How Can I Tell Right From Wrong?

Historian Justin Champion on Francis Bacon's anxieties about the fallibility of technological innovators. The 17th century polymath Francis Bacon blew a fanfare for the new scientific age: where man would dominate, understand and improve the world and use technology to achieve this. Optimistic about man's ingenuity and the potential perfectibility of human society he saw also that men were weak. Nature might have been laid out by God as a kind of book for man to read but individual humans were as likely to be motivated by greed, folly and pride as good intentions. He explored this idea in his book of 1609, The Wisdom of the Ancients, where he used the example of Daedalus, the most ingenious of inventors from Greek Myth to consider the ambiguities of technical progress. Daedalus inventions were truly marvellous but his pride and lack of forethought led to disaster for all around him, not least his son Icarus who perished testing out one his father's extraordinary inventions.

28 Jan 201512min

Is technology making us less human? Writer, Tom Chatfield is an enthusiastic downloader of the latest apps, an early adopter of anything small and shiny that promises to smooth his path through life. But Tom can't help feeling a little anxious about the hold that new technology has on his life.Plato felt much the same, concerned that the new- fangled concept of writing might destroy the ability of the Ancient Greeks to memorise vast swathes of human knowledge. Do car sat-navs destroy our innate sense of direction? Do search engines displace our store of general knowledge?With the help of the Economist's Digital Editor, Tom Standage and cybernetics expert, Kevin Warwick, Tom looks toward a future when the communication and computing power of our smartphones is inserted directly into our nervous systems. With superfast thought processes and a battery of new senses will we feel upgraded or out of control, superhuman or inhuman?

27 Jan 201512min

A new history of ideas presented by Melvyn Bragg but told in many voices.Melvyn is joined by four guests with different backgrounds to discuss a really big question. This week he's asking how has technology changed us?Helping him answer it are Archaeologist Matt Pope, the Surgeon Gabriel Weston, the technologist Tom Chatfield and the historian Justin Champion. For the rest of the week Matt, Gabriel, Tom and Justin will take us further into the history of ideas about technology with programmes of their own. Between them they will tell us about Plato and the internet, medieval medicine, tool use in human evolution and the origins of Modern Science.

26 Jan 201512min

Giles Fraser thinks being human isn't a matter of biology or some unique attribute like language. It's not to do with what we are but about how we treat each other. Taking the work of the philosopher Wittgenstein he argues that to be human is to be considered worthy of certain kinds of respect and moral compassion. For Giles, human is a moral category and it is an instruction to treat each other well.

23 Jan 201512min

Barry Smith argues that language is our most important uniquely human attribute. It doesn't just help us communicate, it helps us to think. He makes the case for the distinctiveness of human language against the limited signalling systems of other animals. He looks at Noam Chomsky's idea of a universal grammar – that there is something in the human brain that gives us an innate ability to produce language from very early in our lives. And he talks to experts on other intelligent animals - Prof. Nicola Clayton and Prof. Robin Dunbar - to ask how human language and imagination compares with that of birds and primates.

22 Jan 201512min

Catharine Edwards wants to introduce you to the Roman Philosopher Seneca. But he's dying. Towards the end of his life Seneca became interested in the idea that only human beings had foreknowledge of their own death. Animals didn't know and Gods didn't die. This singular piece of knowledge gives human life its meaning as well as its burden. Seneca argued that to liberate yourself from the fear of death was a vital part of life. But did his own famous death live up to his beliefs?

21 Jan 201512min

Simon Schaffer is interested in the human species in general and one member of it in particular. Carl Linnaeus was a Swedish botanist and zoologist who set out the basic structure of how we name and understand life on earth. In doing so he broached the thorny question of where humans should sit among the species of the earth. A hundred years before Darwin he correctly placed us among the apes. Simon examines that relationship to see the things that mark our similarities and our differences. Simon comes face to face with 'Jock', an adult Gorilla at Bristol Zoo and talks to Prof. Robert Foley about human evolution. He also sees how Linnaeus' ideas were used to support racial science. After all if humans were more like apes perhaps some humans were more like apes than others.

20 Jan 201513min

A new history of ideas presented by Melvyn Bragg but told in many voices. Melvyn is joined by four guests with different backgrounds to discuss a really big question. This week he's asking What makes us human? Helping him answer it are philosopher Barry Smith, classicist Catharine Edwards, historian Simon Schaffer and theologian Giles Fraser. For the rest of the week Barry, Catharine, Simon and Giles will take us further into the history of ideas about being human with programmes of their own. Between them they will examine the evolution of language, the Stoic philosopher Seneca, the classification of all living species, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein and the film Bladerunner.

19 Jan 201512min