Dan Snow's History Hit - The Frontiers of Science & History with A.C. Grayling

Episode Date: September 18, 2021

A. C. Grayling is one of the foremost minds of his generation and his new book explores some of the biggest questions that face humanity. What do we know, how do we know it and what is left to find out? In this wide-ranging conversation, he and Dan attempt to tackle some of these important questions. They discuss the incredible progress humanity has made in the last century, how history informs and helps us understand our world and how much there is still to learn about our ancient past and beyond.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. I'm very happy to welcome back A.C. Grayling.

He's one of the smartest men I've ever interviewed. He's an intellectual here in the UK, started his own university. I mean, not many of us have done that. He's written hundreds of books on a wide array of subjects his book on the history of philosophy was absolutely brilliant he's got a new book out on the frontiers of knowledge and so we just thought we'd catch up with him talk about what he's learning about history about science and other subjects and check in with the national institution that is ac grayling i gotta say he didn't annoyingly say this on the podcast,

but let me tell you something. He told me that every morning when he's on the treadmill, because he is a man who exercises the body as well as the mind, as we all should, he goes on the treadmill, and you know what he does to pass the time? One of Britain's cleverest men, you know what he does? He watches HistoryHit.tv. True fact.

I didn't even know that. I didn't even know he subscribed. I'd have given him a free subscription. So he's an actual member of the public that subscribes to history dot TV, like tens of thousands of other people. Great stuff. So next time you're watching, or when you go and subscribe now, you're in the footsteps, you're in the shadow of AC Grayling. That's what he does. So be like AC, go to historyhit.tv, subscribe to the world's best history channel. You can listen to all these podcasts. You can watch hundreds of hours of history documentaries. You can act like AC

Grayling. Pretty sweet. So head over to historyhit.tv. But in the meantime, here's the great man himself. Enjoy. AC Grayling, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. Real pleasure. Last time, we were talking about your magisterial history of philosophy, which is something I've returned to many times since our conversation. I did remember thinking, what do you write after writing this book? And of course, you found something even bigger.

I mean, this is everything in this book. Well, it's not quite everything, but it is some very, very important things. You think science is important, of course. History, you and I will agree, very, very important. And then the great discoveries made about mind and brain are hugely important and very consequential for what happens next. When I saw this, that you were working on this, I was interested that you included history at all

because obviously the mind, brain, science feels of a part. But why did you feel history was integral to this new project? Well, unless everything sits in an historical context, you really don't have a framework of understanding for it. Unless you see how ideas, technologies, societies develop, how we enrich or change or suffer reverses in our self-understanding and understanding of things, you have a very shallow grip. I mean, GK Chesterton said, those who don't know any

history don't understand the present, and that applies to everything in the present. So it's of huge importance. Therefore, it's important to discuss and understand also what history is, how historical knowledge is acquired, what kinds of problems and difficulties arise in that process. So it's hugely important to discuss it. How do you think science has changed, our understanding of ourself has changed, the universe, of the laws that bind us? How do you think history has changed? Well, if one looks at the history of history, so if you think about the fact that for a very long period between late classical antiquity and the 18th century, 19th century rise of more scientific approaches to history and philology, there was just an assumption that history was explained

by the narrative of the fall and redemption and the creation and so on. So there was rather little curiosity of the kind shown by Herodotus, for example, rather little effort to try to get things right, as exemplified by Thucydides, and even rather little effort to try to provide a kind of explanatory background, as you find in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, giving its story about the origins of the chosen peoples being chosen. So it wasn't really until the 18th and especially the 19th century among German scholars when the idea of being much, much more systematic, in fact, I shouldn't be unkind to people like Mabillon and so on, who said, you must look at archives, you must look at the manuscripts, you've got to get the evidence together in order really to understand what happened in the past. But this is a pretty recent thing.

And therefore, the discussion about how you do it, what is the science of history? What is historiography? What are the methods that we should employ is a very recent date. You say in this book that you feel that we're still very much at the beginning of the journey. And so far, most of the advances have just been to bring clarity to our own ignorance almost. Therefore, is that exciting or is that disheartening? Because I felt if we're going through this learning process only to understand just how unbelievably primitive our understanding of the universe is, it's either inspiring or it might be slightly disappointing. I think it's immensely

exciting because it shows how much work there is to do. I mean, you know, when one wants to do the work. I can tell you a lovely little anecdote about this, which is that my friend Tajinder Verdi, now Sir Tajinder Verdi, one of the senior people on the CERN experiment that found the Higgs boson. And I remember saying to him, my word, it must have been so exciting on the day that you finally decided altogether that you were ready to publish that you had found the Higgs boson. This was back in 2012. And he said, oh, yes, yes, it was very, very exciting. But you know what, if we hadn't found it, it would have meant that there was a whole lot more physics to do. And it was that sense of adventure, of having huge fields of inquiry to explore, jungles, oceans, planets still waiting to be visited and things

to be found out, which is so exhilarating. So I think the fact that we are at a very, very early stage in our development as explorers and discoverers, as knowers, is an exhilarating thing. I really do think that. Again, we're talking about new ocean floors and planets and extraordinary asteroids and things like that, which is so exciting. Why, though, do you put that on a par with also understanding our deep... You talk a lot in this book about our prehistoric past. I'm fascinated by you put those on a level. What can we learn about our humanoid ancestors that you think is as important to learn about the composition of passing meteorites? Well, of course, I am to some

extent using ocean floors and planets figuratively, because it applies to everything that we want to find out about ourselves, about humanity, about our universe, about our place in it, and our prospects in it. And it's exactly the same curiosity and the same kinds of motivations and reasons drive it as wanting to know about our own family history, wanting to know about ourselves when we were children, wanting to try to understand the reason why we do some of the things that we do, the good things or the stupid things that we do. I mean, this endeavor is the endeavor of making sense, of finding a way of putting things into connection with other things so that it makes a meaningful framework of explanation of things. And humans have this deep psychological need for explanations, for narratives, for a framework that will give us

an interpretation of things. Unfortunately, the majority of us are too ready to jump at the easy, simple story of explanation. I mean, I sometimes say this, and it's a critical remark, but I stand by it, that you can explain the whole history of the universe and what it means and why we're here and what's going to happen to us in terms of any major religion in less than half an hour. It takes a bit longer than that to understand physics or to dig up the ancient past in archaeology and so on. But it's that latter enterprise, which is the really exciting one. There's a lot of discussion at the moment around our, I hate using this expression, but for want of a better word, the kind of Hobbes versus Rousseau about humans in a state of nature and

what was the kind of the nature of us as a prehistoric species. And obviously, because there's a, you know, I've just actually at the moment, as well as your book, I'm reading The Dawn of Everything by Graeber and Wengro. And it seems this is particularly important and fascinating at the moment. What is it that in writing this book you think you learned about our prehistory? Lots, of course. And one of the big things that one learns is just how very, very clever and adept even our very earliest ancestors were. We go back, if it's true, that more than three million years ago, some of our very earliest ancestors were already shaping tools. I mean, that's quite a striking thing to recognize,

because of its implications. To make a tool means that you have imagination and foresight, and you have a purpose in mind, and you plan. And all that capacity suggests a fairly complex social arrangement. So you begin to see from just one little insight like that, suggests a fairly complex social arrangement. So, you know, you begin to see from just one little insight like that, quite a lot, which explains something about our origins. But we have to acknowledge it because you're dead right, Dan, that there continues to be a vigorous and very unsettled debate about the degree to which our evolutionary inheritance plays with our social conditioning, education, and experience in life. The nature-nurture debate is sometimes called. That's undecided, but it's a very important thing to decide because it has practical

implications for decisions made in court, for example, or decisions made in education policy, decisions made in medical practice. And so the practical applications of knowledge are considerable. All the more reason, therefore, for trying to get that kind of knowledge and to understand it. Now, I don't think that we're yet at the point where we can definitively say it's this percent genetics and that percent education or experience, but we're kind of on the way to elaborating a deeper, richer kind of understanding of what human nature is. And if that's gained from sort of practical archaeology, anthropology, then as a philosopher, does that then impose itself on ideas, on your philosophy? If Hobbes and Rousseau

were actually both talking allegorically, they didn't actually know what humans were like in the state of nature, nor did they claim to. As we glimpse what they may have been like through the Merck, as more research comes out, does that affect how you think about how we should organise ourselves, your philosophy? Well, it must do, of course, because just supposing it turns out that Hobbes is right, and fundamentally we're nasty, and we all wish that Rousseau was right, and fundamentally we're all very nice. But supposing it turns out Hobbes is right, well, that will say something about what we endeavour to do in, for example, socialising infants and educating people, and building structures in society which will help to ease

conflicts, provide means for people to resolve difficulties that their nature is going to lead them to create, being competitive and being jealous and being aggressive and so forth. In fact, a lot of people in different traditions have discussed this. In the Confucian tradition, there was a very big difference of opinion about whether human beings are fundamentally nice or fundamentally nasty. And those who took the view that they're fundamentally nasty, the sort of Hobbesian view, said you have to treat children as you would when you're making a bentwood chair. You've got to steam the wood and put it under stress and hold it in position until it gets into the shape that you

want it in. And that's a pretty draconian way of thinking about education. We, on the other hand, have implicitly accepted the Rousseauian view that in our savage nature, we're gentle, kind, free, and nice, and let children teach themselves to do higher mathematics by playing in a sandpit. That kind of idea has had big consequences in society. So as you see, ideas matter. You listen to Dan Snow's history. We've got AC Grayling on the podcast. More after this.

Hi, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb. And in my podcast, Not Just the Tudors, we talk about everything from sex to spying, wardrobes to witch trials. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. Subscribe from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. This is History's Heroes.

People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. As my daughter finds any excuse to avoid doing her maths homework, I'm becoming a little more Hobbesian. I'm becoming a little more bent-woodian in my approach to education. When I was reading this

book, and I was reminded of Humboldt, that expression about Humboldt, he was the last person who knew everything. It's one of the exciting things about this book that you look forward to someone reading it in 50 years' time and thinking, my goodness, they didn't even know what they're at the dawn of. There are endless discoveries ahead of us. Yes, I really do think that. In fact, I was meditating on the fact that my paternal grandfather, well, now he was aged 42 when my father was born. The prime of life, by the way, for age 42, absolute peak. I'm sure it absolutely is. Our life just beginning and so on. And my father was the same age when I was born. And so I'm a bit past my 21st birthday

myself. So I can trace back the fact that my paternal grandfather was at school in the 1870s. Isn't that amazing? He was at school in the 1870s when nothing of what I've written about in this book was known. Absolutely none of it. So in my own grandfather's lifetime, he was completely ignorant about any past deeper than classical antiquity or pre-Archaic period, really, or the period of the Old Testament. Sumer, Akkad, all those civilizations, the Neolithic story, human evolution, none of it was known. The atom, the electron wasn't even identified until he was an adult. He joined the army when J.J. Thompson first identified the

electron. I mean, it's just amazing to think what's happened in this last century. And even more amazing is the fact that with this incredible explosion of scientific knowledge, if you think of everything that we know in physics and in cosmology, and the applications of that knowledge to computing and communications, you know, all our technologies. And yet, what it has taught us is that we have access to less than 5% of the mass density of the universe. Because more than 95% of the universe, we have no idea about at all, dark matter and dark energy.

We don't know what it is where it comes from how it works we've only got tiny little bit of access to a sliver of physical reality and yet on the basis of it we've done so much already so this is why i find it incredibly exciting because if there's 95 percent of the universe left to investigate well we're talking big ocean floors and big planets aren't we yeah the great sadness is, I mean, I totally agree. Human beings have been anatomically human for 200,000 years or so, and we know virtually nothing. Well, I just think to myself, the tens of thousands of years

that ended in the creation of Stonehenge, and we just don't know anything about it at all. There were dramas, there were wars, and there was tidal waves. I mean, it's extraordinary. But at least with the dark matter and things, we have a chance to find them out. Sorry to come back to prehistory, but we will find more sites, won't we? Because we'll develop more remote sensing and ability to map things and look under the ground. So actually, I guess I'm being pessimistic. We will discover a

lot more about prehistory. Absolutely certain we will, yeah. I mean, the amount of the surface of the earth that we've scraped in order to have a look and see what's underneath it is tiny. And there's a huge amount of history there. And also, I talk in the book about the kinds of barriers we have to overcome in our inquiries. One of those barriers is the so-called lamplight problem. This is exemplified by you can only look for your keys

if you lose them at night under the lamp because that's the only place you can see. So we've only just looked in places we can see so far. For example, there may have been great civilizations that were built entirely on wood and paper, and no mud or stones or any other kind of, and therefore, of course, they vanished from view, given the spectacles that we now have available to us to see them. But if we find ways of detecting the presence of these things, we may find cities, civilizations, whole rafts of history that at the moment are completely invisible to us. Another thing we must remember, however, is that for not merely tens of thousands of years,

but hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, our ancestors, the hominin and then homo line, has been incredibly inventive, technologically very sophisticated in many ways. When you think about the tools made and the art produced right up into the Neolithic period with urbanization, agriculture, and the development of the civilizations, irrigation, metal work, all those sorts of things, all of that done on the basis of trial and error, empirics, all done on experience, human ingenuity. Now, I think there's a great story to be told about human creativity and ingenuity, quite independently of this very late development in human history which is our capacity to understand why the technologies work and an even later development in human

history which is understanding that sometimes those technologies have led to the potential for catastrophic climate breakdown and therefore that's the optimism the excitement of discoveries in your book is offset for me slightly by this problem you and I have talked about before and this problem that is often characterized by people saying oh we don't learn anything from history which I don't agree with but the persistence of certain bugs in the system around popular nationalism the things we're seeing at the moment the lunar pull of charismatic authoritarians the things that we are all worrying about at the moment. How do those political developments fit into your thinking at the moment as you write this book? Well, I don't know whether this is good news or bad. I know it always alarms my publishers, especially lockdown makes one more productive

than one really ought to be. But I have another book coming out next February, which addresses exactly the downsides of all these developments. So the climate problem, the kinds of risks that our technological advances now pose, especially in connection with AI, with the technologies of neuroscience, you know, the brain chip interfaces for controlling mood and traumatic memories and so on, and what kind of implications there might be there. The use of artificial intelligence and miniaturization in weapons systems, and whether completely autonomous weapons systems, which are not under any kind of human control,

can still be made such that they comply with the humanitarian laws of war. And also the problem that global agreement on how to deal with climate challenges and how to deal with the risky aspects of technological developments are very difficult because of international rivalries and economic competition and the fact that some of these developments will happen even if we don't want them to happen like for example genetic engineering use of CRISPR technology to edit genes in human fetuses in order to produce six foot six blondes with IQs of 200 and so on you know that kind of potential now actually exists it's not science fiction it's here and

we don't have decisions about how to manage it. So even though we're at a very early stage, we are at a sufficiently advanced stage to create serious problems for ourselves, of which the climate risk is an outstanding example. So I address all these things in this forthcoming book, which is called For the Good of the World, the idea there being that we've got to try to reach some kind of common understanding as a human family about how we manage these developments. Because by the way, Dan, I specify something which I think should really chill people to the marrow. And I bravely have given it the name Grayling's Law, which says,

Grayling's Law, which says, if something can be done, it will be done if it brings advantage or benefit to those who can get it done. So that means that these brain chips, AI and weapon systems or CRISPR technology and editing fetuses, genes, and so on, these things will happen. I mean, governments will do them or private companies will do them. If somebody profits from them, they will be done. It's incredibly hard to stop them once the cat is out of the bag there. And we are not doing anything, as you can see from the climate problem, anything like enough to think of ways of managing and living with these developments. I had Gordon Bell on the podcast, and he had lots of interesting things to say in his recent book. And they all simply said, the answer to all these problems is greater international cooperation and you went well great I mean that's fantastic and that is just wrecked on the rocks on the

reefs of the fact that politicians are elected nationally not internationally and there is a seems to be an advantage to telling those groups of voters that they are unique or that they are exceptional and that they have much to gain from not acting internationally. That feels insoluble at the moment. Well, but I mean, it's a very good point, though. You raise absolutely the right point here. And to explain just how pertinent it is, I'll tell you a little anecdote, which illustrates the point that the solution to the problem is not directly in front of here, the deal with climate change by stopping emissions and so on. In order to get the emissions stopped, you have to do something else first, which lies off to one side and people are not looking at,

okay? The example is, back in the 90s, I was doing some work at the Human Rights Council in Geneva and read a report on the salutary effect of elementary education on women and girls in Africa, rural Africa, how it really changed things for them, number of children they had, how healthy they were, what level of education the next generation achieved and so on. So I thought, oh, brilliant. I must do something about this. Start a school for girls somewhere in Africa. Okay. That was the idea. And no lesser person than Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who's a friend, said, on no account should you found a school just for girls. Because if it's just for girls, the men and boys in their community will give them a hard time. It's got to be co-ed. She said the secret to ensuring that girls get an education in Africa is to provide every school with a toilet with a door. That's the key. Why? Well, because when girls reach puberty,

if they can't manage their personal hygiene, they can't go to school for a quarter of the year. Therefore, most of them drop out. So if there isn't a toilet with a door. So this is the toilet with a door is off to one side of your vision when you're thinking about educating girls, okay? And it's the same kind of off to one side of the vision solution to the problems about climate. The solution is we've got to fix the political cultures that exist in our world. Think about this.

You get a system like the one in the UK or the US where you have two main political groupings. They vie with one another to get their hands on the levers of power. When one of them does get their hands on the levers of power, you have, in effect, a sort of one-party rule for a couple of years or four years or five years. And in order to retain power and to keep their voter base, they have to ensure they get economic growth and they manage tax levels and what have you. So their interests are always short-termist and always focused on staying in power. And therefore, they want to compete with other economies and they don't want to deal with problems that are

going to require major investment or change of direction in economic activity. And that is why we get stuck in the groove of injurious, of harmful activities. If you change the political culture so that government is much less political, but is really devoted to the interests of the people and of the planet, then, I mean, it sounds very idealistic and so on, but it's not impossible to reach it if we could win the argument about what our political culture should be like and what government culture should be like. That's the off to one side point. Change the politics in our world and we get a better world. You get philosopher AC Grayling calls for philosopher kings there.

Yes, why not? Absolutely. And I'll accept the job pro tem. Oh dear. But this is a whole separate conversation, but'll accept the job pro tem. Oh dear. But this is a whole separate conversation, but it's the one we need to get fixed. Thank you very much indeed, Anthony Graham, for coming on this podcast. What is your new book called? The new book in February is called

The Good of the World. Hang on, wait, first of all, what's this book called? You overachieving man. This book is called The Frontiers of Knowledge. It's invigorating. And then the next one, as you say, let's quickly give up on the next one as well. So the next one is called For the Good of the World. And all the excitement of development discussed in this book, The Frontiers of Knowledge, as you correctly pointed out,

there are downsides, there are risks, there are problems. So we need to be thoughtful about those as well. So I address them in the next book. they're not a you know sequel they're not part two or anything everything that one discusses is connected to everything else the one great truth in the bible is that the knee bone is connected to the ankle bone everything is connected to everything else thank you very much ac grayley nice to see you, Dan. Thanks. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thanks, folks, for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History.

As I say all the time, I love doing these podcasts. They are the best thing I do professionally. I feel very lucky to have you listening to them. If you fancied giving them a rating review, obviously the best rating review possible would be ideal. It makes a big difference to us. I know it's a pain, but we'd really, really be grateful. And if you want to listen to the other podcasts in our ever-increasing stable, don't forget we've got Susanna Lipscomb with Not Just the Tudors, that's flying high in the charts. We've got our Medieval podcast, Gone Medieval, with the brilliant Matt Lewis and Kat Jarman.

We've got the ancients with our very own Tristan Hughes. And we've got warfare as well, dealing with all things military. Please go and check those out. Ready to get your pods. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say,

don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.