Queen Square or Online
Cutting Measurement Down to Size
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathAt the heart of all sciences is measurement – the reduction of the answer to the question ‘What is out there?’ to ‘How much is out there?’. This talk, which is a critique not of science but of scientism, will look critically at the belief that measurement will lead to a Theory of Everything and...
RNLI: 200 years of saving lives at sea
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathReady for the next talk in our BRLSI 200 series looking at what other great things took place in 1824? In which case we'll start with the RNLI. 1824. 1,800 shipwrecks a year around Britain’s coasts. The RNLI had to be founded without government support. It depended on amazing volunteers, prepared to risk their lives...
Quantum mechanics, light & the future of technology
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathAny examination of the physical world reveals the domain of quantum mechanics. Here the certainties of the “classical” world are unmasked as mere approximations: the position of an atom, the colour of a ray of light, and even whether a cat is alive, or dead all melt into shades of probability and randomness. In this...
How Japan’s Death Cult led to Hiroshima
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathIn the 1930s Japan developed a death cult, whose origins lay in a government-directed propaganda campaign after the overthrow of the Shogunate in 1868, when the ruling military cliques restored an Imperial system of government with Emperor Meiji as the Godhead central to the constitution and spiritual life of the nation. A bastardised Bushido cult...
Humanly Possible: 700 years of humanist freethinking
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, Bath“Humanism” can mean many things, from Renaissance scholars’ dedication to literary study to a modern organised movement that seeks meaning and morality in our relationships here on Earth, rather than in religious ideas of the beyond. Humanism is so wide-ranging that it can seem an elusive term, but that also reflects its great richness, both...
John Herschel – The Last Polymath – all day conference
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathJoin us for a packed day of talks exploring the life and work of Victorian polymath, Sir John Herschel. Sir John Herschel (1792-1871), son of the astronomer William Herschel and nephew to Caroline Herschel, was the most influential natural philosopher of the Victorian period. His long career encompassed astronomy, mathematics, physics, geology, chemistry, as well...
Living with history in a pandemic
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathTrapped at home during the Covid 19 pandemic, EMMY award-winning filmmaker Martin Smith broadcast forty-three talks for Bristol's community radio station. In Matters of Life and Death: Living with History in a Pandemic the talks have become a book. Tributes to the book have described Martin Smith as “a natural essayist… the discipline of a...
Shakespeare’s Forgotten Sonnets
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathWilliam Shakespeare’s Sonnets are among his most celebrated works but, unlike his plays, they seem to have been largely forgotten following their publication in 1609. A second edition appeared in 1640 but this reordered the poems, combined many of them together to make longer poems, added titles, and in certain cases altered their wording. And...
Jonathan Dimbleby: Who Won World War Two?
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathIf you’re from the UK or America it’s a fair bet you grew up believing that “we” won the Second World War. “We” being the British or Americans, depending on the location. If you’re from Russia you’ll have a completely different perspective, in which the “Great Patriotic War” fought on the Eastern front is seen...
Throwing your arms around the world!
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathReady to get philosophical? In an upcoming talk Dr David Leech considers recent contributions to the metaphysics of feeling, and how humans experience the world as a physical entity. Exploring the work of Mark Wynn on emotional experience and Matthew Ratcliffe on existential feelings, he explores how both men allow that the way human beings...
Rome’s African emperor & his campaigns in Scotland
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathWhat made Septimius Severus one of the first great reforming emperors of the imperial Roman military, and how did he concentrate power around the imperial throne and create a reset of the Roman Empire based around allies from his North African homeland? Since the 1970s, new archaeological evidence has come to light to illuminate the...
Who Owns the Moon?
Queen Square or Online 16 Queen Square, BathOne of Britain’s leading intellectuals, Professor A C Grayling, joins us to take a philosophical stance on the subject of the Moon. Does history give us confidence that humankind's rapidly approaching commercial exploitation and possible colonisation of the moon will be peaceful and constructive, or further reason for conflict, trouble and wars? If we look...