307 The Certainty Principle

The History of the Twentieth Century

Mark Painter

History

4.8 • 719 Ratings

🗓️ 25 December 2022

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Germany in the 1930s, modern science was exploring the limits of what can be known, at the same time the Nazi political movement was claiming absolute knowledge.

Transcript

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0:00.0	One aim of physical sciences has been to give an exact picture of the material world.
0:26.3	One achievement of physics in the 20th century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable.
0:33.3	There is no absolute knowledge, and those who claim it, whether they are scientist or dogmatist,
0:40.9	open the door to tragedy.
0:43.4	All knowledge, all information is imperfect.
0:47.7	We have to treat it with humility.
0:51.8	Jacob Bronowski, the Ascent of Man.
0:56.5	Welcome to the history of the 20th century.
1:00.3	Music Episode 307, The Certainty Principle.
1:32.1	Shall I teach you what knowledge is?
1:35.3	When you know a thing, to hold that you know it,
1:39.2	and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it.
1:45.9	This is knowledge.
1:52.7	Confucius, Anelects, Book 2, Chapter 17.
2:06.9	Euclid of Alexandria was born around the year 300 BC, or around the year 200 after Confucius, if you like,
2:13.8	and he must surely be included on the list of the most important mathematicians of all time.
2:22.0	His textbook, Elements, is the best known and most widely used textbook of all time. His textbook, Elements, is the best known and most widely used textbook of all time.
2:28.1	They were still teaching geometry by the Euclidean method, more or less when I was in high school.
2:32.7	Do they today? I'm hard to imagine teaching it any other way.
2:40.6	Euclid begins his work by laying out some easily grasped definitions and concepts.
2:47.9	Point, line, angle, plane, circle, triangle, and so on.
2:53.9	Then gives a few basic postulates, such as a straight line may be drawn from any point to any other point.
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