LF283 Brian Keating – Imagining the Impossible

Brian Keating, author of Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science’s Highest Honor, discusses the role of imagination and creativity in shaping the world around us and our future.

As perhaps the most curious species on Earth, from the very beginning we have been driven to probe the mysteries of our planet, uncover its inner workings, and use this knowledge for our benefit. From this quest grew the many branches of human knowledge and expression, including science, religion, and art. But the commercialisation of science and art and the marginalisation of spirituality has led to a myopic, materialistic view of what can and what should be done in wider society, a situation exacerbated by the mainstream education system which churns out specialists or drone workers, often for jobs that are rapidly disappearing or already gone.

More than ever, there is now an urgent need to reinvigorate imagination and creativity from the ground up, dissolving the artificial barriers between fields of study, branches of knowledge, and modes of thinking. The extent to which this can or will be achieved will have an enormous impact on how we face and attempt to deal with the huge political, social, economic, and environmental challenges facing humanity. Endless human progress is by no means guaranteed, and if we are to overcome our most pressing problems, we will need to test the limits of our imagination and of the possible like never before.

Previous interview with Brian Keating:
Cosmos and Controversy: Science and the Big Questions

Bumper music: Cliff Martinez ‘Traffic OST’
Jean Michel Jarre ‘Equinoxe’

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