Each generation benefits from the insights and discoveries of those who came before. “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants,” wrote Isaac Newton. In a new annual series, World Science Festival audiences are invited to stand on the shoulders of modern-day giants. Writer Lytton Strachey once remarked, “If one were asked to choose a date for the beginning of the modern world, probably July 15, 1662, would be the best to fix upon. For on that day, the Royal Society was founded, and the place of Science in civilization became a definite and recognized thing.” Nobel Laureate and physicist Steven Weinberg expounds upon Strachey’s sentiment regarding the rise of enlightenment and the downfall of fanaticism.
More from this series: On the Shoulders of Giants: Steven Weinberg

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons; Recorded June 2011; Posted November 2011