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For the best part of sixty years I have been fascinated by philosophy. My bookshelves groan under the weight of publications on the subject, from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, to Cathcart and Klein’s Plato and a Platypus go into a Bar. Of the former I got lost on page 6—and pages 1-5 were the preface... Plato and a Platypus is quite hilarious, and is an exposition of philosophy through mainly Jewish-American humour. I have read many other similar books, but to date the only knowledge on the subject that I have firmly committed to memory, is Monty Python’s Philosopher’s Song.
I’m now trying—for the umpteenth time—to read Bertrand Russell’s surprisingly accessible History of Western Philosophy. I have reached the point where he is expounding the theory that Plato might well have ‘invented’ Socrates. The argument is that what he (Plato) says about Socrates conflicts with Xenophon’s version of the man. Xenophon, like Plato a pupil of Socrates, was ‘not very liberally endowed with brains’ and ‘conventional in his outlook.’ Russell’s thesis is that the Platonic Socrates—the Socrates described by Plato—was a fascinating and most interesting character, substantially embellished, Russell suspects, by Plato’s considerably literary and intellectual talents and possibly even expressing Plato’s own ideas. It is fascinating stuff but by tomorrow I shall have forgotten it. I am reminded of an incident during my graduate student days. I was most fortunate to have Professor Alan Gibson, FRS, as my supervisor. He was an astonishing man; not only a gifted scientist and educator but also a very able administrator. I struggled during my research project which did not start well when I made it very clear to him that I did not understand Ohms Law... We were at an Opto-Electronic conference in Manchester. Alan was due to present a keynote paper first thing in the morning that followed an evening spent by me carousing in the bar. On going to bed I wondered why my travelling clockwork alarm clock was showing the completely incorrect time. I reset it, adjusting the alarm to wake me up in good time for Alan’s lecture. It did wake me up, but it was only that evening on coming back to the room that I realised that the reason the clock appeared to be wrong was that I had placed it upside down... There must be a wonderful metaphor there, but for the life of me I cannot find it. Anyway, I attended Alan’s talk and it was one of those rare Damascene events. As I listened to him explaining with complete clarity a most abstruse and subtle point, the scales were lifted from my eyes and for a few precious moments I was able to understand something that until then had completely eluded me. I never forgot the incident, that is to say the magical feeling of comprehension; the point itself was lost to me by lunchtime that day. I shall soldier on with Russell. At the very least having forgotten it all from the previous reading, every new idea comes as an exciting revelation.
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In our Time, the regular discussion programme chaired by Melvyn Bragg, is the very best of BBC Radio. Each week three working academics are assembled to discuss a topic chosen from an enormously diverse range of subjects in the arts and sciences. Some weeks are better than others. Sometimes an interesting subject is spoiled by poor communicators; likewise, an apparently dull topic can be made fascinating by gifted and informed academics. Occasionally, and last Thursday (29 February) was an occasionally, a set of great and knowledgeable communicators discuss a really fascinating subject and the programme positively catches fire.
The subject in question was Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. The academics: Fay Dowker from Imperial, Harry Cliff from Cambridge, and Frank Close from Oxford, were at the absolute top of their game. Apart from the thoroughly lucid way each one of them dealt with the subject, they were relaxed, there were a few jokes and some light-hearted banter, and some superb analogies: atomic and molecular spectra were likened to a bar code. Quite brilliant! The Uncertainty Principle states that if you know the position of a particle fairly well, it’s momentum is uncertain. Likewise if you know its position in time accurately, you don’t know its energy. The consequences of this for many aspects of science are huge. I think it was Harry Cliff who cracked the joke: Heisenberg gets stopped for speeding. “Do you know how fast you were going?” Says the officer. “No”, he says, “But I know exactly where I was...” I have listened to the programme twice now—including the extra minutes on iPlayer—and I can say with some confidence that for anyone who is interested in science, cosmology, or even philosophy and religion, this programme is a must. I think it is probably the best In our Time ever. |
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