Sunday night on TV is Big Picture night. Professor Niall Ferguson (bottom) takes on the meaty subject of Civilization on Channel 4 at 8pm. However, he’s trumped by Professor Brian Cox (top), who in the following slot takes on the biggest subject conceivable in Wonders of the Universe, BBC2, 9pm.
They’re both impressively polished presenters and, I suppose it has to be said, they’re both pretty easy on the eye too. Unlike some others recently featured on TV (and here too), it’s also very evident that the two of them have a real flair for teaching. And just like many teachers, they each fall into a familiar type. Whereas Mr Ferguson, when not taking the scholarship class and racing around in a sports car, would coach a highly competitive First XV, Mr Cox seems the sort of teacher who arrives at school on a motorbike and is rumoured to actually play in an indie band.
Their styles are suitably contrasting: Ferguson is a button-holer, putting across his thesis with such barely-suppressed energy that he appears animated even when not talking – eyebrows bristling, jaw clamped, cheekbones rippling. Cox’s method is more insinuating – he’s laid back, his enthusiasm rather more restrained and tinged with a humble wonder.
But despite this contrast both styles work well. As for content, Civilisation seems to be based mostly on Jared Diamond’s remarkably comprehensive and seemingly robust account in Guns, Germs and Steel of how civilisations take on the shape they do largely for environmental reasons: in Diamond’s interpretation geography is the midwife of history. Given what we’ve seen of the later subject matter, I suspect the series will also give us a taste of David Landes’s The Wealth and Poverty of Nations – the importance of culture in the rise of the West.
So this is pretty much a synthesis, a re-presentation of the conclusions of previous influential studies, and none the worse for that. Ferguson, being the talented teacher he is, comes up with a few buzz phrases to make what he’s saying memorable for the C-students at the back – his description of the West’s advantages as ‘killer apps’ jars a bit to the more sensitive ear. But it has got people’s attention and is a fairly valid metaphor.
Wonders of the Universe, as befits its presenter’s style, takes us on a more meandering journey. Initially, I began to dismiss it as an example of how TV inclines towards pretty pictures at the expense of words. Long, lingering shots of a Patagonian glacier; the sight of Cox practically petting a turtle on a Caribbean beach; derelict buildings being swept by a dusty wind in the Namib were all accompanied by a pretty sparse script. However, the effect was cumulative, and effective.
Physics for the average student (I don’t have the ‘O’-Level) is impenetrable at this level on its own terms – the only way to come close to grasping it is through metaphor and simile. Cox’s images and thoughtful analogies gradually built up a picture which seemed comprehensible despite the staggering dimensions. The whole beautiful journey – from planet to universe, from the beginning of everything to its end, taking in such minor details as the nature of time – culminated in Cox informing us that life is viable over such a small period in the existence of the universe that its proportional digit needed to sit behind a decimal point accompanied by a few dozen or so zeroes (I lost count). And yet, for Cox, life was significant: it was how the universe became conscious of itself. A literally wonderful idea and pretty deep stuff, Mr Cox (no wonder you feel the need to play in that indie band).
It was at this point that the two lessons – sorry, programmes – dovetailed quite nicely. Earlier, Ferguson had questioned the usefulness of the great Chinese voyager Zheng He‘s early-15th century voyages of discovery as they hadn’t led to the advance and propagation of Chinese civilisation. In this they were akin to a later spectacular exploratory venture: where the Chinese had managed to land a eunuch on the coast of East Africa, the Americans had put a man on the moon. Both in Ferguson’s words were ‘a waste of time’.
However, when one took Cox’s almost immeasurably larger perspective the moon missions stood out as one of man’s greatest achievements, the supreme manifestation in our history to date of how life is the instrument of the universe’s self-revelation. Geography might be the granddaddy of history, but – outside of RE, though that’s another rather large debate – subjects don’t get any bigger than physics.
while I was transfixed by the series, Wonders of the Solar System, I got the impression that this sequel was an excuse for BC to visit a few more exotic places far off the tourist trail. I mean, he could have drawn his one and two hundred noughts in the sand at Swanage. Not only that but it is a scientific fact that Dorset sandcastles have the lowest entropy in the world.
I wasn’t aware of the other bloke, I’ll have to check him out.
The day before yesterday, I noticed there was a Goth doing the Dark Ages – yes, it figures, I suppose. Her eyes were almost as large as her boots were black (I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned out to be the one Cox went to first for advice on purchasing a motorbike). I was so absorbed by their roundness I didn’t catch her name.
I think the strangeness of the locations was evocative – a trip to a far galaxy was out of the question, so Namibia had to do. I don’t think Swanage would create the same mood.
Re the Dark Ages, everyone seems to be showing documentaries on this period. The two I’ve briefly watched looked remarkably similar: the same facts, locations and even similar presenters (i.e. your Goth lady and the Scottish fella with the flowing dark locks).
Far too kind to both of them. Almost insufferably vain and especially in Prof Brians case stating the obvious as if to Trobriande islanders. To pursue your analogy: Cox comes over as the type who would impregnate besotted fifth formers; and Ferguson probably sings Sturm Sturm Sturm in his cups.
True, both do seem very vain. But one sees so much vanity on TV it doesn’t feel that egregious. Goes with the job, really. For that matter, a touch of vanity isn’t unknown amongst the more exhibitionist teachers, often to useful effect (and as for bloggers…).
As I don’t have the physics I was quite happy to be addressed as a Trobriande Islander. To be fair, it’s difficult to pitch it at the right level when tackling these sort of subjects on TV; I suspect the young Prof was actually aiming at science numpties like me.
…also I heard on the radio last week that the big question now is what happened before the big bang? this, we are told, will give a hint as to what will happen at the end of the universe, when time stands still – cue reel of Richard Greene firing an arrow into a tree trunk, booiiing! that’s the sound of time stopping; unfortunately, no one will hear it as a) in space you can’t hear anything, and b) everything will be dead.
When the programme ended (along with the universe) I did wonder about that myself.
I enjoyed Ferguson’s book “Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World” – a pleasing change from Empire Guilt and he has a happy knack of making dense collections of Fact entertaining.
Cox irritates the hell out of me though I’m not proud of that. Such a nice, soft-spoken chap, don’t you just want to punch him?
I recently read Piers Brendon’s Decline and Fall of the British Empire, which succeeded in making me feel all guilty again.
Cox? Yes, I feel a bit jealous of him too…
The Brian cox programme is ok but I always feel that it could be condensed down to a one minute shot of Brian cox just standing pointing at things going ” stuff….isn’t it amazing?! And space… That’s just mental!”
It’s all a load of old codswallop mate, bleedin’ space time continuum, as for this big bang theory, yeah, right and I’m Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s left nipple. It’s the fault of that twerp Gell-Mann, sitting there in his tent in the dusty desert, dreamin’ up quacks and stuff, quacks my arse,
As for Coxy, what’s he done since the Bourne stuff eh, go on, tell me, dyed his hair black, that’s wot.
Scientists, pah!, two a penny, think they know all, eff all, look at that flaky bugger Oppy, the one with the daft hat, stood there, hour after hour at that lathe, turning out bits for the whoosh-bang-ooh nasty, couldn’t be seen for the pile of dog ends, commie bastard, the feds got him for sure.
How’s everybody then? all fit are we.
All the better for that, Malty!
Great review. But any decent physicist would play in a heavy metal band, surely…
In the profound words of the Tap: ‘Out of the emptiness… salvation’
Let there be rock.
Surely you all know that Cox in fact plays shitty handbag techno. He famously manned the keyboards on that dreadful ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ song that was Tony Blair’s theme tune in 1997.
Jon and Daniel, there are fatal flaws in your respective theories: (1) only balding middle-aged men with Brummie accents play heavy metal; (2) Cox was 11 in 1997.
Ferguson: fairly obvious attempt to cheer up playing-to-the-gallery sub-neo-con sermonising with sub-Petrean ‘what is truth?’ superficial cleverness; frankly embarassing personal life; Morrissey-type hairstyle isn’t really working for him. Verdict: wish I could have liked it all more, but it got on my nerves.
Cox: what Worm said – although as the floppy-haired Prof is very nearly my age (or indeed Ferguson’s) I kept wondering at what point the arrow of time would catch up with the whole fresh-faced skinny indie-kid persona, at which point it might be worth adding a bit more of the intellectual rigour which, apparently, Cox can also do extremely well when he wants. Instead, I actually fell asleep, but only because I find the rake of crepuscular light across Cox’s cheekbones blissfully relaxing. Verdict: wished I could have found it all more annoying, but actually loved it.
Mind you, neither is a patch on even late-stage Attenborough, 1980-vintage Robert Hughes looking quite sexy in flares, or indeed Lord Clark with his rakishly-deployed teeth, odd way of pronouncing ‘capitalist’ and casually wandering hands.
The problem may be that this attempt at plebucation by the BBC suffers from substance stifling by style. The subject is complex and needs serious airing, in the right hands it may work, for those with enough audience stamina. The question to be begged is the one that asks if the BBC, with it’s present mindset, quarantined from reality, is capable of mounting such a task. The only law of physics it currently appears to understand is the one that states ‘for every ten percent drop in quality of output the remuneration package of it’s executives will increase exponentially’.
In truth Coxs its fookin amazin style whilst describing the second law of thermodynamics apparently to cretins encapsulates the BBCs view of its audience. It is very hard to imagine the mindset that considers The News Quiz to be comical; the Today Programme impartial or that anyone would want to watch 8 hours of pitiful preachy boring drivel like Outcasts, but there you have it.
Part of the problem is that the talentless people who produce this crapola have no chance of employment elsewhere let alone matching their “competitive” remuneration and they will never leave thus ensuring the output continues to make GDR Rundfunk look like Tudor Theatre.
Patten (god help us) should sack the shockingly useless Thompson and make Jonathon Meades DG – now that would be fun.
As I got something out of Prof Cox’s lesson I must number myself among the cretinous Trobriander plebs that it was aimed at – and I guess I should be flattered to have attracted such super-intelligent commenters…
Barendina, there’s a lot to be written on Prof Ferguson, who is a fascinating character. In a recent Observer interview, the product of Glasgow Academy and Magdalen
e, Oxford and the current Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School remarked how glad he was be to leaving these shores again as he was ‘sick of being patronised by public schoolboys’. Where to begin?And as for where he’s going to rather than coming from, like a worrying number of historians who study power he seems to have become rather enamoured of it.
I am now counting the minutes until you produce that anatomy of Prof Ferguson, Gaw. Did you know, I once met someone who had spent several years at Peterhouse yet emerged with his moral functions broadly intact? The scars were still very much on show, though. ‘Accurate scholarship can / unearth the whole offence / from Cowling until now / that has driven a parlour mad …’*
*Unfortunately ‘seniour parlour’ wouldn’t really scan, although I guess it might have had a wilfully irritant effect appropriate to the subject-matter.
I’m one of the science morons as well so loved Cox and his expanding sun. I like any programme that tells me that we, humankind, are a few ants crawling over a sugary spoon. There is a rule that the more you know about a subject the less you want to see it vulgarised and dumbed down on television.
Most annoying presenter ever – Simon Schama
Loveliest most unassuming presenter – David Attenborough (universally acknowledged. The only person who could dislike him would be Satan)
Presenter whose music class I wish I was in – Howard Goodall
Presenter I’d most like to walk round an art gallery with while he sneered at Tracy Emin – Robert Hughes
Presenter I wish I was going to meet at a folk club this evening – Neil Oliver (him with the flowing locks and way of looking at you over his shoulder.)
Good hit list Rosie, should include…Jacob Bronowski, teacher of the highest order…AJP Taylor, modern history as seen thro’ the twinkling eyes of a
Mauserist…Richard Feynman, physics without the smoke and mirrors…Brian Sewell….dreamy, acceptable face of English snobbery, no tumbrel for him….and Francesco da Mosto, explainer of all things Itie and the only bloke Frau M would swap me for, I mean..me?
If the long haired porridge scoffing beach comber curls your toenails then I do believe he can occasionally be seen in Tiles, not tomorrow of course wot with the coming of the second Culloden and all, I hope to be there, complete with Hanoverian outfit.
Good one on Brian Cox from Caitlin Moran in The Times today…
…the odd, querulous feyness that the Lancashire accent often brings to pronouncements, which sometimes made it seem as though Cox was on the verge of ending a speech on gravity with “It’s dead magic, our mam”, giving a thumbs up and riding off the stage on a trike.
Barendina, I don’t feel qualified to anatomise Prof Ferguson as he seems so very Scottish. I think of him as the impossibly conceived child of Norman Stone and Andrew Neil, what with his combination of brilliance, workaholic tendencies, good looks, fierce ambition and chippiness (no prizes for guessing from which side he inherited one or two of those qualities). But I don’t get much further than that.
Rosie, I think that’s very true. But when a documentary is on that I know a bit about I try not to be too hard on it if it gets things broadly right and might give a curious ‘A’-level student something to think about.
Malty: And not forgetting the young Mr Graham-Dixon – probably the best around right now, I reckon.
Brit: That’s very good isn’t it? I wish we could afford her. I wonder what she’d do for a bottle of Gem?
In episode 2 of his C4 documentary, Ferguson claims that as religion in Turkey was causing retarding of scientific discovery, science and scientists were being rewarded and embraced in Europe. Many would qualifiy Ferguson’s sweeping statement.
One example is the treatment meted out to Galileo Galilei. After 1610, when he began publicly supporting the heliocentric view, which placed the Sun at the centre of the universe, he met with bitter opposition from some philosophers and clerics, and two of the latter eventually denounced him to the Roman Inquisition early in 1615. In February 1616, although he had been cleared of any offence, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as “false and contrary to Scripture”,[10] and Galileo was warned to abandon his support for it—which he promised to do. When he later defended his views in his most famous work, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, he was tried by the Inquisition, found “vehemently suspect of heresy”, forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
He’s not that young, he just looks like a fey boy. Behold:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Cox_%28physicist%29#Studies_and_career_in_music
I also saw Jonathan Ross chortling about this when he interviewed him a while back.