Too much emphasis on "content" and not enough on understanding :^(Īnyway, here's a vote for good old James Burke. Yet this kind of rich context can be so important in gaining any depth of understanding of important ideas and events. That sort of historical connection is one of the "luxuries" we as teachers don't generally get to include in our curricula. I love to sit my students down and show them the ".Universe." episode, "Fit to Rule," to give them a feel for the way Darwin fits into the context of the nineteenth century, right along with the philosophical, architectural, musical and artistic achievements of the same period. I also cast a strong vote for Connections, which was *both* science and history, and for a sort of "sister" series, "The Day the Universe Changed."īurke did such a wonderful job of putting scientific and technological achievement into the context of history. Oh, this is a lovely thread! I recall almost every show mentioned, and loved almost all, from Mr. Self-examination leads to modesty, humility and a certain lack of certainty which (if my personal experience is any judge) tends to promote empathy for others, whatever their background. It is often said that the unexamined life is not worth living, but perhaps it is more apt to say that those who do not examine their own lives seem disposed to make the lives of others miserable. If you know of any, I'd love to hear about it.Ĭonversely, belief systems seem to often engender an undeserved confidence that can lead its adherents to regard themselves or their cause as so just as to lead them to dehumanize, enslave or even butcher outliers within their own group or members of other groups. being inspired and directed by skepticism. It seems to me that there is a certain abundance of negative evidence here, which is that I am unaware of wars, racial cleansing, mass murder etc. Hi! I'm not sure what you mean by reference or evidence. Humanist, scientist, citizen, thinker, communicator-these represent the best values of our culture. You come away from it with a sense that science is an entirely human endeavor, profound and powerful, and that it does not exclude any piece of our world. I remember watching this series with my father while I was in high school, an awful lot of years ago. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. This is where people were turned into numbers. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. There's one program that comes immediately to mind… The Seed mothership wants to know, " What is the best science TV show of all time?"
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