And Slaters Go Plop

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Prior to 2005 I was reading mostly the kind of books that make the Whitcoulls Top 100 list along with the occasional classic by the likes of Dostoevsky, Hardy and others. And, of course, Iain [M] Banks whenever a new book came out.

In early 2005 a friend recommended Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. It was this simple book that, to my great surprise, allowed me to clearly see the fact that my view of reality didn’t match what we can observe of the universe around us. Subconsciously I’d been aware of this fact but had managed to ignore it for 14 years or so. I decided that I would be better off with truth rather than a comforting fantasy and decided to investigate further. I watched a lot of documentaries, visited a lot of websites (and blogs) and talked with a lot of interesting people. I also read a lot of books - here are the ones that have influenced me the most over the last three years:

The Bible - Various Authors
The Mind of God - Paul Davies
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
E=mc2 - David Bodanis
Deep Simplicity - John Gribbin
Pale Blue Dot - Carl Sagan
The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
Climbing Mount Improbable - Richard Dawkins
The Origin of Species - Charles Darwin
The Demon-Haunted World - Carl Sagan
The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
Letter to a Christian Nation - Sam Harris
The Richness of Life - Stephen J Gould
The Creation - E O Wilson
The End of Faith - Sam Harris
Various Writings - Thomas Paine
Breaking the Spell - Daniel Dennett
Why People Believe Weird Things - Michael Shermer
God is not Great - Christopher Hitchens
Infidel - Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Freakonomics - Levitt & Dubner
The Blank Slate - Steven Pinker
Consciousness, An Introduction - Susan Blackmore

And I have the following books waiting to be read:

Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond
How The Mind Works - Steven Pinker
The Ancestor’s Tale - Richard Dawkins
Freedom Evolves - Daniel Dennett

I’m not sure where I’ll go to from here but I feel I’ve done the topics of religion, superstition and pseudoscience to death. Evolution, cosmology and the workings of the mind still fascinate me so I’ll probably carry on down that path for a while.

In 1973 the BBC released a TV documentary series in 13 episodes by mathematician Jacob Bronowski called The Ascent Of Man. 35 years later I purchased it as a DVD box set on the recommendation of a fellow science documentary aficionado.

It’s extremely good! And I’m not just saying that in the context of the era in which it was produced. Sure, some of the music grates on the nerves and some of the graphics don’t compare to what we are capable of these days but overall it’s got a depth that is often missing from the kind of documentaries found on the Discovery Channel. Actually, I take back my comment about the music; it features music from Meddle - my second-favourite Pink Floyd album - which, for me, redeems a multitude of musical sins.

Bronowski is thoughtful, poetic and very deliberate in every sentence. He gives you the feeling that he is treating you, the viewer, as an equal throughout and he conveys a sense of awe that is impossible to resist.

Most moving for me was a scene where Bronowski is visiting a Nazi concentration camp where many of his relatives were murdered. According to the interview with Attenborough in the bonus material the entire scene was spontaneous and filmed in a single take:

Bronowski died a year later of a heart attack at the age of 66.