Free Thinking: Hands - The Anatomical Venus

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 21 June 2016

⏱️ 46 minutes

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Summary

Psychoanalyst Darian Leader's new book looks at the culture and psychology of the human hand. He joins Matthew Sweet along with art historian Lisa Le Feuvre, currently curating an exhibition on sculpture and prosthesis at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, and robotics scientist Thrishantha Nanayakkara from King's College London, who works on the problem of engineering a functioning hand from scratch.

'The Anatomical Venus' looks at another point where physiology and art meet, in waxwork anatomical models. The book's author Joanna Ebenstein joins Matthew along with the curator of the Barts Pathology Museum Carla Valentine.

And, one of this year's New Generation Thinkers, Seb Falk, unveils his work on the history of science. Seb Falk is at the University of Cambridge and blogs at http://astrolabesandstuff.blogspot.co.uk/

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio programmes. Find out more from our website and hear them introducing their research in the programme which broadcast on May 31st - available as an arts and ideas podcast.

The Body Extended: Sculpture and Prosthetics runs at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds from 21st July 2016 - 23rd October 2016

Robotics Open Day 2016 runs 11am to 4pm King's College London on Sat 25th June. You can hear more about The Robots Are Coming at Southbank's Power of Power Festival debates on Saturday 25 June

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?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:31.9	Welcome to 45 minutes of digital radio.
0:34.8	That's to say radio that talks to the hand.
0:37.3	The robot hand, good for much more,
0:39.3	it seems, than making instant mashed potato. The fleshy abacus of the medieval hand. The hand,
0:45.0	and much, much more than the hand, of the anatomical Venus, crafted in wax in 18th century
0:50.6	Florence, and the Victorian hand, preserved in formaldehyde and cared for by one of my
0:56.1	guests tonight, the mortician turned museum curator Carla Valentine. So, should you happen to have a
1:02.0	hand, take a look at it now, observe its opposable thumb, that key to human technological progress,
1:08.6	its networks of lines, legible to Gypsy Petchilengro and the Metropolitan Police.
1:13.6	Just think of all you've done with it, all that it's expressed for you, holding your fork for you,
1:18.8	moving the pen when you wrote your first love letter, stabbing the telephone keys that time you rang for an
1:24.3	ambulance, flicking a V sign just at the moment of maximum impact.
1:28.7	And perhaps as you consider these things, you'll begin to imagine this hand as a useful ally,
1:34.1	rather than an intrinsic part of you.
1:36.8	That's the founding suspicion of those films in which a severed hand goes scuttling down the corridor,
1:41.9	the idea that makes us believe in Dr. Strangelove's
1:45.2	wayward Hitler salute or the terrible autonomy of Emu. The psychoanalyst Darian Leder, author
1:51.4	of questioning books such as What is Madness? And why do women write more letters than they post?
1:56.5	Has been thinking about his hands, the subject and the title of his new book. He's here,
	...

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