The Conflict of Technique and Human Nature
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 1949
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The inaugural Reith Lecturer is the philosopher, mathematician, and social reformer Bertrand Russell. One of the founders of analytic philosophy and a Nobel Laureate, he is the author of Principia Mathematica, and the bestselling History of Western Philosophy, written in 1946. His Reith lecture series is entitled 'Authority and the Individual'.
In his fourth lecture, entitled 'The Conflict of Technique and Human Nature', he examines what part human nature has played in the development of civilised society, and argues that poverty, suffering and cruelty are no longer necessary to the existence of civilisation. He believes these can be eliminated with the help of modern science, provided it operates in a humane spirit, and with an understanding of the springs of happiness and life.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:05.0 | This lecture in the series Authority and the Individual, given by Bertrand Russell, was originally broadcast in 1949. |
| 0:15.0 | The Reith Lectures. Bertrand Russell is giving the fourth of six broadcasts on authority and the individual. |
| 0:23.7 | His fourth lecture is entitled The Conflict of Technique and Human Nature. |
| 0:30.7 | Bertrand Russell |
| 0:31.3 | Man differs from other animals in many ways. |
| 0:36.9 | One of these is that he is willing to engage in activities that are unpleasant in themselves |
| 0:42.0 | because they are means to ends that he desires. |
| 0:46.2 | Animals do things that from the point of view of the biologist seem to be labour for a purpose. |
| 0:52.5 | Birds build nests and beavers build dams. |
| 0:56.0 | But they do these things from instinct, |
| 0:58.0 | because they have an impulse to do them, |
| 1:00.0 | and not because they perceive that they are useful. |
| 1:03.0 | They do not practice self-control or prudence or foresight |
| 1:07.0 | or restraint of impulses by the will. |
| 1:09.0 | Human beings do all these things. |
| 1:13.6 | When they do more of them than human nature can endure, they suffer a psychological penalty. |
| 1:19.7 | Part of this penalty is unavoidable in a civilized way of life, but much of it is unnecessary |
| 1:25.7 | and could be removed by a different type of social organisation. |
| 1:31.3 | Early man had little of this conflict between means and impulses. |
| 1:35.3 | Hunting, gumbert and propagation were necessary for survival and for evolutionary progress. |
| 1:41.3 | But that was not his reason for engaging in these activities. |
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