LSE Literary Festival 2017 | The 'Universe' Starring Man? The Impact of Scientific Revolutions on Hu

Speaker(s): Professor John Worrall | Editor's note: Apologies for the poor quality audio in this podcast. Many people unreflectingly think that ‘Man’ plays a special role in the Universe. Although this view was endorsed by Aristotelian cosmology, revolutionary developments in science, particularly those associated with Copernicus and with Darwin, seem to have made it entirely untenable. So what does science teach us about our place in the Universe? John Worrall joined LSE as an undergraduate in 1965, initially as a student of statistics. But, seduced by Karl Popper's lectures, soon switched to a course that was part statistics and mathematics and part philosophy. He came under the influence of Imre Lakatos - who tried to convert him to his own brand of 24 hour a day philosophy. He studied for a PhD under Lakatos - developing the latter's methodology of research programmes and testing it against a detailed case history from 19th century physics. Worrall was appointed to a Department of