Educational

University of Cambridge

Economics

Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2014

NARRATOR:
In the early fifteenth century, artists and intellectuals in Italy came to realize that the time they lived in was very different from the centuries before.  There was a revival of interest in the achievements of classical antiquity -- in the art, literature, and architecture of the ancient Greeks and Romans.  They came to see the previous medieval period as a time of darkness after the glories of the classical past, and their own era as a new age in the arts.  

In the 16th century, Giorgio Vasari, an Italian painter best known as the biographer of artists, used the term rinascità—meaning rebirth -- to describe this change in the artist’s vision of the world around him.  Later historians coined the term Renaissance from the French word for rebirth.

The focus of the Middle Ages had been the spiritual world, and the major patron of the arts the Roman Catholic Church.  Painted altarpieces and frescos conveyed the church’s teachings in a form that could be understood even by those who could not read.  During the Renaissance, the Christian religion continued to play an important role in art.  But the masters of the 15th and 16th centuries, like Greek and Roman artists before them, looked to man as the measure of all things.  They based even their spiritual images not on an imaginary world, but on the world around them.  In Italy, the remains of numerous ancient sculptures and monuments, still visible after more than a thousand years, inspired many of the great Renaissance artists whose work is on view here at the National Gallery – including Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci. 


Renaissance Overview-English

World Wildlife Fund President and CEO Carter Roberts talks about why businesses need the planet just as much as the planet needs businesses.

Music by: Blank and Kytt (Heavy, Crazy, Serious)

Saving the Earth is Good Business | Harvard Business School

This lecture will review just some of the extensive evidence from ancient civilisations – mainly China, Mesopotamia and Greece – that helps to throw light on four interrelated questions that form my principal agenda: (1) What items were the subjects of prediction? (2) How were predictions made: on what basis did people think they could foresee the future? (3) Why were they interested in doing so? (4) How is foresight related first to divination and prediction in general, and then to wisdom and prudence? The subjects on which predictions were attempted (Q 1) can be used to reveal the concerns and values of the groups in question. While hundreds of different techniques were tried out (Q 2) that will lead me to examine the ways ancient theorists evaluated them and to a discussion of the growth of scepticism. The aims and motives of ancient investigators (Q 3) include influencing policy and advising rulers as well as building up their own prestige (when they got it right). Most important is Q 4 . What were the resources available in antiquity to learn to make more prudent and wiser judgements about what to do, and to that end do we not still need all the resources available to us to do the same?

Biography

Geoffrey Lloyd is Professor Emeritus of Ancient Philosophy and Science at Cambridge, where he was Master of Darwin College from 1989 to 2000. He is now based at the Needham Research Institute, whose Trust he chaired from 1992 to 2002. He has held Visiting Professorships in Europe (France, Spain, Italy, Germany) in the Far East (PRC, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore), Australasia, and North and South America. He has published 25 books, initially concentrating on ancient Greek philosophy and science and then embarking on detailed comparative studies with ancient Chinese thought. His three most recent books, which tackle the underlying philosophical problems of such comparisons and related issues in cognitive science, are: Cognitive Variations: Reflections on the Unity and Diversity of the Human Mind (2007: the subject of a special number of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews in 2010), Disciplines in the Making (2009) and Being, Humanity and Understanding (2012, all from Oxford University Press). He has been translated into12 different languages. He became a Fellow of the British Academy in 1983 and an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995. He was awarded the Sarton medal for History of Science in 1987, and the Kenyon Medal for Classical Studies in 2007. He holds Honorary Fellowships at King’s, Darwin, and Tembusu College Singapore, and Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Athens and Oxford. He was knighted for ‘services to the history of thought’ in 1997.

Foresight in Ancient Civilisations

Speaker(s): Dr Ha-Joon Chang | In Economics: The User's Guide, which he will talk about in this public lecture, bestselling author Ha-Joon Chang explains how the global economy works, and why anyone can understand the dismal science. Unlike many economists who claim there is only one way of 'doing economics', he introduces readers to a wide range of economic theories, from classical to Keynesian to institutionalist to Austrian, revealing how they all have their strengths, weaknesses and blind spots. By challenging the received wisdom, and exposing the myriad forces that shape our economic life, Chang provides the tools that every responsible citizen needs to understand - and address - our current economic woes. Ha-Joon Chang teaches economics at Cambridge University. His book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism was a no.1 bestseller and was called by the Observer 'a witty and timely debunking of some of the biggest myths surrounding the global economy.' He is a popular columnist at the Guardian, and a vocal critic of the failures of our economic system. Thu, 1 May 2014 18:30:00 GMT

Economics, But Not as You Know It [Audio]

Speaker(s): Dr Rebecca Empson | In this lecture Rebecca outlines an economy based on the temporary, rather than outright possession of resources and commodities. Ethnographic evidence shows that such transient forms of possession can come to shape the very financial forms we might have assumed were incompatible with them. Mongolians located at the periphery of financial centres thereby come to shape wider economic practices that impact upon what we have understood capitalism to be. Theoretically, this may be taken as a broader critique of the idea of the ‘performativity of economics’ and the need to acknowledge the complex motivations that drive people toward different kinds of economic activity, including emotive feelings of trust, secrecy and uncertainty, as well the politics of accumulation in a rapidly changing landscape of economic potential. Rebecca Empson is a lecturer in Social Anthropology at UCL. She works in Mongolia on ideas about kinship, economics and material culture. Her monograph, Harnessing Fortune: Personhood, Memory and Place in Mongolia is published by Oxford University Press (2011). In September this year she will begin a new ERC-funded project exploring the form of capitalism emerging in Mongolia’s mineral economy, entitled: Emerging Subjects of the New Economy: Tracing Economic Growth in Mongolia. Rita Astuti is professor of social anthropology and head of the anthropology department at the LSE. Thu, 22 May 2014 18:00:00 GMT

An Economy of Temporary Possession [Audio]

Dr Ha-Joon Chang is a Reader in the Political Economy of Development and author of several widely-discussed policy books. He was ranked by Prospect Magazine as one of the top World Thinkers in 2013.

Economics: a user's guide

Leading international economist Gerard Lyons spent nearly thirty years working in the City and is now Chief Economic Advisor to the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. In 2010 and 2011 Bloomberg ranked him the number one global forecaster out of 400 leading economists, so his views on where we are heading economically are worth listening to. In his new book The Consolations of Economics he lays out his roadmap for an optimistic future. Hear what he has to say in a Faber Podcast recorded at City Hall, with the skyscrapers of the City the ideal backdrop.

Gerard Lyons: The Consolations of Economics

Hear how Checkhov was an innovative writer.

Chekhov as an innovative writer

An introduction by the editor, Lesley Brown of Somerville College, Oxford to this seminal work. 

Why read the Nicomachean Ethics?

Hear how archaeology connects people across time and space using examples from nationally important museums and pioneering outreach projects. Join Drs Carenza Lewis and Jody Joy to explore highlights and legacies of the last ten years’ work inspiring thousands of members of the public to unearth new discoveries to advance knowledge and enjoyment of local heritage. In association with Access Cambridge Archaeology and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology with Curating Cambridge - See more at: http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/time-team-archaeology-all#sthash.XGzqFVMV.dpuf

From Time Team to Archaeology for All

How can we understand the rich and puzzling variety of different sexual desires, ranging from that associated only with exclusive monogamy, through fetishes to the extremes of addiction and desire linked to violence? There is also the phenomenon termed ‘asexuality’: people feeling sexual arousal and a capacity for pleasure but no associated desire directed towards another individual. Some people report sexual disgust. Recent advances in psychology and neuroscience allow the beginnings of an understanding of such a spectrum of tastes in terms of how a few simple processes of the brain/mind can combine in a variety of different ways. Research into the brain’s chemical messengers is also yielding some crucial insights. The Open University’s Professor Frederick Toates digs deeps into our brains to find out more. - See more at: http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/fully-booked-how-sexual-desire-works#sthash.1g9dCSuV.dpuf

How sexual desire works

Cambridge Stars - Richard Hunter, Regius Professor of Greek

Cambridge Stars - Professor Gareth Stedman Jones

Cambridge Stars -Hamid Sabourian, Professor of Economics and Game Theory

Ha-Joon Chang talks about his latest book Economics: A User's Guide, which questions the idea that economics is a science and addresses the failures in economics thinking that he says led to our current predicament. Ha-Joon Chang teaches economics at Cambridge University. His book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism was a number one bestseller and was called by the Observer "a witty and timely debunking of some of the biggest myths surrounding the global economy". He is a popular columnist at the Guardian, and a vocal critic of the failures of our economic system. - See more at: http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/fully-booked-economics-users-guide#sthash.tOMqZoaV.dpuf

The UK’s national academy for the Humanities and Social Science, the British Academy, elects 42 Fellows annually; in 2013, 9 of these were at the University of Cambridge. Join Hans van de Ven, Professor of Modern Chinese History, Christopher Page, Professor of Medieval Music and Literature, and Usha Goswami, Professor of Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience, who will introduce us to their ground-breaking work. - See more at: http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/cambridge-stars-big-ideas-2#sthash.S5KOB9hT.dpuf

Cambridge stars: Christopher Page, Professor of Medieval Music and Literature

Vitamin D and light: a close relationship with a lot of controversy. Diet is insufficient in providing vitamin D; however, to make Vitamin D ourselves, we need sunlight, which tends to be in short supply in the UK. The EPIC-Norfolk study observed that participants who had a higher blood vitamin D concentration had a lower risk of developing lung disease, heart disease and fractures. Prof. Kay-Tee Khaw will discuss these findings and shed some light on the question: To D or not to D?

12 March 2015 Vitamin D: To D Or Not To D

In this year's Linacre Lecture at St John's, Professor Sharon Peacock discusses a potential tool that could be used to control bacterial resistance to antibiotics. The Linacre Lecture is an annual presentation on a medical topic that has been given at the College since 1524.

Antimicrobial Resistance In The Genomic Era

Lydia Rutherford, an A-level student from Lodge Park Academy (Corby), interviews Professor Trevor Robbins, Head of Psychology at Cambridge University about drug abuse and dependence.

Lydia Rutherford & Professor Trevor Robbins on drug addiction

Noel Fombanu, an A-Level student from Lodge Park Academy (Corby), interviews Dr David Franklin from Cambridge University's Dept of Engineering about the role that neuroscience has to play in robotics.

Noel Fombanu & Dr David Franklin

Dr Denis Alexander talks to Eleanor Puttock about the new technique of human embryo gene editing, the science behind it, its implications as well as a theological view point. 

To find out more about Dr Denis Alexander go to: http://bit.ly/1T0g7sO

To find out more about The Faraday Institute go to: bit.ly/1AAhTXq

To read the original article "CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing in human tripronuclear zygote" in Protein & Cell go to: http://bit.ly/1EedsFn (subscription required) 

To read the article in Nature "Ethics of embryo editing divides scientists", referred to by Dr Alexander, go to: http://bit.ly/1LM7GQL (subscription required) 