Human Intelligence

Darwin asked big questions. His theory of evolution transformed our understanding of life on Earth. But Naomi Alderman discovers that he did it by looking at small things and tiny changes that other people had overlooked. From earliest childhood, he’d been a collector – pocketing shells, coins, minerals, bits of pottery and rooftiles – and his travels on HMS Beagle allowed him to amass a vast collection of specimens and observations that he and others would puzzle over for decades.

Special thanks to Dr John van Wyhe, historian of science at the National University of Singapore and the Director of The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Presenter: Naomi Alderman Executive editor: James Cook Assistant producer: Sarah Goodman Researcher: Harry Burton Production coordinator: Amelia Paul Script consultant: Sara Joyner

Samuel Johnson was living proof that a person can be extremely messy and disorganised but still do work of great worth. He compiled and almost single-handedly wrote an English dictionary that changed the language for good. ‘Dictionary Johnson’ established the spelling and meaning of many words; he looked at etymology; he poked fun and cracked jokes. He lived hand to mouth, writing for money, and helped establish the modern literary world.

Special thanks to Judith Hawley, Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Naomi Alderman examines the intelligence and sharp humour of an ancient Greek historian known as Pamphila of Epidaurus. She was a female historian working in a society that believed women were constitutionally unsuited to the rational and peculiarly masculine task of recording facts for posterity. She wrote thirty-three volumes of her famed Historical Commentaries from her home. She wrote for fun, organising her material in a free and easy mix, like ‘embroidery’. We have none of her original writings, just reported fragments, but she gave us cultural history as we know it today, centuries ahead of time.

Special thanks to Edith Hall, Professor of Classics at Durham University.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Naomi Alderman looks at the remarkable way Denis Diderot connected ideas and people. In 18th-century Paris, he edited one of the very first encyclopaedias: twenty-eight volumes with tens of thousands of articles on everything from the concept of liberty to cutting-edge medical research, the manufacture of silk stockings and a recipe for apricot jam. Diderot was the perfect man for the job – energised by veering from one subject to the next and undeterred by fierce opposition from the Church or even a government ban on the entire project.

Special thanks to Kate Tunstall, Professor of French and Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones Fellow in Modern Languages at Worcester College, University of Oxford.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Naomi Alderman wonders at lady-in-waiting, writer and all-round entertainer Sei Shōnagon, who wrote The Pillow Book over a thousand years ago in the Japanese imperial court.

The Empress and her entourage lived in a closed world, glimpsed through half-shut blinds, while political machinations went on all around them. Poetry and wit were highly prized; and Sei Shōnagon was unmatched. In dark times, she picked out the beauty and absurdity in everyday life; and pulled together poetry, anecdote, essays and lists to create a whole new genre in Japanese – miscellany.

Special thanks to Naomi Fukumori, Associate Professor and Director of The Institute for Japanese Studies at The Ohio State University.

Excerpts from The Pillow Book translated by Meredith McKinney (Penguin Classics 2006).

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Naomi Alderman investigates the eccentric brilliance of Diogenes. He was a ‘cynic’ philosopher, which originally meant ‘dog-like’, and wanted to teach us that humans could learn from dogs and the simple authentic manner in which they went about their lives. Diogenes was sharp, hilarious, downright rude and a menace in the market place.

Special thanks to Dr Robert Cromarty, Classics Master at Wellington College.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Presenter: Naomi Alderman Executive editor: James Cook Assistant producer: Sarah Goodman Researcher: Harry Burton Production coordinator: Amelia Paul Script consultant: Sara Joyner

Naomi Alderman meets Peter Ramus – a teacher determined to simplify and systematise the teaching of difficult things. He spoke his mind and thrived on stirring up trouble.

Ramus was behind one of the most important learning devices in history. A system of organising knowledge that helped overthrow the primacy of Aristotle in medieval universities and allowed everyone to access ideas, regardless of birth or status. He was a fighter (literally on some occasions), a brilliant speaker and devoted to the idea that knowledge deserved to spread far beyond the cloistered walls of higher education.

Special thanks to Robert Goulding, Associate Professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Mary Somerville was a brilliant polymath who found time to correct the work of Isaac Newton whilst looking after her infant children. Naomi Alderman investigates her extraordinary work ethic and expansive interests.

Somerville's writings, across a range of disciplines – maths, astronomy, botany, geography – became essential reading for those learning science, and helped to define what a scientist was in the early 19th century.

Special thanks to Dr Brigitte Stenhouse, Lecturer in the History of Mathematics at The Open University.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Naomi Alderman explores one of the greatest minds of the medieval world and in the history of Jewish thought. His work, The Guide for the Perplexed, is among the most influential works of medieval philosophy. In his efforts to reconcile faith and reason, Maimonides was having parts of the Enlightenment in his head 600 years early.

Special thanks to Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum, Dean of the London School of Jewish Studies and the Rabbi Sacks Chair of Modern Jewish Thought.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

The modern world is inconceivable without this son of a blacksmith and his meticulous, relentless brain. Naomi Alderman meets the mind behind huge scientific advances – who made breakthroughs in the understanding of electricity, changed the technology by which we live and contributed to our theoretical understanding of the forces underpinning the universe. Faraday also devoted his life to spreading the understanding of science into public life via his lectures at the Royal Institution.

Special thanks to Frank James, Professor of the History of Science at University College London.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

While in prison, Malcolm X read furiously after lights-out and changed his entire life trajectory. Naomi Alderman looks at his extraordinary capacity for learning. Prominent as a black nationalist, skilled orator and remarkable organiser in the black freedom struggle in mid-20th century America, Malcolm X was, above all, a learner – a thinker prepared to change his mind. He left hustling behind for a Spartan, ascetic existence, dedicated to the cause.

Special thanks to Clarence Lang, Susan Welch Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts and Professor of African American studies at Penn State.

Excerpt from The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley (Penguin Modern Classics 2001).

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Presenter: Naomi Alderman Executive editor: James Cook Assistant producer: Sarah Goodman Researcher: Harry Burton Production coordinator: Amelia Paul Script consultant: Sara Joyner

Luther's vivid, wild words – powered by new printing technology – set in motion a chain reaction that split the Catholic Church, powered the Reformation and changed the world forever. Naomi Alderman meets this determined thinker.

Famously, Luther walked up to a church in a backwater town and nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door. The son of a metal smelter, he knew how rough and dangerous life could be; and he was prepared to question, argue and openly insult powerful authorities in defence of his explosive theology.

Special thanks to Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Mary Wollstonecraft argued with passion and moral certainty in her great work, A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Naomi Alderman meets the first modern woman, who lived the ideas she espoused – travelling to revolutionary France, living unmarried to her lover, arguing, debating, persuading and showing, with the quality of her arguments, the justice of her own cause. She died tragically young, giving birth to her daughter Mary, known now as Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

Special thanks to Dr Corin Throsby, who teaches English at the University of Cambridge.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Washington may be better known as a man of action rather than ideas. However, he gave the world one idea of huge power, an idea that was also about power. As a military General, Washington won the American War of Independence. Then, as the first ever US president, he helped establish a nation and guide it through its early life. And then he did something extraordinary – he voluntarily gave up his power and returned to his farm. The idea of the peaceful transfer of power has been at the heart of the American system ever since.

Special thanks to Dr Tom F Wright, Associate Professor in Rhetoric at the University of Sussex.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

The ancient Athenian Socrates encourages us to think about what are the most important things in life and to bring real clarity to the ideas, concepts and beliefs that we use every day. He was persistent, brilliant, possessed of an intellectual curiosity and rigour that few have matched. Naomi Alderman explores the mind of this mercurial and fleeting figure – he has left us with no written work and our only sense of him is through the experiences and writings of others.

Special thanks to Dr Frisbee Sheffield, Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Naomi Alderman introduces her series dissecting the minds of brilliant thinkers from the past; examining the myriad ways in which humans think – the messy magic behind ideas that shaped the world.

Unlike Artificial Intelligence, human intelligence is a flesh and blood pursuit. It is shaped by character, opportunity and circumstance, and fuelled by ego, mania, tenacity and eccentricity.

Each episode of HI tells a story of how a brilliant mind came up with a brilliant idea, asking: how did this person achieve their intellectual ambitions? What kind of mind is at work here? Did they argue their position? Did they prefer quiet contemplation or long walks by the sea?

Naomi introduces remarkable thinkers from across history – Socrates, Mary Wollstonecraft, Malcolm X, Sei Shōnagon, Charles Darwin and so many more – alongside academic experts from around the world.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.