The Birth of Exploration
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 12 November 1975
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year's Reith lecturer is distinguished Professor of American history, Dr Daniel J Boorstin, the twelfth Librarian of Congress. In his Reith lectures, entitled 'America and the World Experience', he explores how the USA developed into the superpower it is today.
In this first lecture entitled 'The Birth of Exploration', Dr Boorstin explains why the desire to journey to new and undiscovered lands was important in the development of the United States of America. He considers the difference between a 'frontier' and 'the wilderness' for the first colonisers of the continent and explains how a community spirit of adventure made it all possible.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:04.2 | This lecture in the series America and the World Experience, given by Daniel Burstyn, |
| 0:09.2 | was originally broadcast in 1975. |
| 0:12.1 | When Columbus started out on his famous voyage, we're told, he didn't know where he was going. |
| 0:18.8 | When he got to his destination, he didn't know where he was, and when he got back, he didn't |
| 0:23.0 | know where he'd been. |
| 0:24.8 | Perhaps this quip has been popular because of a widespread suspicion outside the United States |
| 0:31.0 | that it may describe us Americans during the whole two centuries of our national existence. |
| 0:37.2 | But like some other old world characterizations of the relation between the old world than you, |
| 0:43.3 | I believe this gives the old world hero too much credit. |
| 0:47.3 | For this suggests that Columbus really was an explorer. |
| 0:51.3 | Actually, he was only a discoverer, although of course a very great one. |
| 0:57.4 | In the present lecture, I will try to recount how the American experience stirred mankind |
| 1:03.3 | from discovery to exploration, from the cautious quest for what they knew or thought they knew |
| 1:10.6 | was out there, into an enthusiastic reaching to the unknown. |
| 1:15.4 | I will begin by reminding you of a crucial nuance of meaning between to discover and to explore. |
| 1:23.9 | Then I'll suggest why Columbus was a discoverer, and I will go on to the role of America in the rise of exploration. |
| 1:32.3 | What I'm talking about is no mere distinction of words, but a substantial difference between two kinds of human enterprise. |
| 1:42.4 | When we say that men climb the highest mountain, |
| 1:45.9 | simply because it's there, |
| 1:48.1 | we think we're describing changeless human nature. |
| 1:51.9 | Actually, we're expressing a peculiarly modern point of view. |
... |
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