tries to include human evolution into physics, chemistry and the universe.
Significantly he seems to attack the Dawkins dogmatism and suggest more chance and less certainty into what has happened to us in the last 4 billion years. I think a full blown attack on the aged and egotistical (but brilliant) Dawkins is well overdue. Whilst they are at it a burning of Stephen Fry, a great advocate of evolution with no scientific education – is not beyond good taste. Comedic celebrities should stick to what they have ability in – telling jokes.
Dawkins might be a good zoologist but his maths, physics and chemistry is not as good as his decedent reading degree supporters think.Their knowledge of science is close to zero which explains why they like a scientist who can write so well in literary fashion about matters they understand nothing of.
I think the Cox doco.is hard, complex, important but pretty.
I worry about Brian Cox. Whilst people like him might start out as thinkers and communicators once they become media celebrities they tend to loose their brain and judgment. Maybe they are smart – but ‘we’ don’t want a smart people with complex ideas – we want a pretty face with a great body and don’t care less whether they are smart or idiots. Many are idiots who just read scripts.
The BBC is less than generous with free videos of this program. Its a money making world and there are probably expensive DVD's of the program. I'm too lazy to give you direction on the matter.
I suspect that in elite London circles his lack of an Oxbridge degree is treated with both satire and derision. Nevertheless other science communicators like Carl Sagan have survived this normally life crippling deprivation of a sandstone education.
Interestingly in a subsequent doco he suggests that life in another planet is less rather than more likely – at a particular point in time. His argument, in brief, is that the millions of possibilities need to be reduced by the chances of favorable local conditions, then reduced further by the chances that mitigate against the development of complex life then reduced again by the millions of years during which that life develops. It seems that he thinks the numbers mean that we are very unlikely to ever come in contact with anything meaningful during our limited period of existence.
Its a strange world. Thousands of celebrity commentators are paid well to tell us about politics, economics and social change. On the other hand, other than Cox and very few others there are few, and none in the newspapers, who can tell us about science in an interesting and engaging way.
Brian Cox did a TV doco on this issue in 2014. Its visually pretty, complex and hard to understand. The fact that its about the most important issues in the world probably means that its viewing is in single digits and most stop watching after 10 minutes.
Its worth watching.
Weaknesses include its Foucault like circumlocution.
Strengths include its visual beauty and the way it tries to include human evolution into physics, chemistry and the universe.
Significantly he seems to attack the Dawkins dogmatism and suggest more chance and less certainty into what has happened to us in the last 4 billion years. I think a full blown attack on the aged and egotistical (but brilliant) Dawkins is well overdue. Whilst they are at it a burning of Stephen Fry, a great advocate of evolution with no scientific education – is not beyond good taste. Comedic celebrities should stick to what they have ability in – telling jokes.
Dawkins might be a good zoologist but his maths, physics and chemistry is not as good as his decedent reading degree supporters think.Their knowledge of science is close to zero which explains why they like a scientist who can write so well in literary fashion about matters they understand nothing of.
I think the Cox doco.is hard, complex, important but pretty.
I worry about Brian Cox. Whilst people like him might start out as thinkers and communicators once they become media celebrities they tend to loose their brain and judgment. Maybe they are smart – but ‘we’ don’t want a smart people with complex ideas – we want a pretty face with a great body and don’t care less whether they are smart or idiots. Many are idiots who just read scripts.
The BBC is less than generous with free videos of this program. Its a money making world and there are probably expensive DVD's of the program. I'm too lazy to give you direction on the matter.
I suspect that in elite London circles his lack of an Oxbridge degree is treated with both satire and derision. Nevertheless other science communicators like Carl Sagan have survived this normally life crippling deprivation of a sandstone education.
Interestingly in a subsequent doco he suggests that life in another planet is less rather than more likely – at a particular point in time. His argument, in brief, is that the millions of possibilities need to be reduced by the chances of favorable local conditions, then reduced further by the chances that mitigate against the development of complex life then reduced again by the millions of years during which that life develops. It seems that he thinks the numbers mean that we are very unlikely to ever come in contact with anything meaningful during our limited period of existence.
Its a strange world. Thousands of celebrity commentators are paid well to tell us about politics, economics and social change. On the other hand, other than Cox and very few others there are few, and none in the newspapers, who can tell us about science in an interesting and engaging way.
