The Infinite Monkey Cage - Modern World

Episode Date: November 22, 2010

Physicist Brian Cox, comedian Robin Ince and guests return for more witty irreverent science chat. This week they are joined by comedian and former mathematician Paul Foot to discuss whether the modern world is a force for good or evil, and whether a simpler, more natural existence might be a better way forward. Producer: Alexandra Feachem.

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long.

Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. This is a download from the BBC. To find out more, visit bbc.co.uk slash radio 4. Welcome to the Infinite Monkey Cage 3.2, which is a scientific way of saying third series episode 2. Alternatively, it's the way of saying something if you're middle-aged and think it makes you seem younger, like a man wearing a wig attempting to body pop shortly before going to hospital, bald and with a slipped disc. I am Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. This programme was originally called The Modern World, is it a force for good or evil? But we very quickly realised that questions such as what is good and

what is the origin of evil, if evil itself actually exists as an entity, are questions that have troubled philosophers for approximately 5,000 years. We don't have that kind of time, so Brian's come up with a well-defined, snappy, but slightly longer title. Yeah, I've decided to call it The Modern World is Better Than the Middle Ages, so what's the problem with all these whinging hippies? And yet again, the agenda sign has flashed up behind all those at home.

Agenda... This will be a properly balanced show. We have gathered together a panel of experts and interested people to help us, so if we hadn't reached the modern world, this guest would have been at a loose end, unable to examine computer games and other products of the modern age. She would have had to resort to critiquing groups of men kicking pig's heads through the streets. It's social psychologist and technology writer Alex Krotosky. He is a chemist and pro-vice-chancellor of science at Sheffield University, but without modernity he might have been an apothecary

with a good knowledge of nettles and a sometime wizard. Professor Tony Ryan. And without the modern world he'd still be doing what he does now, which is make people laugh, with an increased likelihood, of course, of being decapitated if his whimsy was presumed treasonous. I've seen him. Sometimes it is. It's comedian and a mathematics graduate, Paul Foot.

Well, we looked up what modernity meant on the internet, but it turned out to be rubbish, so we went into the past and used a big book called a dictionary made of paper. And the definition was, of the present and recent times, a person living in modern times or in current fashion. So basically modernity means modern. So that was very useful. But we should start off actually by asking that question because it is a difficult thing to define.

Tony, if I can ask you first, what for you defines the modern world? So it would be easy to say the iPod. But for me as a chemist, the modern world has to be the post-Harbor Bosch world. So the Harbor Bosch process basically allowed the Earth to support more people than it could have previously supported. So it allowed us to enrich the Earth by putting fertilizer in to fix nitrogen directly from the air in a way that

allowed the earth's population to grow by developing new plants high yield plants and so in our lifetime the earth's population has quadrupled whereas for millions of years before it hadn't doubled is that when tesco started tesco's came shortly after When was it? So 1908 So Fritz Haber Fritz Haber's a nasty little fellow Who also invented chemical warfare But before he did that He worked out how to fix nitrogen

And it's a fantastic reaction So 500 million tonnes of nitrogen Is fixed into ammonia every year And most of it's converted into fertiliser and it's 3% of the Earth's energy budget and two-thirds of us dispend existentially on it. See, Robert? That's modernity.

Science saves the world. Yeah, but you told me that chemistry wasn't really a science. It was just mixing stuff. That's what you were... I'm used to physicists calling me dealier, so... LAUGHTER That's what you... I'm used to physicists calling me deal yourself. LAUGHTER What have you made for us today? Oh, look, it's blue and goes bang.

Alex, with a relatively late definition of the start of modernity, 1908, where would you say the modern world began, and what's your definition of modernity? Tony hinted at it, and I'm going to take this back even further. 1908, I'm surprised that that's when all of this happened, because I'm thinking the 1450s. I'm thinking the printing press, basically, which people have said that as soon as the printing press happened,

knowledge became power, and knowledge was distributed amongst the population. Everybody suddenly had access to knowledge, and that was what ushered in things like the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and then ultimately the modern world. So I'm going back beyond chemical processes, and I'm talking about the people, man. The people. No, and I'm talking about more people.

Well, yeah. Brilliant. You've got some people, more people, people. Hang on, what about the Library of Alexandria, then? I'm going to go back another 1,400 years, where they all had to share the documents that were taken into that port there, and then some idiot went in there, I think his name was Cyril, St Cyril.

In fact, it was, indeed, it was St Cyril, who fled, I picture it. Yes, the only thing that I've ever seen, by the way, is I've watched Cosmos 500 times, which is why I'm allowed to be on this show. What do you know, Robin? If it was in the 13-part series by Carl Sagan, I am well covered. I can do a bit of Jacob Bronowski as well.

Did you see how he seamlessly mentioned who he'd done the impression of? It's a very bad impressionist, that's a good one. That was Carl Sagan. Ronnie Corbett. Who am I going to do next? The universe is brilliant. Brilliant, there we are. It's a lot of antagonism, isn't it?

Everything's like it's a monster. So you're going with the Prince of Crest. Paul, what for you would be the dawn of the modern age? I don't personally think it's started yet. I can tell by the way you're dressed, Mark. This is not appreciated on radio, but I'm dressed from the past. I remember when I was a child, which occurred in the 1980s, there used to be books, and it was about the future,

which was about now, 2010, and it showed there were robots. We were specifically promised robots. And not just, like, a machine that does something, like an iPod, like a thing that moves around and says, where do you like tea? I'll make it proper. You know, then it would pour the kettle out and everything. Everything looked modern, and it was all lights, and and it was all flashing and you could just press a button

and then you saw a picture of your granny and you just spoke, hello, granny, and she would materialise in another room. So, sorry, you mean much like Skype, which exists at the current time? Yeah, but it's not the same. We were promised that it actually worked. It wasn't, oh, you turn a computer on,

then wait for about 15 minutes for it to fire up, then it says it has to install an update, then it crashes. It was just a thing. You pressed it on the fridge and there was Granny and there was a robot that could deal with anything anyway. So, basically, until that happens, I'm not convinced the modern world has started.

I was promised it and I want it. Tony, there's a serious side, hopefully, to this debate. I mean, we start with this nature against science, which is something that you hear about a lot. There seems to be a presumption, in a way, that nature is something that's good and old-fashioned, whereas science is something, you know, GM food or drugs, chemical fertilizers, bad things. So progress is somehow anti-natural and bad. Is that a logical position?

Well, I do have to say that, you know, natural philosophy was where science started. So science and nature are intrinsically linked. And this feeling that science is something that kind of does nasty things is, to me, just crazy. Because all science tries to do is understand nature, understand the very nature of nature. And then it gets transformed into something else. the very nature of nature and then it gets transformed into something else you know it gets transformed into whatever makes money or whatever wages war it's not the science that's evil it's what's done with it that's evil see why is it i mean even talking about we've created there i think slightly awkward boundary to say there's they're two different things you know

the word natural now on most products is... Don't worry, this product is natural. This has been naturally made. It's not been made by something evil. Like Botox, for example. Yes. This is natural remedies. We always hear from these people who say things like,

well, this is a remedy that actually comes from 5,000 years ago. And it's a natural remedy. And you go, yeah, have you checked how long people lived 5,000 years ago. And, you know, it's a natural remedy. And you go, yeah, have you checked how long people lived 5,000 years ago? Well, Alex, what do people mean when they're saying this is natural? What is natural? I mean, ultimately, I think what people think is natural is that of nature. You know, as soon as you start mucking around in a lab with a lab coat and putting things together and making things do robots and stuff flying cars people would say

that's not natural but frankly you know we were you were talking about botox and arsenic is a natural ingredient and all of these things could potentially kill us and so possibly the flying cars and the robots aren't unnatural it's just our relationship with them is so is this one of the problems that we have if we're talking about what is the problem of the modern world that our rational minds have meant that we've moved on we have uh vaccinations we have an ability to feed an enormous population but our kind of instinctual mind so you know the sexual mind for instance means that people still have uh large families so that we have there is a certain battle between the rational and then what is irrational kind of the animal instinct well i think the issue here though is that the rate of inventing is much much higher than the rate of

evolution right so so basically you know you've got this modern person and a modern society inhabited by people who have the urges of cavemen right so you know the uh kind of back to cave you know uh whether it's it's a young lady or a meal. These days, it could be like that. They're the two basic needs. The way we deal with modernity is governed by

those kind of protein-driven processes. We've not evolved sufficiently to be able to take away those kind of primeval urges. So that's why we have so many obese kids, right? Because kids are programmed to eat high-energy density food. You know, you take kids to a party, they don't do bits of cucumber, carrot sticks,

if there's peanuts and crisps, right? And human beings are basically preparing for a famine. That's why people eat the way they do. So everyone's preparing for a famine, but the famine's not coming, right? But you can't turn your physiology off. How come some people, thin people like me, have not prepared for the famine?

Because people like you weren't meant to survive. But I must say, though, Paul, I mean, this sounds... To me, we could be accused of being rather aggressive on this show. And often I think scientists do come across as being people who are arrogant. I know everything, the scientific method is paramount. Absolutely. You know, scientists say scientific method is paramount. Absolutely. You know, scientists say, oh, this is how you get into space. You need a space rocket with a certain amount of thrust.

It's up to other people to fight back and try it with their own methods. For example, faith rocketry. You sit on a rocket and with the power of your mind, you go into space. No-one's tried that. I don't know, they're all sat there, trying to get into space by the power of their mind. They're all sitting there.

It's typical of your arrogance to assume that they're just going to sit there. People do it. See, whereas you arrogant scientists... Oh, look, we're nasa we've used to rocky he was like i've used the power of my mind but that's just to keep it quiet you know i show off but alex implicit in this in this discussion there's a sense of a distrust of science and i'd like to say rational thoughts i mean maybe we should discuss how synonymous science and

rational thoughts are but why do you think this there does seem to be a distrust in our society at the moment of science or the scientific method? I think generally, you know, we lived through the 80s, we lived through the 70s, we lived through the polyester pants period. Paul, you're still there. Very hot.

For representing. You know, we lived through that period where the 20th century was dominated by this idea that you can mash things up in a lab and it will be cheaper, better, faster, whatever. And so now there's a rebellion, a sense of, right, let's go back to nature. Let's go

back to our agrarian roots and hoe the fields with shire horses. But it wasn't entirely positive at, perhaps in the 50s, if you look at the 50s or the 60s, the white heat of technology. That was the way that the human race were better itself, the way we would grow more food, the way we would progress.

But at the same time, you look at the fiction around that time, and there's so much fear associated with the modern world. They're talking about the Andromeda chain. They're talking about the potential for all of this nuclear threat to destroy society. So the modern world, the now, the organic now, it's nothing new, but it's referring back to all of that stuff. And it's a reaction, of course,

to all the bad things that the white heater technology gave us, like white bread. Nuclear war. Actually, I reckon white bread's most likely killed more people than nuclear war. No, I'm being quite serious. And how would you kill someone with white bread?

Would it be with a baguette? If you've got a baguette, it's nice and hard. As if you just have one of those soft loaves. Especially with no crust. Smother it. Smother it, yeah. To kill your mother with mother's pride is the ultimate Greek tragedy, I think.

Is science then necessarily amoral? It's a process for understanding nature, and scientists should really take no care, I suppose, in how the science is going to be used. No, no. So we have to have, and you know, we have to have a moral responsibility

for what we do and think about the ethics of what we do, what happens in the lab, what things we try and understand. But that's the whole thing about your definition of modernity, of knowledge. And once knowledge is being created, it can't be controlled. So who knows what nefarious purposes

someone might take a new bit of knowledge. I mean, OK, you'd struggle to batter someone to death with a Higgs boson, but who knows where that's going to take us? I think as well, though, I don't think it's amoral in the sense that the people who are making science have such reverence for their subjects. And if you didn't have reverence for your subject, then you wouldn't recognise that it is something that needs to be preserved, protected and respected in so many ways.

But it is a rather ideological and idealistic pursuit, actually, isn't it? I mean, blue sky is science. It's curiosity-led. You go where your curiosity about nature takes you. The things we're discussing, I'd say nuclear weapons and white bread, as you say, I mean, those things are essentially the fruits of curiosity-driven research. Does that mean that there has to be some kind of i don't know consideration

i think you know there's there's a move afoot now amongst uh amongst lots of scientists that actually we need to concentrate on provide you know doing the science and providing for energy and food sustainability you know so so they're the two things that lots of practical scientists are starting to work on. There was the announcement recently of a big investment in Cambridge around the physics of sustainability. At Sheffield, I run this thing called Project Sunshine

where we're kind of trying to corral a bunch of scientists to use their own little bit of science towards a bigger goal to make sure that we can provide for all the people on the Earth. And so we've developed our own morality. Isn't one of the big problems... I mean, everyone talks about the planet's under threat. The planet isn't under threat. No, absolutely not.

It's the population. It's the human population that's under threat. So all we need to do is just, for one generation, just encourage people not to procreate so much and, you know, invest in homosexuals. I mean, seriously, if we encouraged homosexuals for one generation, the population would go down. There'd obviously be some people who'd just say,

even with the incentives, I'm just too much. And those hardcore people could still create more children. And then we would reduce the number, and then there'd be maybe two billion people again, and we'd all be happy. It's a package. But this is the interesting thing, is we've been

talking about the fact that people perhaps don't know what they're actually taking, don't know what they're doing, they don't know what certain kind of foodstuffs are, and sometimes we are living in an uncertain world. Now, is this part of the problem, Alex, that we do live in this world where technology has bombarded us with so much information,

that it's actually in some ways much easier to be stupid? I think the problem is that we've got so much choice, and in my particular field, in the internet, we literally, it is the printing press multiplied by 10 gazillion, 10 Googleplex, as it were. And we've got so much information that's out there, we've got so many different boxes on our shelves that we can choose from,

that frankly we are completely overwhelmed. And so the way that people choose now is they choose by filtering out information based upon what it is that their friends think they follow links based upon you know the the things that they hear about and and instead of accessing this ginormous library of information they only go for the information that actually confirms what it is that they think anyway. So instead of expanding our horizons, we're actually making them narrower. We're creating an echo chamber of information. This, to me, seems to be one of the problems, is there is so much choice now.

If you go into a bookshop and you look, for instance, diet sections, there are hundreds of different diet books, and yet you think, how has this industry happened when the truth is, well, do a bit more exercise and eat more healthily that's that's the ultimate there we go it's as simple as that but there is an industry around these things and so you're bombarded by i mean is it possible fictional choices really well it's because people they want to live the they want to buy a book that gives them a sort of sense of, oh, this is how I'm going to lose weight with all these methods and follow this 17-step plan, and it's all fun, isn't it? It's much more exciting than just take control of your own life. Get a bit of self-esteem.

Just pull yourself together. I mean, you know, in the war, people didn't go around with diet books, did they? They just went around saying, oh, no, there's been another bomb over there, better clear that up. Oh, run, run, run. Oh, have you got any cakes? No, there haven't been any cakes since 1939.

Have you got an egg? Yeah, I've got one powdered egg that will last us the month. Oh, well, I feel I'm so thin. And that one minute of Paul Foote is going to be edited down and available as a self-help tape. It seems to me we've confused many things. Technology, science, consumerism. Getting back to this question of modernity,

I take a rather pure view that science is the understanding of nature. Now, flat-screen television, to me, are a different matter entirely. But purely in terms of science, is there any possible argument for not continuing the march of knowledge? That's a bit of a weighted question, isn't it? And I'm going to give you a really weighted answer. So I would say pure science, as you describe it, is applied science that's run out of usefulness.

It's an interesting way of looking at it. OK. Paul. Paul. Right. No, continue down this fascinating path for a moment. Paul, so why did we start? You know, why did science start?

Science started because we, people, wanted to understand what was around us. And once we learnt to understand what was around us, then we thought, well, you know, how can we improve on it? How can we make that work better for humans? And thermodynamics, we have thermodynamics because people wanted to make better engines. We don't have better engines because people understood thermodynamics.

We've got to get this the right way around sometimes. Well, but if we follow that logic for a moment, it would seem to suggest... Are you implying that we know enough now by some measure and now we're in the process of commercialising and refining the knowledge that we know? No, no. Okay. And one of the benefits of knowing so much and being able to create so much is that we have the luxury of being able to keep on searching to know more.

And if we didn't have that luxury, then there wouldn't be any more science, would there? Because we'd all be back to surviving. So because we no longer have to struggle to survive, then we can afford the luxury of your pure view of science. But prior to that, science was just there to make life better for people. Right, while Brian calms down... In a war, Brian, your job

would be the first to go. We wouldn't need you, would we? No, we'd say, oh, we need to know the origins of the universe. How did it happen? How does gravity work? People would be just saying, oh, there's someone with a lance there. I think the comedians might. We may well go before the scientists.

I think we'll be the first first There's a man with a hat So What are the ramifications of the modern world For mathematics Only one man can answer that Or alternatively only one man who's here Can answer that, there's probably lots of men who can answer it But this person is available, it's stand-up mathematician

Matt Parker. Now, I have faith that maths and science can solve our problems. I believe that as technology continues to advance, our lives will continue getting better and better, right up to the point where iPhones become

sentient, which is pretty much the end for us. The future's less Skynet and more iNet. But between now and then, I think technology can even fix our energy problems. I think the Prius is a bit of a good start. They have... Thank you, that wasn't a punchline, but thank you for laughing.

No, they do. They have a dynamic energy flowchart on the dash, so at any point in time, you know precisely how smug you're allowed to be. Down to the nearest millibono, which is the metric unit of smugness. They even... Gradually getting it at the back there. Thanks, guys. No, they even have leaves that light up, so you can be driving there going, oh, look, I'm now hugging three trees a gallon. But they are just leaves covering our guilty bits. I mean, electron-powered cars probably are the part of the answer,

but we still need the energy. Last year, the UK used 1,776 terawatt hours of energy, mostly derived from burning dinosaurs. And the trouble with that is you get toxic dinosaur gases. I don't know what they are, I'm not a paleontologist, but I do know we just put them in the atmosphere where they can do maximum damage. It would be beneficial if we could put them in a box.

And we can. Nuclear power, apart from giving us all the energy we want and being safe for dinosaurs, gives us much less waste that we can put in a box, put the box in a desert, and put a please don't touch sign on it. Now, I admit I am for renewable energy technology. That's fine. And for every wind farm that starts, we'll turn off one nuclear reactor. Because by now, we could be all nuclear,

having absolutely no impact on the environment as we gradually wean onto sustainable energy. And then, sometime in the future, I think with technology, we can have solely sustainable energy. And more likely than not, with science, we can take that nuclear waste and turn it into, I don't know, lead or gold or something. And frankly, that will be very much to the pleasing

of our then nuclear-powered iPhone overlords. Thank you very much, guys. Thank you very much, Matt Parker, who will be back with us again next week. This is a question I'm going to ask all of you as well. We asked the audience who were with us this evening, which modern-day invention would you uninvent and why? I have a lot of entries we can't go through. Polystyrene. More trouble than it's worth.

Twitter. This is an intro. Twitter because then my wife would be unable to virtually stalk Brian Cox. Finished with a long grrrr. Chemistry. Oh, no, this really is true. Celebrity physicist.

That wasn't me. The iron. So I could get around four hours a week of my life back. So that's nice. Some people need their whole life back, sometimes just for us. Tony, is there anything that you would uninvent? Instant coffee. Yeah, is there anything that you would uninvent? Instant coffee. Yeah, that's... Now, with a Radio 2 audience, they'd be furious, Paul.

These people are prepared to wait. Some of them own a second Café Thier in France. Alex, have you got... It's pretty straightforward, my alarm clock. Excellent. And Paul? Well, I was just thinking about this here. The lady says she would un-invent the iron so she could get four hours a week of her life back.

Just don't iron. I mean, what she's really wanting to un-invent is the need within society for people to feel that they need to have trousers that are pressed in order to, I suppose, impress people. Nothing wrong with invention, it works perfectly well. Well, that brings us to an end this week. So, thanks to our guests, Paul Foote, Tony Ryan, Alex Kratosky and Matt Parker.

Hopefully you may now be content to live in the modern world. If not, why not try a little exercise in quantum mechanics and go into one of the many other universes that may be around where technology hasn't taken hold. Possibly I think you just have to collapse a wave function, Brian? No. Oh. I do think there's a more prosaic explanation

for the apparent confusion in the quantum theory about when to apply non-unitary evolution, probably along the lines of a GRW-like mechanism. That would be my guess. Of course. Next week, we're joined by Tim Minchin, the rationalist orchestral minstrel, and we'll be discussing randomness, probability and chance.

Until then, I'm off to invent a perpetual motion machine with some elastic bands, a greyhound and a slinky. Frankly, I'm not very confident. APPLAUSE If you've enjoyed this programme, you might like to try other Radio 4 podcasts, including Start the Week, lively discussions chaired by Andrew Marr, and a weekly highlight from Radio 4's evening arts programme, Front Row.

To find out more, visit bbc.co.uk slash Radio 4. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks with a small coffee all day long. Tax is extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature.

And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. you