Redefining Reality: The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

The metaphysical concept of reality and how it leads to a scientific worldview; the scientific picture of reality changes as theories are refined or overthrown; the germ theory of disease and philosopher Thomas Kuhn's idea of paradigm shifts.

Defining reality as understood by the ancient Greeks; revolutionary ideas about reality proposed by Plato, Aristotle, Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler; Newton inspires the Age of Enlightenment; closing with the Romantic backlash of the 19th century.

Mathematics hits the rocks of uncertainty in the 19th and 20th centuries; the discoveries of non-Euclidean geometries and the incompleteness theorem of Kurt Gödel; "Alice in Wonderland" sheds intriguing light on this view of reality.

Until 1905, physical reality consists of absolute space, absolute time and the luminiferous aether; Einstein's special theory of relativity overthrows this deeply ingrained view; cultural figures such as Kurt Vonnegut draw on this legacy.

Relativity is incomplete until Einstein formulates a general theory of relativity that incorporates gravity; this breakthrough demolishes the idea of gravity as a force; the concept of warped spacetime; strange predictions such as black holes.

Investigating the underlying reality that governs the universe; learning whether the universe is eternally the same or is it changing and unstable; this debate culminates in the contest between the steady-state theory and the big bang model.

Atoms are the bedrock of ordinary matter; a century ago, many scientists are reluctant to accept their existence; chemical elements come in countable units; the backstory of the atomic hypothesis; its triumph and the complications that ensue.

The subject of quantum mechanics was pioneered by scientists probing atomic structure in the early 20th century; Max Planck, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger; Heisenberg uncertainty principle; the Schrödinger wave function.

Quantum field theory leads to a synthesis called the standard model of particle physics, which is confirmed by the discovery of the Higgs boson; the implications of this theory for one's understanding of reality; its impact on the visual arts.

Traditional attempts to understand the world assume that it is regular, simple, periodic and predictable; nature gives scientists a richer picture of reality through chaos theory; chaos is a previously unimagined complexity within the universe.

Learning what happens when the accepted picture of reality is overthrown; this happens in the late 20th century, when scientists suddenly discover dark matter and dark energy, which together dwarf the contribution of ordinary matter to the cosmos.

Science has been on a mission to unite disparate phenomena under the umbrella of more comprehensive theories; the search for a grand unified theory that unifies the workings of quantum forces; a theory of everything that quantizes gravity.

Descartes holds the dualistic view that the mind and body are separate; materialists counter that brain processes produce the mind; discovering what physics has to say about free will; the famous thought experiment involving Schrödinger's cat.

One of the complete transformations of reality in history; the new picture of life that emerges from the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace; their influence on William Golding's Lord of the Flies and on TV reality shows.

The mechanism that drives evolution is not discovered until long after Darwin's death; clues lead researchers first to the cell nucleus, then to chromosomes and genes; finally to the DNA molecule as the agent of heredity; genetics and human identity.

The quest to understand human behavior inspires researchers to study the mind; the theories of Sigmund Freud, who gives the world a new vocabulary, including concepts like ego, id and superego; Freud's legacy is enduring in the horror film genre.

The many directions psychology takes before World War II; Carl Jung extends Freud's ideas to encompass a universal collective unconscious; the behaviorists focus on observable behavior, an approach that influences advertising and public relations.

The Holocaust raises serious questions about the mind and its relation to authority; three experiments test the limits of human autonomy; Solomon Asch's group think study, Stanley Milgram's obedience study and Philip Zimbardo's Stanford prison study.

Freudian psychology sees mothers as the wellspring of neuroses; contrasting this view with Harry Harlow's studies of maternal caregiving and Carol Gilligan's theory of differing moral development in females and males; the novel "Frankenstein".

Analyzing the contributions of genetics, environmental factors and social interaction to one's effective functioning as members of the species; how CT, MRI, and PET imaging technologies provide windows into brain structure and activity.

If the human brain is the result of evolutionary processes, then many shared psychological traits must have adaptive advantages; exploring this view, known as evolutionary psychology; it can be illustrated by a simple logic problem.

Culture imprints itself on our brains through socialization; the insights that sociology provides, from Auguste Comte to Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim, who suggests that crime has an unappreciated positive role in society.

In the early 20th century, crisis is a popular word in book titles; it reflects a widespread anxiety about a rapidly changing world; contrasting assessments of the stability of society from sociologists; the analysis by industrialist Andrew Carnegie.

Learning what differences between groups are real and what differences are as arbitrary as a political boundary; addressing this question regarding race, which is considered rooted in biological reality; this view is conclusively overthrown.

Probing social reality by looking at the concept of progress; social optimists and pessimists believe that society is progressing, but they see different causes; exploring the idea that Western culture is doomed to collapse under its own weight.

Money is a powerfully real phenomenon; money, goods and services are exchanged in the economy; the ideas of John Maynard Keynes and the results of modern psychological research challenge two assumptions of classical economic theory.

Applying the reality-analyzing tools one has learned to the problem of life; the close connection between life and sunlight; the startling exception to this rule: the fauna that flourish around volcanic vents in the dark ocean depths; life's origins.

Fiction writers lead the way in exploring the prospects of life beyond Earth; scientists catch up and look for extraterrestrial organisms using a variety of ingenious techniques; they narrow the search; tantalizing clues which have already turned up.

Reality for the individual ends at death; medical technology makes that endpoint increasingly hard to define; knowing what it means to die and the complications that ensue if one develops brain transplants or finds the secret of immortality.

Modern technology transforms procreation, birth and parenting; given the different donor and surrogate options, it is perfectly possible to have a child with five biologically contributing parents; the implications of this revolution; human cloning.

Exploring the history of genetic engineering, which has roots in the imaginary hybrid creatures of ancient myth; real hybrids are made by splicing genes for desired traits into the genome of an organism; how this brave new technology is being used.

The availability of cosmetic surgery, psychoactive chemicals, performance-enhancing drugs and other treatments; people are free to redefine themselves to overcome their limitations; a trend that is rapidly transforming what it means to be human.

Prosthetics, eyeglasses, and other aids are seen as less-than-ideal substitutes for normal human abilities; now, technology enhances one well beyond what is considered normal; the superhuman traits currently available; the era of the cyborg arrived.

The evolution of artificial intelligence from basic calculating machines to computers that can vanquish chess masters; the distinction between weak AI, such as a chess-playing machine, and strong AI, which is a machine that has a human-like mind.

Personal computers, email, and the Internet represent a major departure in the evolution of computer technology; the exciting birth of personal computing in the 1970s; exploring the nature of the virtual world where more and more people now reside.

Today's networked culture is a dream come true for researchers in fields from marketing to sociology to epidemiology; big data puts potentially everyone and everything under the microscope of analysis; a comprehensive view of the intricate reality.