The Day the Universe Changed — Season 1, Episode 10: Worlds Without End: Changing Knowledge, Changing Reality

Episode synopsis

Observes that over the centuries Western civilization has regularly shifted its conception of the nature of truth. The series closes with host James Burke's remarkably prescient assessment of the role in which modern computer networks are beginning to now play in shaping man's current conception of his reality as well as how they may well define the fundamental nature of all future human interaction. And while his message is ultimately a positive one, it is tempered with the warning that while the promise of the computer may indeed provide a framework for a future anarchism where human freedom is nourished and where every individual conception of reality is a valid one, it could conversely become of tool of totalitarian repression and conformity.

About The Day the Universe Changed

Documentary series about the effect of advances in science and technology on western society in its philosophical aspects.

More episodes from Season 1

• E1The Way We Are: It Started with the Greeks
• E2In the Light of the Above: Medieval Conflict: Faith and Reason
• E3Point of View: Scientific Imagination in the Renaissance
• E4A Matter of Fact: Printing Transforms Knowledge
• E5Infinitely Reasonable: Science Revises the Heavens
• E6Credit Where It's Due: The Factory and Marketplace Revolution
• E7What the Doctor Ordered: Impacts of New Medical Knowledge
• E8Fit to Rule: Darwin's Revolution
• E9Making Waves: The New Physics: Newton Revised