Encylopedias and Knowledge: from Diderot to Wikipedia.
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 6 February 2019
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jimmy Wales talks Diderot & collecting knowledge + Tariq Goddard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk. The French writer Diderot was thrown into prison in 1749 for his atheism, worked on ideas of democracy at the Russian court of Catherine the Great and collaborated on the creation of the first Encyclopédie. Biographer Andrew S. Curran and Jenny Mander look at Diderot's approach to editing the first encyclopedia. Plus writer and publisher Tariq Goddard on the work and legacy of his collaborator and friend, the critical theorist Mark Fisher who analysed the culture of Capitalism following the economic crash of 2008. Shahidha Bari presents.
Diderot and the art of Thinking Freely by Andrew S Curran is out now. k-punk: the collected and unpublished writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2017) edited by Darren Ambrose is out now.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
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| 1:47.5 | Hello, cats always land on their feet and buttered toast always lands butter side down. |
| 1:53.0 | So what happens when you put buttered toast on a cat? Here on free thinking, we like to tackle |
| 1:57.8 | the big intellectual questions, but some things are best left to Wikipedia. |
| 2:02.5 | That's where you'll find a detailed disquisition on the buttered cat paradox amongst many |
| 2:07.1 | other things. But if you want to know why we know the things we know, who puts information |
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