Science and Religion - Templeton Essay

http://www.templeton-cambridge.org/fellows/2006

ESSAY FOR TEMPLETON CAMBRIDGE JOURNALISM FELLOWSHIP

Thirteen years ago Pope John Paul II expressed optimism for science and religion's happy co-existence. Speaking to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences he said that although they formed two realms of knowledge they: "Are not foreign to each other. They have points of contact."

His optimism was echoed in a book published in 1999 from the other side of the divide. In "Rocks Of Ages - Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life" scientist Stephen Jay Gould argued for the co-existence of what he termed the two non-overlapping magistera of science and faith.

"People of good will wish to see science and religion at peace," he said, "I do not see how they can be unified, or even synthesised under any common scheme of explanation or analysis, but I also do not understand why the two enterprises should experience any conflict."

Nevertheless, in 2005, things look less rosy. Science and religion seem to be in growing confrontation. And this is seen most sharply in the world's most developed nation.

Last year the U.S. Union of Concerned Scientists issued two reports accusing the Bush administration of distorting scientific fact in pursuit of policies on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weapons.

His re-election prompted the scientific community to forecast increasing difficulties in this relationship. Likely areas of conflict are science education, climate change, stem-cell research, and renewable resources.

Why should this be? After all, US funding for the sciences grew significantly during the first Bush administration.

In part it is politics as usual. But a deeper cause is a more fundamental conflict about the constitutional principle of separation of church and state in an increasingly religious nation.

Many in the wider intellectual community see the deepening right-wing social revolution in the US as symptomatic of the growing influence of the religious right which challenges values which have shaped the intellectual landscape of the West since the Enlightenment.

These challenges find parallels in the developing fundamentalist impulse among other world religions and are further strengthened by post-modernist arguments presenting science and religion as belief systems of equal value.

At the heart of all this is a challenge to the scientific world view and its philosophical corollaries.

In the "Critique of Pure Reason" Kant offered seemingly conclusive refutations to both the ontological and cosmological arguments for the existence of God. Darwin meanwhile seemed to have nailed the lid on the "woefully anthropomorphic nature" of intelligent design in the natural realm.

In the 19th century the poet Matthew Arnold wrote in "Dover Beach" of the "melancholy long withdrawing roar …of the sea of faith". But where Nietszche once heralded the death of God and 20th century neuroscientists expected advancing brain science to bring about the parallel demise of the notion of the soul, that sea of faith is now in full flood again.

The post-Enlightenment world proved that, where faith and science can co-exist, the gains to humanity are immense. It led to a modern world shaped by a constantly evolving technology with, in the West, an intellectual climate where human inquiry could move forward within a moral and ethical framework increasingly unhampered by the constricts of religious power.

This decline of faith left a vacuum filled to some extent by the utopian visions of socialism which, in its fullest efflorescence, enslaved or perverted intellectual enquiry for political ends.

Where faith had offered moral structures and meaning and, especially, answers to eschatological questions, the new ideas of scientific socialist focused on the apparent realities of living in "this world". The absence of a deity was increasingly taken as a given.

Now the collapse of these 20th century utopian ambitions has seen the resurgence of values thought anachronistic - fervent nationalism and the reassertion of religious ideas as a way of explaining our lives.

But some things are irreversible. Technology has both created and revealed a world of increasing interconnectedness. The tsunami at Christmas symbolised this with tragic force. It revealed both the strengths and shortcomings of science, faith and politics.

Scientists can explain the mechanics of the Tsunami and explore ways of limiting the future impact of such events. And politicians know how to react in practical terms.

But it was left to spiritual leaders to help us all to make sense of the tragedy. But, with scientists and politicians, they too failed to answer the question asked by so many: Why?

When human agencies are the catalysts of the unspeakable - the Holocaust, 9/11 or Beslan - notions of evil are evoked. But religions fall mute in explaining natural catastrophes.

Most united in calls to look forward. The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams said that terrible events like this will shake faith, but Christians must focus on a passionate engagement with the lives that are left.

Britain's Chief Rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, said asking why was pointless and that Judaism's priority was to inquire: "What should I do? How can I help?" He added: " We must put our efforts into saving life. We believe God needs our help to help those who suffer."

A leading British Hindu said it was a reminder that we exist to serve the world, not vice versa. "To blame God is infantile. It is about accepting personal responsibility and the truth which is that you are not the centre of the universe."

So how are the fundamental questions about who we are, why we exist and what things mean to be answered? Take for instance this question of almost childish simplicity. "Why is there something instead of nothing?"

The follow-up question is probably: "What is the purpose and meaning of creation?" The scientific community has no answers. Religion, in marked contrast, offers a seemingly simple explanation. "Because of God."

The argument flows into the realm of philosophy. The German thinker Friedrich Schelling asked: " Has creation a final purpose at all and if so why is it not attained immediately? Why does perfection not exist from the very beginning."

It reveals the deep gulf between those who seek to understand the nature and workings of our universe via scientific method and in humanist philosophical terms and those who believe the truth stands revealed already through the major religions.

Science abounds in theories about how our universe came to exist. But not why. Although the Big Bang is evidentially established, what preceded it? Science is seeking answers - a theory of everything with no loose ends. But it is an elusive and some say unattainable goal.

The cosmologist Stephen Hawking concluded in his best-selling book "A Brief History of Time" that if we succeed: "We shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would the ultimate triumph of human science - for then we would know the mind of God."

Since he wrote that 18 years ago, theoretical physics has moved into increasingly speculative areas with such ideas as string theory, dark matter and parallel universes. All require leaps of faith as large as that required by those who see the truth is revealed in holy text.

Novelist Salman Rushdie recently defined us as meaning-seeking organisms with a "God shaped hole" yearning to be filled. It is little wonder in the face of such bewildering scientific theories and a world of increasingly intractable difficulty that much of humanity has returned to the affirmations of faith.

But since disengagement with science is no longer an option, the troops of faith have entered a new redoubt of explanation - armed with ideas about intelligent design and the anthropic principle.

So can there then be a harmonious co-existence between resurgent faith and science as scientists enter the 'sacred realm" of experimenting with life itself. Stem cell research, cloning, genetic manipulation and chemical modification of behaviour bring religious and scientific imperatives into confrontation.

But there is another area where it is perhaps more crucial that such conflict be resolved. In a forthcoming book scientist Jared Diamond explores why societies collapse. He concludes that it is usually where tradition and ritual, cultural or religious, are allowed precedence over intelligent application of scientific knowledge.

Clear parallels can be drawn between the fate of vanished peoples like the Anasazi or the inhabitants of Easter Island with our now globalised culture. Are we the crown of creation, made in God's image, or a part of nature, a contingent species, that could be snuffed out by our own ignorance if we turn away from the accumulating evidence about the fragility of our sustaining ecosystem.

The Tsunami was not a man-made disaster but the mounting evidence suggests we are moving towards one that could be irreversibly catastrophic . The arguments now forming are between continuing our odyssey of seeking to understand via scientific inquiry or turning back to the comfort of faith. The challenge is achieving a compromise for our crowded and perilous times.

Ideas that can change the world - brochure

“If scientists could prove we are all related,
would that stop wars? “
Katie aged nine

Original ideas can come from all kinds of places.

Young people often have the best ideas of all.

They see solutions where others see only problems and imagine ways to make our troubled world a better place.

They might be ideas about confronting environmental problems, of making businesses benefit everyone or ways of making their homes, schools, neighbourhoods and the wider world a better place.

In short, ideas that might change the way we all live.

But most have no way to see if their ideas can really make a difference.

Until now.

IDEAS THAT CAN CHANGE THE WORLD is a project in schools across England that will tap into the fresh and exciting ideas of young people and help the best of them become reality.

It will give the young people access to the knowledge and tools that can make their ideas happen.

Its aim is to connect these bright young people with the industries, policy makers and planners that can turn their ideas into reality.

It is being run by Creative Partnerships and will launch in schools across Britain in 2007. The young people taking part will come from areas of significant economic deprivation. Young people have chosen five key themes for the programme:

• Compassion
• Environment
• Money
• Technology
• The Impossible Dream (blue sky thinking)

How will it work?

Businesses, policy makers and planners have the expertise and knowledge that young people in schools need to help them develop their ideas.

Young people in Creative Partnership areas will work with their teachers to submit ideas.

Then a panel of young people and experts will then choose the ideas that can be developed into projects. Businesses and experts will be identified to help.

The experts will come many different fields: artists, scientists, designers, engineers, industry experts, philosophers, writers and more. They’ll engage in dialogue with the young innovators to discuss the ideas and develop them.

Organisations who take part will give the young people access to the most cutting edge thinking, processes, and materials.

By creating these forums for the discussion and development of ideas, IDEAS THAT CAN CHANGE THE WORLD will support schools to embrace innovation and enterprise.

Who will benefit

Business and organisations will be associated with a dynamic nationwide creative project. Their partnership may produce ideas that will benefit them and the world. They’ll be nurturing the future and working with schools in a collaborative and unique way. Scientists, designers and engineers will gain a fresh perspective by working with young people.

Teachers will work creatively and strategically with local, national and global businesses. By working in partnership with entrepreneurs, businesses, designer and scientists, teachers will have the opportunity to develop new and exciting content for their lessons. New partnerships between business and schools will give teachers from different disciplines opportunities to collaborate across the curriculum.

Young people will have a unique opportunity to work alongside forward thinking external partners and experts. They will develop their thinking and increase their understanding of current developments in science, technology and engineering. They will learn about finance and intellectual property. Young people will work in teams and understand the processes required to turn ideas into reality. Ideas that can change the world will promote global awareness amongst young people and give them the knowledge they need to better understand global issues

Happiness

Happiness – Times Education Supplement June 2006

Adults have an annoying habit of telling young people that childhood was the happiest time of their lives - and enjoining them to take advantage of this fleeting era of well-being. We can forget the heartaches and the thousand natural shocks that childhood and adolescence are heir to - the sheer awfulness of bullying, adolescent relationships, rivalries and acne, and the misery that some can feel at school.

The more realistic among us do recognise the challenges of childhood and the new difficulties faced by today's young. As Sue Palmer puts it in her new book Toxic Childhood: "In a global culture whose citizens are wealthier, healthier and more privileged than ever before, children grow unhappier each year."

So do the grown-ups. A BBC poll found that the proportion saying they are "very happy" has fallen from 52 per cent in 1957 to just 36 per cent today.

There is a growing revival of interest in the idea that adulthood could be made easier if we can find ways of making schooldays genuinely happier - by educating young people to be happy.

Nel Noddings, the influential American educationist, has this to say:
"Happiness and education are, properly, intimately connected. Happiness should be an aim of education,and a good education should contribute significantly to personal and collective happiness."

Everyone is surfing the happiness zeitgeist. David Cameron has announced that promoting happiness will be part of Conservative party policy. He said: "It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP but on GWB - General Well-being."

Labour shares the vision. Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell says progressive politics has to make room for "fun, laughter and play".

Both were perhaps influenced by the arguments of such academics as Richard Layard, founder-director of the LSE Centre for Economic Performance, who called for a "happiness-based public policy" in his recent book Happiness: Lessons from a new science.

And so educationists are thinking harder about how to make schools happier places and to educate young people in ways to achieve this most elusive emotion.

One leading independent school has put happiness on the curriculum. Anthony Seldon, new head of Wellington college, says: "Helping to produce happy young adults when they leave the school at 18 is my highest priority as head. I have been saying this for 10 years, but only in the past year have I begun to realise this isn't just an airy-fairy aspiration, but that one can in fact learn happiness in classes."

The Wellington lessons are devised by a former forensic psychologist, Nick Baylis, founder of Cambridge university's Well-being Institute, and are aimed at improving their pupils' chances of leading a fulfilling life. At first there will be one 40-minute lesson per week for pupils aged 14 to 16, teaching the skills of how to manage relationships, physical and mental health, negative emotions and how to achieve one's ambitions. A-level students at the boarding school in Crowthorne, Berkshire, will also attend happiness seminars.

Professor Noddings says one reason she wrote her book Happiness and Education "is to counteract a narrow emphasis on test scores - we have really made schools quite grim places.

"We put such a tremendous emphasis on academic achievement for economic success and children take this to be the meaning of happiness and there is no discussion of all these other wonderful sources of happiness.
"What I'm talking about really is quite a strong intellectual programme that helps kids to understand there are many strong sources of happiness - home is a source, so is love of place, relationships, parenting, character, spirituality and finding congenial work."

But the idea of putting happiness on the curriculum also attracts criticism. Katie Ivens, vice chair of the Campaign for Real Education, says: "The duty of a school is to enable children to achieve. That is the contribution that schools are going to make to the children's happiness as children, and also to happiness in their future lives, and if schools don't focus on this, children will become aimless and lack self respect."

Can we actually teach happiness anyway? Understanding it is challenging enough. It has been a theme of philosophical inquiry for millennia.

As one sage reflected: "The search for happiness is one of the main sources of unhappiness in the world."
Most parents when asked what they want from school, say they want their children to be happy. And all around us our culture proclaims short cuts to that end.

Spiritual gurus beguile and neuroscience has found it a subject fit for study. Positive Psychology, a class whose content resembles that of many a self-help book but is grounded in serious psychological research, is now the most popular subject at Harvard university.

The godfather of such studies is American psychologist Martin Seligman, who found that one key to happiness is good friendships. Some London 10-year-olds interviewed recently by the BBC confirmed this, agreeing that they were at their happiest when "with their friends".

They said that schools could help them understand the meaning of happiness - though they could not create it.
However the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham had ideas about how happiness could be fostered in the young. This is the advice he offered the daughter of a friend:

"Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul."

Book review - The Miracles of Exodus

Book Review - The Miracles of Exodus

Among scientists, physicists have a peculiar propensity for finding God. Perhaps it is because many deal with the most fundamental things of all that they find room – down there beyond the quarks, strangeness and charm - for a deity whose existence is otherwise looking increasingly improbable in our age of science and reason.

Colin J. Humphreys is one such scientist – a renowned Cambridge physicist who has devoted much of his non-professional energy in recent years to probing the Bible in the light of science.

His magnum opus in this area, "The Miracles of Exodus", takes on a foundation narrative of the West to discover how much can be verified as history rather than myth and then to find a scientific basis for the miracles of this journey.

Books which uncover the historical facts behind figures such as King Arthur, Robin Hood or Cleopatra often make cracking yarns and can also offer valuable contributions to scholarship.

But Humphreys is playing a bigger game. If the events of Exodus – from the flight from Egypt to the handing down of the 10 commandments – can be given a hard historical and scientific foundation then some profound questions are raised.

Humphreys, who is also the Chairman of Christians in Science for the United Kingdom, sets out to answer five key questions about the Exodus narrative: Is the story coherent and consistent; Is it factually accurate; Can we understand the miracles; Has the text been misinterpreted and can we reconstruct the Exodus route and find the true Mount Sinai?

His journey to a resoundingly positive answer to all of these questions is lengthy and argued with close attention to the Biblical text. Yet it is also curiously idiosyncratic and rather folksy. We wander adrift at times in the desert of irrelevancy.

Much of what he offers is still built on shifting sand – secondary sources and leaps of faith - but his key conclusions include a revised date for the events and the conclusion that Mount Bedr in the north of the present state of Saudi Arabia is the real Mount Sinai.

The pillar of cloud (by day) and fire (by night) that led the Israelites on was – he argues – a distant volcanic plume. The ten plagues of Egypt are also quite plausibly explained but he offers an extraordinary argument to explain the crossing of the Red Sea and the inundation of the pursuing Egyptian Army. This was a remarkable combination of wind set down and a bore wave.

How important is it to verify the accuracy of the Exodus story – the escape of the Israelites from captivity in Egypt and the miraculous events that help them to overcome all barriers? On the political level a reliable roadmap for those ancient events would have some obvious contemporary ramifications.

Humphreys believes he has established the historical truth of Exodus, that its miracles can be scientifically explained and that we can therefore take this part of the Bible as literal truth. But what of the divine cause? He concludes: "When a whole sequence of events happens at just the right moment, then it is either incredibly lucky chance or is there is a God who works in, with and through natural events to guide the affairs of destinies and nations…Chance or God? I'm not going to answer that question for you."

But his own answer is pretty clear… that this congeries of miracles is evidence of God as an intelligent designer – working through science.

Why is it necessary to try to find scientific explanations for the behaviour of a God who elsewhere acts in ways that can only be understood if we simply swallow his omnipotence? Believers "know" the Exodus story is true anyway… but I suspect others will remain unpersuaded. Are we meant now to pick and mix history from metaphor, science from myth.There is surely no scientific way to verify Noah's flood, the Adam and Eve story or the transformation of water to wine by Jesus at a wedding feast.

For his next act perhaps Professor Humphreys will present us with scientific evidence for the reality of angels?

"The Miracles of Exodus" by Colin J. Humphreys (Continuum Press ISBN 0-8264-6952-3 (HB)

Book Review - The Big Game

Review of The Big Game - published TES

How many young people will vote in next month’s general election? In 2001 their turnout was the lowest since 1918 and many politicians and pundits worry it will be worse this time.

But young people DO vote. When it comes to “Reality TV” they’re avid participants. Thousands clamour to appear and millions vote to expel inmates from the Big Brother house, to choose which celebrity to rescue from the jungle or to decide who should become a pop idol.

In the five British series of Big Brother since it launched in 2000, some eighty million votes have been cast – overwhelmingly from people under 30.

Big Brother, now shown in versions globally, is an astonishing financial success and defines the zeitgeist more than any other contemporary television. Why is it so successful?

The man who brought the show to Britain, Peter Bazalgette, chairman of Endemol UK, offers some answers in a fascinating book detailing the business story behind the show and examining its wider cultural implications.

A couple of years ago UK academics studied its success to see what lessons it offered to lure a “lost” generation back into politics. They found it most popular among young women from poorer socio-economic groups who felt empowered by seeing a swift and direct result from voting - in marked contrast to real democracy,

Stephen Coleman, Professor of e-democracy at Oxford, says “authenticity” was the overriding message with fans contrasting the honesty of the “housemates” with politicians who they considered “unreal, opaque and devious.”

But empowerment doesn’t automatically spring to mind when considering the impact of Big Brother. It makes millions for its Dutch creators Endemol –from global sales and from young viewers who telephone premium lines to vote.

But isn’t such voting really a form of virtual reality giving the illusion of influence? And the programme participants, so avidly tracked by millions while “housemates” generally vanish into obscurity after a transient twilight of temporary celebrity.

Critics are almost universal in condemning the show. Former US President Bill Clinton said: “These people (the participants) are prostituting themselves to media conglomerates.” Novelist Salman Rushdie wrote: “Who needs talent when the unashamed self-display of the talentless is on offer” and professional critics dismissed it variously as “gross, ghastly, inane, cynical, sad, dissipated, desperate, seedy, voyeuristic, creepy, phony”

Bazalgette says these ”ritual denunciations” come from: ”Mostly middle aged men who has been brought up to abhor displays of emotion and who didn’t understand this new, media savvy generation.”

Big Brother has made its creator John de Mol one of Europe’s wealthiest men and rich rewards may also have helped quell Bazalgette’s earlier doubts about the show. In 1998 after his company merged with Endemol he warned Big Brother was: “Far too cruel, and wilfully so, for the British market.”

Now Big Brother is in the cultural mainstream and the wisdom is that, if you’re under 30 – and especially female – then you may well love it. But if you’re a middle-aged male then you may hate it and probably don’t get it - just like Bob Dylan’s Mr Jones who never had a chance of understanding the youth revolution of the 1960s.

Bazalgette often draws cultural parallels with this youth culture. Older critics denounced Elvis Presley in the 1950s and, “from that point on successful innovations in entertainment went through a cycle, appealing to the emerging generation and appalling their elders. The disgust of the latter ensured success with the former”

Tim Gardam, the Channel Four executive who first commissioned Big Brother says: “In all it’s raunchiness, it revealed the truth of a generation… which was a fundamentally different from generations before. They had no sense of propriety, no sense of modesty, they were open, honest and candid with each other.”

Big Brother is the most vivid example of an increasingly irreverent genre focusing on what Bazalgette’s calls “painfully ordinary people.” It also draws inspiration from internet phenomena such as voyeuristic webcams by merging the desire to watch with a passion to be observed.

But is it the latest manifestation of an on-going youth revolt or merely a cynical commodification of this youthful impulse to rebel against an older order?

Appraising forerunners of reality TV formats Bazalgette revealingly says: “Television was moving towards being less of an art form and more of a commodity. Producers were now having to make programmes less for themselves and more for the audience.”

But those who defined earlier visions for broadcasting, always argued that they too made programmes for audiences though with loftier ideas about who their viewers were.

Bazalgette relates a parallel tale of another even more globally successful format “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”, devised by the British producer Paul Smith. It reveals money to the true motor behind all of this. The defining art at the heart of this new era of television is the deal.

Both shows have helped further homogenise global popular culture with its ongoing obsession with youth. From Rochdale to Rio its rap, trainers and now, reality TV.

Only recently have the convergence of the internet, television and telephony enabled Big Brother’s creators to come up with its unique multi-platform format and to offer this” uniquely media savvy generation” the ability to achieve brief fame. But why do so many young people seek to be so exposed, warts and all?

The contemporary cult of the celebrity says fame without substance is enough. It reflects a new generation’s disenchantment with both the radical idealism and the materialistic obsessions of previous generations and an degree of anxiety about its own longer term prospects.

More prosaically Big Brother may also reflect a de-mystification of the medium for a generation used to domestic digital media, filming and editing and beaming pictures to each other via mobile phones or the web.

Britain enjoying a brief reputation for producing the best television in the world, but now broadcasting is international and Reality TV is at its heart.

s Germaine Greer said before her own brief encounter with Big Brother: “Reality television is not the end of civilisation as we know it. It is civilisation as we know it.”


“Billion Dollar Game” by Peter Bazalgette is published by Time Warner Books at £12.99

The Electric Universe

THE ELECTRIC UNIVERSE - REVIEW FOR THE TES

This review is being written on a computer in a warm and well lit room. A coffee machine keeps me fuelled, a CD plays some music and, shortly, I will e-mail this to a TES editor. My telephone and mobile are to hand should she have any queries.

Imagine a world without any of this - with no understanding of electricity.

There would be almost none of the multitude of machines we take for granted, no mass entertainment or long range communications, no aircraft, nor weapons of mass destruction but also medical science would be virtually medieval.

And most noticeably perhaps, our nights would be dark. Until modern times we lived largely in a world lit only by fire.

Before gas lamps began to glimmer in major Western cities in the early 19th century, all humanity lived under curfew. Only the rich could afford to light their homes with any regularity - even candles were costly - and the night-time domain beyond the shuttered windows and doors was dangerous and, in Shakespeare's phrase, full of "the deeds of darkness."

But the discovery and development of electricity changed all that. The painter James McNeil Whistler captured the wonder of this transformed world when he wrote: "The warehouses are palaces in the night and the whole city hangs in the heavens and fairyland is before us."

American socilologist Marray Melbin likened the transformation wrought bt public lighting to the colonisation of a new world - with humanity now beginning to live fully around the clock and Lenin characterised Communism as "Soviet Government plus the electrification of the whole country."
The profound revoution sparked by by the unlocking of electrical power is detailed in "Electric Universe - How electricity switched on the modern world." by David Bodanis, the writer whose last book, the best selling “E=MC2" offered one of the most accessible routes into understanding Einstein's ideas.

Here he recounts how we came to understand and harness electrcity and begins with two shockingly dark visions. The first is to consider what would happened to our wired world in the event of a global power failure? A rapid descent into chaos. And what would a universe without electricity be like? Simple. It would not exist. Electricity is fundamental to the fabric of reality.

He writes: " The force of electricity is very powerful and has been operating non-stop for more than 15 billion years. But it's also utterly hidden, crammed deep within all rocks and stars and atoms. The force is like two Olympian arm-wrestlers whose struggle is unnoticed because their straining hands barely move. There are almost always equal amounts of positive and negative charges within everything around us - so well balanced that although their effects are everywhere, their existence remains unseen."

There are many genres in popular scientific writing. Some have urgent messages to impart - for example Jared Diamond's recent book "Collapse"; others present new and hugely complicated ideas in accessible ways such as Michio Kaku's forthcoming "Parallel Worlds" and then there are those that take something utterly familiar like salt, cod, the nutmeg or water and reveal the fascinating hidden history and science behind the seemingly mundane.

"Electric Universe" together with Bodanis's earlier books such as his Secret House trilogy, and “E=MC2“ fall into this last group - and he does it better than most. His greatest gift is telling stories with a passion and vibrant energy that makes you thirst to investigate more once his books are done. He used to be a teacher.
If the start of "Electric Universe" is dark, the rest is full of light - even allowing for diversions into the story about the role electricity played in Bomber Harris's "bombing of ethics" in the words of Canon Collins.

The narrative whisks us through a panoply of personalities whose passions and perceptiveness first uncovered the true nature of electricity, saw its potential and went about harnessing it.

Many gave their names to the stuff. The Italian Alessandro Volta for instance whose party trick of putting metal in his mouth to produce a tingling on the tongue was a first portal into understanding the work of electric batteries.

Or the German Heinrich Hertz who, in his tragically brief life, carried out research which paved the way for the discovery of radiowaves.

The achievement of this book is to illuminate an important but surprisingly difficult subject via engaging human stories. Bodanis locates the genesis of some of the greatest discoveries in very basic human emotions - love, grief and greed.

It was the love of a young teacher of the deaf in Boston for one of his students in the 1870s that led to the development of the telephone for example.

Alexander Graham Bell had been intrigued with the mechanics of the human voice since childhood. As a teenager he and his brother carried out various experiments on voice generation, even coaxing the family's long-suffering dog to produce word-like sounds by manipulating its larynx and rewarding it with biscuits.

But then he met Mabel, the love of his life. It was her parents' objections to the match that sent him into overdrive to win their approval. This moving story intertwining intellectual and emotional pursuit led to a scientific breakthrough.

Grief helped shape the creativity of another pioneer, Alan Turing, the English father of computers. At 17 he fell in love with an older boy at school, Christopher Morcom. A shared passion was science. But then Morcom died of TB.

Bodanis writes that Morcom's death seemed to have bred a rage at religion in Turing. "That anger, that belief in cold materialism, was indispensable for the great electrical device that Turing imagined just a few years later. It is hard to conceive of creating an artificial device that duplicates human thinking, if you believe in an immortal soul."

But Turing's grief and later his isolation in an era where his sexuality was still a crime finally led him to suicide. It came on the very brink of the development, in the USA, of the transistor, a device that would have enabled his dream to be realised.

Greed is another engine of discovery. Bodanis offers the wonderful but salutary tale of the first bungled attempts to connect Europe to America by telegraph cables beneath the Atlantic. To this day thousands of miles of useless cabling lie fathoms deep beneath the ocean, lost and useless.

He offers a plethora of other stories about the people who helped bring about the modern electric world. But this book goes further too - for it also has chapters reminding us that it isn't just gadgets and technology that electricity drives.

This strange invisible stuff is also at the heart of how the human machine works - and how the fabric of reality is built.

"Electric Universe' by David Bodanis published by Little, Brown at £14.99 ISBN 0 31686182 0

Cosmogenic Architecture

First Impressions - Bahrain

A short piece published this month (April 2006) in the Gulf Weekly. I was in Bahrain on and off for four months in the autumn and winter of 2005/06 to research and produce two films - "Bahrain - The Roads To Democracy" and "Imagine bahrain". This followied the production in the summer of 2005 of a three one hour series "A Man Of Our Times" for Emirates Media - a documentary series in Arabic about the Life and times of the founder of the UAE Sheikh Zayid bin Sultan al-Nahayan.


Preconceptions are the excess baggage carried by any traveller visiting a place for the first time.

So it was when I first flew to Manama last year on business. I knew something of Islam and the Arabs from working in the Emirates in the summer, but little about Bahrain. So I expected a similar experience.

My first surprise was finding a people with a long history who were as familiar with my world as I was unaware of theirs. I was also struck by the warmth of both the welcome and the weather.

On my first evening in Manama I discovered two enduring delights - sweet melon juice and the intoxicating aroma of Sheesha.

In the ensuing weeks I avidly gathered images of Bahrain by digital camera, but some things can't be so easily captured - the humour of Bahraini people for example or their ease in English, but surprising difficulty with classical Arabic.

Grasping the subtleties beneath the surface of Bahrain is harder and would probably take a lifetime for an outsider.

But a disturbing aspect was Bahrain's drivers. This is a nation speeding in more ways than one. Bahrain's hurtling cars are metaphors for a drive to develop Bahrain, clearly visible in such amazing projects as the Financial Harbour and World Trade Centre.

But it’s a country where speed is also a killer. Nearly every day I saw the grim aftermath of this fascination with supercharged motoring. Hopefully Bahrain's journey into the future will end more happily.

Other enduring impressions are positive. The passionate articulacy of the children we took to film at the Shura; great food in Adliya; the grace and beauty of Bahraini women in their elegant Abayas; the call to prayer resounding over the waters of the Gulf from several mosques and happy families on the corniche at twilight.

Pompidou Centre

Short review of the newly re-opened museum of Modern Art at the Pompidou Centre in Paris


The Pompidou Centre has always been a raffish rogue amid the boulevards of Paris ... a candy coloured clown of a building which still has the power to shock more than 20 years after its invention by the young British architect Richard Rogers and his Italian partner Renzo Piano.

The two architects went over the top with their design - plotting a technicolor irruption among Parisian sobriety - never expecting to see it built. It was and, since then, Paris and millions of visitors have taken this modernist masterpiece to their heart.

It has become the most visited art collection in France... out pacing the labyrinthine Louvre, the coolly elegant Musee D’Orsay and such smaller gems as the Rodin or Picasso Museums.

Now after a brief absence behind mountains of scaffolding the Pompidou centre has been revamped -- with some losses and some gains.

Playfulness has always been the keynote. All those pipes and ducts painted in dayglo colours. The mood remains. Visitors now snake past a giant golden flowerpot on a plinth amid the street entertainers and, to one side, Niki de Saint Phalle’s wonderful water spouting modern sculpture’s intrigue visitors of all ages.

The first thing to say about a visit here is that children and teenagers are in for an even greater delight than it used to offer. The reorganised museum is a better than ever... and free to those under under eighteen. But more of that momentarily.

If you’re over that golden age, then you now have to pay for one terrific treat that used to be free - the view over Paris from the roof of the Pompidou Centre and from the plastic encased escalator ride to the summit.

Now to enjoy all that you must pay to visit the museum... the French National Museum of Modern Art. And to really enjoy the the view you must eat in the excellent if pricey restaurant on the roof.

With an admission price now in place, certain parts of the building remain free. The vast central arena, the children’s centre, design exhibits on the ground floor and the library (thought his would really be of interest only to those fluent in French and prepared to endure the vast crowds who use this resource.)

However the main attractions for teachers, children and school groups has to be the modern art and there is acres of the stuff. Comparisons with London’s hugely popular new behemoth Tate Modern are inevitable.

Fact. The Pompidou’s collection is bigger - the largest in the world actually - and richer than that in Tate Modern. It’s less fun to visit in a way for the curious curatorial jumble at the Tate - disguising the vast gaps in the collection - offers something a mystery tour with its occasionally bewildering juxtapositions.

By contrast the Pompidou’s collection has a chronological flow which makes understanding the story of modern art easier.

So where to start? At the beginning? Well then its a long wearying trek from a bold Rousseau painting that starts the journey of discovery to the playful art objects of our recent fin de siecle.

An innovation, now available at increasing numbers of museums is a hand held audio guide - available in English - which you key to head about selected works. Seeking out numbered works is one route through.

For younger children some of the earlier rooms may be less appealing ... as this offers the journey into abstraction in painting through the world of Picasso and Braque (play spot the difference - it takes a most expert eye) through all the great art movements of the troubled mid 20th century to the abstract expressionists of the middle third of the 20th century and beyond. Delights enroute include Dadaism, surrealism, Pop art, Op art and kinetics.

That’s all on the top floor. It’s more fun when you go downstairs for here are the zesty playful provocations of the last two or three decades - ideas about art exploding in all directions. Marcel Ducamp has much to be respoonsible for. here is his “Fountain” - a urinal.

Here is art you can climb on or in, installations involving whole rooms you can clamber into - Jean Dubuffet’s “Winter Garden” or gawp at in dread - an installation by the surrealist Dorothea Lange where the furniture is mutating onto nightmarish animals and body parts are bursting through the walls., video art and, lots which certainly won’t really stand the test of time.

It isn’t just the much hyped “Young British Artists” (who are thinly represented here) who take japes and jokes as the starting point for their work. There’s plenty here. Profund? It is hard to tell, but there’s a lot of fun to be had in studying art these days.

JOHN LENNON FOR SUNDAY TIMES

John Lennon and the National Curriculum
The Sunday Times
By John Kelleher

Former Beatle John Lennon has made it into Britain's national curriculum as part of history studies for primary school children – 21 years after his death.

His widow Yoko Ono says she is thrilled and that John would have loved the idea – but neither of his two former primary schools in Liverpool have any plans to put the old boy back in the classroom as a topic of study.

The head of Dovedale Junior School, which John attended for six years, says: "There are better role models from the sixties than John Lennon. He did go rather peculiar after The Beatles."

And the history co-ordinator at nearby Mosspits Junior School, which the ex-Beatle attended for six months says: " There are many other important things in Liverpool."

"The Life and Times of John Lennon" has been added to the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority's teaching schemes for Britain's primary school teachers – an option for children aged between nine and eleven.

Yoko Ono told me: " John would have loved the idea. He was always very caring about the future of the human race. So, naturally, being part of the curriculum to inspire the young would have delighted him no end."

The QCA suggest Lennon's life could be a starting point for a discussion of popular culture, social and cultural change and single-issue political activism.

The teaching unit says youngsters can learn about "Aspects of recent history through the study of the life of John Lennon as an example of someone who made a significant impact on popular culture and entertainment and whose life portrays some of the social and cultural changes of the post-war period."

And they suggest classes listen to his song "Imagine" and discuss the lyrics.

Yoko Ono says: "The song 'Imagine', which was sometimes criticised by fellow musicians for being simplistic, was written for the young in mind".

But in another song, "Getting Better" John and Paul sang that: "The teachers who taught me weren't cool." And now it is the turn of Liverpool teachers to be lukewarm about the former Beatle.

Steve Flynn, the headmaster of Dovedale, says the Beatles are already taught as part of a wider look at history but he has no plans to focus on Lennon. "After Sergeant Pepper and all the involvement with drugs The Beatles went off. They tended to reject Liverpool after that and it's only recently that Paul McCartney has been helping here."

Paul was a prime moving force behind the establishment of the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts and thirty undergrads at Liverpool University get grants of £1,200 a year to aid studies, thanks to the John Lennon Memorial Scholarships sent up a decade ago.

At school Lennon was something of a troublemaker. Mr. Flynn says "There used to be a punishment book here and I'm afraid John Lennon appeared in it rather too often. The book has vanished now."

Old school friends confirm Lennon was a troublesome little boy who had a little gang and was always involved in fights, taunting girls and getting up to other misdemeanors such as shoplifting and riding tramcars without paying the fares.

Dovedale in the Liverpool suburb of Wavertree has a complicated relationship to The Beatles. The headmaster Steve Flynn says: "There is a special feeling here. Most of the pupils here know about The Beatles and can sing their songs." It is also a place of pilgrimage for fans because it numbers both Lennon and George Harrison among its old students. Some fans are even allowed to visit their old classrooms to take photographs - providing the headmaster is on hand to keep a wary eye on them.

Earlier this year's its' sister Infants school was boosted by a £30,000 gift from Lennon's widow Yoko Ono when she flew into John Lennon Airport in Liverpool to mark its name change in honour of her husband. The money has gone to create a new playground.

Before going to Dovedale, John was briefly enrolled at Mosspits Lane Junior School also in Wavertree. He was only there for six months – though claims that he was expelled for misbehavior are unconfirmed.

The history co-ordinator at Mosspits, Lesley Rutherford says: "We've not included him in our history curriculum yet because we have a choice between the 20th century and Victorian times –and we're concentrating on the Victorians. But he might well slot into our local history studies some time in the future."

"Children at the school are aware of him – because of parents, or I suppose grandparents by now… and it's hard to avoid him. But we don't want to get carried away."

Lennon is widely honoured at home and abroad - both as a former Beatle and in some cases as a campaigner for peace. Yards from the scene of his murder in New York, a grassy dell on the edge of Central Park, christened Strawberry Fields, has become a poignant place of pilgrimage for Beatle fans of every generation.

And even Serbia has found a place to honour him. A street in its second largest city Novi Sad was recently renamed after the pop star.

The outspoken Cambridge historian David Starkey, presently fronting a TV series on Henry VIII, says he is happy to see Lennon's life on the history curriculum – though with some caveats. "Pop music is very important and the impact of popular music on the 20th century has been very great. If this is a way to look at the broader issues then I welcome it, as long as it does not become merely hagiographic."

And already one teaching resource has been published - by the TES Primary magazine - to steer teachers on how to include the life and times of this rock'n'roller in the classroom alongside such more familiar fare as Shakespeare, Ancient Egypt and "what we know about Jesus."

Presumably Lennon's own thoughts on the Christian saviour – he once remarked that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus - and his more controversial escapades such as stripping naked for the Two Virgins album cover, recording songs in support of the IRA and his self confessed "hundreds of LSD trips" - won't be on the syllabus.

The QCA says that it is important to guide children towards appropriate aspects of his life. They say that drugs, moral issues and unsuitable vocabulary in his own writing might be risky topics.

When John Lennon was at school in the 1950s, history classes were very different. The Liverpool poet Roger McGough, who was a contemporary of John Lennon said: "I think it’s a good idea, though clearly he isn't a particularly good role model in himself, but that isn't the point. This is a way to look at modern history from a wider perspective.

"I think that the way history is taught today is better than when we were at school. There is more of an international context. Back then it was all kings, queens, battles and martyrs. "

But what would the former Beatle have thought of his own inclusion on the school curriculum and his own impact on history?

Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine asked him about the impact of The Beatles in 1971, just after they broke-up. He replied: " I don't know about the history. The people who are in control and in power and the class system and the whole bullshit bourgeois scene is exactly the same except there is a lot of middle-class kids with long hair walking around London in trendy clothes and Kenneth Tynan's making a future out of the word: 'Fuck.' But apart from that, nothing happened except that we all dressed up. The same bastards are in control, the same people are running everything. It's exactly the same. They hyped the kids and the generation."

SRI LANKA

Sri Lanka

The view down from the coach edging up the hillside in Sri Lanka was not for the faint hearted. Through the verdant vegetation were glimpses of a stunning landscape, but below was a fingers' width of crumbling road between us and the prospect of disaster.

It was here, as we made a stop-start ascent into the heart of the island's tea growing uplands, that the two boys first appeared.

Brandishing bouquets of bright blossoms they seemed at first to be simply local people like those who'd greeted us everywhere with waves and warm smiles. But a certain desperation marked them apart.

They were about nine or ten and, as we climbed, they re-appeared after every sharp bend, scrambling up the vertiginous and densely vegetated hillside to outpace our coach. "If we buy flowers from these children it will encourage them when they should be in school, " explained our guide. "If they do not study then they will not be able to work when they are older".

But the fifth or sixth appearance of the truants finally halted us. The passengers, a group of nearly 40 teachers and companions on the first TES sponsored: "Half term Travel Club " trip clamoured to reward their persistence.

Perhaps it was encouraging truancy - something the teachers would hardly countenance back home - but here some more basic impulses were at play. A collection produced a few hundred rupees for their flowers. They might be short on schooling, but not Sri Lankan street smarts.

The children were among a small handful of ordinary Sri Lankan's encountered by the party. They suggested an undercurrent otherwise little felt from the comfortable and conditioned containment of our journey - a tightly planned itinerary offering vivid glimpses of central Sri Lanka's main tourist sights.

We saw scant evidence of the deeper troubles of this nation especially the quiescent ethno-religious conflict between the majority Sinhalese Buddhist population and minority Hindu Tamils. Nearly 20 years of conflict have claimed some 65,000 lives, displaced a million people and driven a tidal wave of Tamil refugees overseas. Is it done with? No one is sure for while roadside gun emplacements are now largely unmanned we weren't taken to the more troubled Tamil dominated northern part of the island.

Our guide Sunil explained this "difficulty" at length during our ride amid the sun drenched tea plantations..

Here a different group of Tamils - imported here from India during the Raj for the backbreaking task of tea picking - live in meagre housing projects known as "the lines " on estates with largely Scottish names. We passed one called Dunsinane.

The complexities of Sri Lankan politics were just one of many learning curves to be had on this zigzag journey - seven days beginning and ending in a tiring and tiresome encounter with Sri Lankan Airlines .

Post mortems are underway to fine tune away the few problems encountered in time for the next trip in spring. Some, like one teacher's close encounter with a leech, mosquito avoidance strategies, the unseasonably wet weather and hot water bottles in one mountain hotel to ward of the chill, will doubtless be warmed over as travellers tales.

But the main complaints of too much time on the bus and too little encountering Sri Lanka in the raw - or enjoying the luxury of our hotel stops - need addressing.

Sri Lanka is about the same size as Ireland, but the slowness of travel makes it seem larger. Its roads are ragged and littered with the ever present hazards of standing cows, sleeping dogs, roadworkers - including women in hard hats and saris - and the ubiquitous motorised tricycle taxis, mostly unlicensed, which offer harum scarum rides through red traffic lights in city and along jostling rural roads.

For this autumn half term week, it was the turn of the teachers to join a classroom on the road for lessons about multiculturalism, politics, the environment, religion and more.

So how much can a group of jet-lagged teachers learn in a few hectic days of cultural and environment sightseeing in what was - for a some - their first taste of a developing Asian nation?

Most enjoyed the expedititon - the handful of veterans of earlier similar trips , newcomers and the few simply along for a holiday. But some experienced culture shock.

One teacher, for instance, sat in the tea room at the Glen Tee plantation expressing dismay at the conditions endured by Tamil workers. Earlier our guide had explained as we passed their homes, eliciting more of the familiar friendly greetings. that: "although they are poor they are not necessarily unhappy."

Perhaps this was due, he surmised, to the intractable reality of the Hindu caste system, though he said this also was a significant source of Sri Lanka's social and political problems. He added, provocatively, that perhaps, Hinduism and the dominance of Buddhism here explained why this part of the world was less developed than the West.

It was a dense schedule. On offer was wonderful food ( fiery Sri Lankan curry for breakfast, lunch and dinner if you were sufficiently bold ); visits to Buddhist treasures including Kandy's Temple of the Tooth and Dambulla with painted and sculptured Buddhas in five astonishing cave temples haunted by monkeys; a trip to an elephant orphanage and to track the beasts in the wild and nature visits at dawn by foot and boat. Other popular highlights were a visits to spice plantation, Kandy's botanical gardens and the astonishing rock fortress of Sigiriya (complete with Ex London Underground spiral staircase to help ascend its rockface) with a finale of a few beach and pool hours, gift shopping and Ayurvedic massages.

So what did the teachers cull from the trip apart from jetlag and bites, sunburns and souvenirs?

Ian, a deputy head of a Leeds secondary school, was exhilarated by much of what he saw and said this and an earlier trip to India had provided him with ample material for several of the RE lessons he has to run back home.

A primary head from a Wiltshire village, on her honeymoon, gathered enough material for six weeks of literacy lessons and her husband, a classroom assistant, promised that the sarong he'd acquired - worn by many Sri Lankan men - would soon be worn to school (though not, he admitted, to his local pub).

A clutch of primary teachers learnt the skills of slipping into saris - and promised to host into assemblies back home in the distinctive Sri Lankan version of the elegant Asian gown.

So by now anecdotes and images of exotic flora and fauna, of elephants bathing in the river, of Buddhist temples will and the strange otherness of this nation, have made their appearance in classrooms across Britain. The ongoing and deeper lessons derived from this trip will continue to unfold.

HENRY MOORE IN CHINA
THE TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION SUPPLEMENT

It’s a willow pattern picture with a twist. Dawn in a Beijing park with mist drifting from a lake. Beneath a drapery of trees, shadowy figures perform the lithe balletics of Tai Chi.

This familiar scene is repeated across the Chinese capital this autumn morning. But here in Behai Park - once the setting for the palace where Kublai Khan greeted Marco Polo - the ritual is performed before an exotic addition to the landscape: a giant bronze by the British artist Henry Moore.

It is one of twelve placed at key points around the park - their soft curves offering stark contrast to the ornate angularity of pavilion and temple roofs.

They are the advance guard of the biggest exhibition of British art ever mounted in China. From late October to spring 2001, 118 of Moore’s works will be seen first in Beijing, then Guangzhou and Shanghai.

The event has already excited the intelligensia of Beijing. Professor Jin Shang Yi, Principal of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, said: “This is the most important exhibition of Western Art in China since the foundation of the people’s republic in 1949.”

One of his vice principals, Professor Wang Hong Jian, an art historian, has travelled to Britain three times to see Moore’s work. When we meet at the crumbling old campus of the college in a Beijing neighbourhood well away from the tourist orbit, he clutches a photo album showing pictures of his 1982 trip to Britain when he visited Moore’s old home at Perry Green near Much Hadham in Hertfordshire.

After these visits, he wrote widely about Moore’s work for Chinese readers. He believes it will strike profound chords among ordinary people, for he sees echoes of classical Chinese landscape art in Moore’s forms. “In China you will see many garden stones called Taihu Lake Stones... stones with many holes in them, and I think we can compare his work to these stones. I think that lots of ordinary Chinese people will accept his work.”

Professor Qian Shaowu, is former head of sculpture at the Academy and one of China’s most successful sculptors. His monumental work is scattered across China - vast granite works like sets from sword and sorcery films commemorating heroes from every era of Chinese history.

He studied socialist realist art in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and this still influences his sculpture, contrasting sharply with his delicate watercolour paintings and calligraphy. Though now retired from teaching, he still works with students at the academy and is currently completing a figure of an imperial general, Guan Jian Pei. A clay model fills his little studio in a Beijing suburb.

He says Moore’s work has influenced him and that the forthcoming exhibitions will prove powerful for people who’ve never seen such sculpture.




“The most fruitful thing about studying Henry Moore’s work will be his spirituality. He has opened the window to other perspectives, other ways of seeing. We have been socialist realists, but he has been very liberating.”

The early verdicts of ordinary Chinese happening upon Moore’s work in Behai Park were more mixed. The works are sited around a lake crowded with Chinese families navigating pedalo boats or riding large dragon-headed pleasure cruisers past delicate arching bridges. A white Buddhist dagoba tower dominates the scene rising from an islet hilltop like a giant plunger.

“This does not belong here. It is wrong. It destroys Chinese harmony”, ventures an old gentlemen in a weather-beaten workers’ cap who leans forward in his Nike trainers to prod his cane at Moore’s: “Large Spindle Piece .“

Whether its Feng Shui is wrong, or he sees it as disrupting the important divine order of Chinese landscape and architecture is unclear. Linguistic limitations prevent deeper discussions. “I do not like it” he mutters as he wanders on.

The object of his disdain had been sited between two lions in a temple gateway. Across the water another bronze provokes puzzlement and delight. “ Is this art?” asks one young man. Another ventures: “ Is this impressionism?”

But one group of students pauses in delight. “Henry Moore! I have seen him in America. I never knew he would be here” says one. Another adds “I do not know this artist, but his design is beautiful. Like water flowing ”

By the park’s main entrance a larger sculpture, “Three Piece Reclining Figure”, is already a novel backdrop for a steady cavalcade of wedding photographers and family snappers. Local children encounter it in now traditional fashion - by clambering on it. The reclining figure has travelled all the way from the more sedate setting of the meadows of Perry Green where sheep graze alongside Moore’s old studios.

Perry Green is now the powerhouse of the Moore industry. From here the Henry Moore Foundation operates as custodians of his reputation and distributors of his posthumous financial largesse (It is said by many to be more generous in funding young British artists and students than the Arts Council). It manages the regular global showing of Moore’s work and co-ordinated this enterprise with the British Council.

Even as the Beijing show was being assembled, another was ending in Greece and in the spring another will be staged in Texas. Moving Moore’s work around the globe - and keeping it in shape - is a full time job.

In the West Moore’s work has become part of the mainstream, long defused of any power to shock. But Western art is little known to the Chinese public. Shows of French landscape painting and of Rodin sculpture have attracted crowds in recent years. And more controversially the paintings - and persons - of Gilbert and George trailblazed the Moore exhibition path in the early 1990s.

But this Western art has been a sideshow in a city otherwise working day and night to put on the accoutrements of the 21st century. Workers bulldoze entire old neighbourhoods, sweeping away narrow Hutongs, or lanes, to make way for the shiny edifices of globalised capitalism. Cars and coaches edge through jams along four lane highways in Beijing’s heart, flanked by shoals of bicycles while rickshaws weave through the melee.

One has a tottering tower of caged chickens, another is laden with computer keyboards.

Beijing is a lurid swirl of ancient and modern, overseen by an authoritarianism which is now largely exorcised of the idealistic dreams of Communism. Money not Maoism is the modern dynamo. Though the Chairman’s portrait still gazes across Tiananmen Square, it now faces the golden arches of McDonalds in the night. Souvenir stalls tout cheap Maorabilia to tourists from the provinces as smart young Beijingers in Gucci or Armani crowd into internet cafes and muiti-storied malls. A Starbucks logo adorns the facade of a teahouse in the Forbidden City.

This latest Eastern embrace of corporatism demands art to complete its replication of the West. In Beijing western style sculpture graces the public spaces of new office spires. In the newly minted Cosco tower, for instance, a large piece by one of Moore’s former assistants, British sculptor Richard Deacon, now dominates the steel and glass atrium, fabricated and installed by local workers under Deacon’s eye.

But as with Maoism, this modernisation is a layer which will be transmuted and shaped by the forces of an ingrained and ancient culture. Behind the facade of commerce the old China continues, its order and the outdoor energy of the Hutongs undimmed by the latest coil of a century of succeeding revolutions.


What this nation will make of Moore is an exciting question as yet unanswered. Orientalism has long intrigued and influenced Western artists, but any occidental impact on Chinese art has been little seen abroad beyond the dramatic iconography of revolution. Now western inspired design is pervasive in advertising, shops and on television.

Work by young Chinese artists will be coming to Europe next year - presently slated for showing in Austria, Paris and Germany. No British venue has yet been agreed. Mr Dong Junxin, the Head of China’s bureau of external cultural relations, says he hopes that we too will decide to take the show which the authorities believe will as important to East-West relations as the Moore exhibitions.

With that new mood stirring, why was Moore - whose greatest impact lies nearly half a century ago - taken to China, rather rather than something more cutting edge, perhaps work by a British controversialist such as Damien Hirst or Cornelia Parker?

Maria Day, who is coordinating the show for the British Council from the British Embassy in Beijing, says: “ I just don’t think the new Young British Artists would work here. They simply would not be understood at all.”

This opinion is echoed by Professor Qian: “I think Chinese people will understand Henry Moore better than later abstract or conceptual work.... his use of natural forms. With conceptual artists the ideas that they are expressing, their criticisms... I don’t really understand this.”

At least Moore’s pedigree seems apt for showing in the People’s Republic. Born in Yorkshire, the son of a miner, Henry Moore retained his working class credentials, even as his work became globally famous and he was garlanded with prizes and academic titles.

Henry Moore’s work crystallises a mid 20th century vision of art and is long established as peerless among his British contemporaries. Examples of his work can be seen across the world, but not, until now, anywhere in China except Hong Kong.

Henry Moore died in 1986 - a decade after Chairman Mao. What Mao would have made of this show is anyone’s guess, but what about Moore? David Mitchinson, Head of Collections and Exhibitions for the Foundation, says:
“Moore’s appeal was across all cultures and ethnicities. It has universality and a humanity that speaks to everyone, He wanted to dignify man. That was the key motive in his work.”

LIVERPOOL AND CULTURE

published in 2004

When the American pop singer Bruce Chanel performed in Liverpool in 1962 he says that he found it: " biblically bleak with the waves hitting up against the sea wall. It was a melancholy and lonely place."

Yet just five years later another visiting American, the beat poet Allen Ginsburg, described it as: "The centre of consciousness of the human universe."

Clearly a lot changed in the interim and one key were Chanel's supporting act … a local band called The Beatles.

John, Paul George and Ringo delivered their hometown to the world … and the world has been coming back ever since. The Beatles are written into the legend of the city and the cultural history of the 20th century. The city's airport is named after John Lennon and he is in the National Curriculum, their childhood homes are National Trust properties and McCartney is a Knight of the realm.

But Liverpool 2004 has a lorra lorra other stuff happening and is very different from the place that nurtured the group. It is profoundly changed from the town described by the earliest English antiquary John Leland who, when he toured Britain in the 1530s. wrote: "Lyrpole or Lyverpoole… a pavid towne." Even in the 19th century it was described as being : "Deficient in essentials to embellish the historic page."

Fast forward to 2004 when it has just been named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and is a month into its third Biennial arts festival - now the UK's largest event showcasing contemporary visual artists.

In 2007 it will celebrate the 800th anniversary of its founding charter and, the following year it will be European City of Culture, likely to create thousands of jobs and draw billions in investment. One leading estate recently dubbed it "the new Barcelona".

And the Year of Culture decision prompted Liverpool City Council leader Mike Storey to proclaim: "This is like Liverpool winning the Champion's league, Everton winning the double and The Beatles reforming all on the same day - and Stephen Spielberg coming to the city to make a Hollywood blockbuster about it."

Such a film would be an epic and at its heart would be the sea. It would trace Liverpool's modest origins as Hather-polr - a Norse settlement in the 8th century through the granting of its royal charter by King John in 1207 when he foresaw its potential as a port.

The short sea journey to Ireland made it a staging post for St Patrick and saw hundreds of thousands of Irish settle in the city fleeing famine. Thousands of hopeful emigrants departed here for America. And later it was the conduit that brought American R'n'B records into the country - via the crew of Cunard Line ships - to help fuel the Mersey Sound.

But crucially maritime business also made the city wealthy, most disgracefully through slavery. By 1795 Liverpool controlled more than 80 percent of Brtain's slave trade.

It is a dark history now acknowledged in the city's museums and schools, but it also helps ensure Liverpool should never become a mere colourful northern outcrop of theme-park Britain. It's got too many shadows , too much pride and and its traditionally brutal humour.

Liverpool was never a gentle city and it still makes self deprecating jokes about its once notorious reputation. "Why does the Mersey run through Liverpool?", goes one. "Because if it walked it'd get robbed."

However visitors arriving by train now see a sign proclaiming it the safest city in Britain. So how did it change?

The starting point was the 1960s. Liverpool's music put it in the vanguard of a cultural revolution that, over succeeding decades, has widely levelled categories of high and low culture in place of today's pervasive popular culture. It helped challenge the cultural dominance of London with a decentralisation and democratisation of culture that is now global.

The Liverpool poet Roger McGough said of his hometown then that it was: "like the cowboy frontier " and fellow scouse versifier Adrian Henri added that: "The Beatles were the first cultural phenomenon of any kind who made it outside London first."

But other Liverpool creative figures also played a key role in this process of cultural change. It has always bred talent but perhaps most importantly after music, are its humorists and writers - the Liverpool poets, for instance who helped empower a whole generation to venture into verse, and dramatists such as Willy Russell and Alan Bleasdale.

Its no accident perhaps that the first and defining British cop series Z Cars, was set in the mean streets of Merseyside. Alan Bleasdale's offered grittiness and wit a'plenty in drama such as The Boys from The Black Stuff and GBH and three of the most successful long running soaps, Brookside, Hollyoaks and Grange Hill, were created by Phil Redmond's Mersey TV.

All counterpoint Northernness - in all its varieties - as a badge of "authenticity" in contrast to "effete" southern values. This raw working class past is still refracted through Liverpool's pride and acerbic wit.

But while booming tourism boosts its economy this a revolution has also benefited native Liverpudlians. Their comspolitan city offers more to enjoy than almost any other comparable conurbation: Britain's second oldest symphony orchestra, nightclubs, art collections like the Walker or Tate Liverpool, theatres and a seemingly endless season of festivals. 2004 has events celebrating art, comedy, Arabic culture, the sea and the long established Beatles Week.

The German born director of Tate Liverpool Christoph Grunenberg says: "Five years ago someone like me might not have come to Liverpool, but its an indication of how swift the change has been in terms of cultural provision."

Last word to city poet Sir Roger McGough. He recently produced a poem with a litany of definitions of Liverpool; "Lippy, Irreverent, Vibrant, Edgy, Racy, Pacy,Obsessive, Off-the-wall, Legendary."

Native Americans

This is a feature on Native Americans that was published last year in Teacher magazine, a section of the Times Education Supplement.


The old Indian boarded the Greyhound bus somewhere in Texas and sat next to me. He seemed somewhat taciturn but I was so excited to encounter my first flesh-and-blood Native American that eventually I managed to strike up a conversation.

He was headed back to his reservation and asked me where I was from. "England," I said. "London."

"I have not heard of that," he replied. "Where is it?" "Europe," I explained, but he hadn't heard of that either.

Clearly he brought no cultural pre-conceptions to our conversation, but my generation had come of age on a diet of a mythical "Wild West " nurtured by endless TV series, Hollywood films and adventure yarns. Our imaginations were crowded with ideas about American Indians and the names of such legendary chiefs as Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull and Geronimo.

The very name Indian is a misnomer gifted to the indigenous peoples of the Americas thanks to the cartographic confusions of Christopher Columbus in 1492, though some argue it may have derived from his delighted description of the Arawak Indians on San Salvador as “a people in God…Una Gente in Dios.”

The Wild West was not the first, nor the last, of the veils of myth through which Native American cultures have been viewed. In turn they were thought to be virtually non-existent, primitives destined to extinction or requiring salvation, and as noble savages. More recently they’ve been seen as repositories of mystical wisdom and as the world's truest environmentalists.

Now, at last, America's Indians are starting to present themselves to the world on their own terms, to stop being defined by victimhood and forge a new place in the modern world

In autumn 2004, the long-awaited National Museum of The American Indian, conceived and curated by Indians, was opened with the biggest gathering of Native Americans ever seen in Washington

The event united Indians from across the Americas - Inuit from the Arctic, Brazilian tribes people, descendants of the Inca, Aztec and the Maya and tribes from to all corners of the USA. A gathering of nations.

The museum's curator, a former Washington attorney and Cheyenne Indian called W. Richard West Jr, smiles at the notion of it being a "National Museum". That is to do with location and funding. Tribal reality transcends national boundaries. As the 19th century Nez Perce tribal leader Chief Joseph put it. "The Creative Power, when he made the Earth, made no marks, no lines of division or separation on it."

The continuing stories of the native Americans are complex and varied. Each tribe is unique but all share areas of common experience. And they embody important lessons for the rest of the world especially for other indigenous communities.

The cataclysm sparked by the arrival of Columbus is a familiar tale, but the story of the American Indian starts some 30,000 years before 1492.

Most Indian creation myths locate their origins in the Americas, but modern science believes that humans arrived from Asia across the Bering Straits 35 millennia ago, then gradually spread throughout the continents, to generate a vast array of different cultures and communities.

In some cases they were hunter gatherers. But elsewhere kindlier climates allowed complex cultures to flourish including many agrarian societies and peoples who built cities, complex states and even empires.

As Europe went through its "dark ages" cities had long since risen across the Americas. Those in Central and South America are the best known. By the year 1,000 Teotihuacán in Mexico was one of the six largest cities in the world and home to some 10,000 people. By the time Cortez arrived the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, was larger than Paris with 250,000 inhabitants. Further south, the Inca realm, overthrown by Pizarro's handful of adventurers, sprawled through the Western seaboard of Latin America from Ecuador to Argentina and was the largest empire in the world.

These awesome places inspired fantasies of still greater fabled realms such as Eldorado in Amazonia or Cibola in the heartland of the US Southwest.

Neither existed, but across the landscape archaeologists continue to uncover evidence everywhere of differering communities including the Anasazi ruins of the US Southwest, mysterious monuments like the Nazca lines in Chile, complex ruins like Cahokia in Illinois and remnants of cities at the edges of the Amazon.

How many people lived there when Columbus landed? The question is one of considerable controversy.

For a long time a modest figure of around 1.5 million across both continents was generally accepted - supporting the belief that, until Columbus, the Americas had been a pristine land scarcely touched by humanity. As recently as 1987 one standard American school textbook said that the story of Europeans in North America was "the story of the creation of civilisation where none existed." It described early America as: "empty of mankind and its works."

But now the developing belief is that the Pre-Columbian Americas were at least as populous as Europe Some scholars argue that there may have been as many as 112 million inhabitants.

Tied to this is the even more controversial issue of what happened to this vast continent full of humanity. Put simply, contact with Europe killed most of them.

When was contact first made? Hopi myths speak of travellers going east to Asia and European legends speak of Greek, Irish and Welsh seafarers visiting America. But the first verifiable contact came in about 1,000 when Vikings met either Inuit or the now extinct Beothuk tribe in Newfoundland.. Norse chronicles called them Scraelings. There is evidence Chinese seafarers may also have visited South America.

But then Europe "discovered' this parallel universe across the ocean and the greatest cultural extinction in history began. Peoples, languages and a wholly different concept of time, of nature and history came close to vanishing.

The Europeans arrived with a multitude of motives - gold, glory and the gospel, then to trade and to colonise. While some values were resisted, other things could not be fought off. Disease arrived with the earliest visitors. a lethal forerunner to settlement.

It is now estimated that in the first 130 years of contact, 95 per cent of the Indians of America died from illnesses to which they had no resistance. Waves of disease - diphtheria, smallpox, typhus, measles and other maladies - scythed through the indigenous American populace. Some came from humans, others from their domesticated animals.

Even as it became clear that the land was far from uninhabited, the notion of the Americas as a "Promised Land' grew. The first Governor of Massachusetts, William Bradford wrote" The good hand of God favoured our beginnings by sweeping away great multitudes of the natives that they might make room for us."

And in 1760 the pamphleteer Daniel Denton wrote: "It hath been generally observed, that where the English come to settle, a Divine Hand makes way for them; by removing or cutting off the Indians, either by wars one with the other, or by some raging mortal disease."

The idea of an empty land had enduring and useful currency. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote. "When America, the Negro countries, the Spice Islands the Cape and so forth were discovered they were, to the Europeans, countries belonging to no-one for they counted the inhabitants as nothing."

By the 19th century North Americans Indians were seen as a major barrier to American lebensraum, the growing idea, that it was America's "manifest destiny", in the word's of journalist John L O'Sullivan, to: "overspread the continent allotted by providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions."

Meanwhile their portrayal as savages without civilisation had become ingrained. In no less a document than the Declaration of Independence one of the complaints laid against the British monarch was that: “He has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants on our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”

And when an early Spanish viceroy in Peru saw the Inca buildings in Cuzco he said that: "Surely this must be the work of the devil. It is not possible that the strength and skill of men could have made it."

The views were in ironic contrast to Europeans' first perceptions. Columbus wrote to the King and Queen of Spain of the Arawaks: "So tractable, so peaceable, are these people that I swear to your Majesties there is not in the world a better nation. They love their neighbours as themselves, and their discourse is ever sweet and gentle, and accompanied with a smile; and though it is true that they are naked, yet their manners are decorous and praiseworthy.”

By the 17th century a new notion of the Indian - as a noble savage - was taking shape. Some enlightenment thinkers saw them as embodying values lost by European civilisation. Philosophers such as Rousseau and Montaigne claimed that civilisation had much to learn from the naked and untutored natural man encountered in the Americas.

Despite this, back in the Americas, the business of destruction continued unabated and was given renewed legitimacy by another intellectual wave in Europe taking shape in the 19th century..

Charles Darwin was an early witness to genocide as Government policy when in 1832 he saw the early stages of the 40 year campaign waged by the Argentine government to eradicate the Indians of the Pampas..

It helped inform his own developing ideas about natural selection. In 1871 in "The Descent of Man" he wrote: " At some future period, not very distant as measured in centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races."

The visionary Anglo-Polish writer Joseph Conrad echoed this mood when a character in "The Rescue" argued: "If the inferior races must perish, it is a gain, a step towards the perfecting of society, which is the aim of progress."

While it is tempting to see these as, in some way pre-figuring such future horrors as the Holocaust, the Gulag and the killing fields of Cambodia, Rwanda and Darfur, such ideas were already defining dealings with the indigenous peoples in most colonial regions of the world.

A popular book about the British Empire published in 1896 declared: "All that the most philanthropic can hope for the native races of America is their gentle diminution, followed by their peaceful extinction. When they cease to be indolent of body and predatory of disposition, life loses its charm for them and there is some little justification in the old frontiersman saying that: 'the only good Indian is a dead Indian'".

And so the saga of how the west was won - and lost - unfolded. The greater firepower and organisation of the white man eventually overwhelmed all resistance. Among those who fought longest and hardest were the American Plains' Indians who had mastered horses and guns, the Seminole in Florida who engaged in jungle guerrilla war and Chile's Aruacanian people.

By the end of overt hostilities only around a quarter of a million North American Indians remained alive. Coercive treaties forced them onto reservations with few civil or political rights and with legal bars on practicing their culture or religion. Their destiny seemed to be of gradual decline or assimilation.

But Indian tenacity and a gradual shift in wider attitudes has seen them regain ground winning civil rights and equality in US society.

So who are they today? Two contrasting events symbolise their fuller entry into the mainstream of American life. In 2002 Astronaut John Herrington, a Chicksaw became the first Indian in space. Last year a Hopi, Lori Ann Piestaw had a grimmer distinction when she was killed in Iraq - the first Native American woman to die in combat for the USA.

But myths are still pervasive. In more recent decades there has been an upsurge in interest in Indian culture and a growing belief that they have access to truths missing from the mainstream of Western culture.

Today Indian science, religion and medicine are embraced as alternatives to dominant practices reflected by the success of such books as Carlos Castaneda's series about the Mexican Indian shaman Don Juan and, more recently, The Celestine Prophecy novels with their pseudo-mystical insights derived from Inca wisdom .

Native Americans are especially seen as proto environmentalists - the tribal forerunners to such currently fashionable ideas as the Gaia principle.

In 1963 Kennedy's interiors secretary Stewart Lee Udall wrote: "During the long Indian tenure, the land remained undefiled save for scars no deeper than the scratches of cornfield clearings or the farming canals of the Hohokam (Indians) in the Arizona Desert."

But the cultural matrix from which Indian ideas about reality sprung remains largely eclipsed by the domination in the discourse of western intellectual structures of thought.

While the Indians of North America have become a far more respected community, the wider picture is more complex.

The Museum in Washington offers snapshots of many communities told in their own way. These includes peoples such as the Kalinago - once known as the Carib and long described as extinct - but actually surviving on the island of Dominica..

And the Iguglingmiut people on Baffin Island who are also working to preserve their Inuit culture. In their schools they teach Quautimajatuqangit, tribal knowledge, and the Inuktitut language alongside the Canadian national curriculum.

But darker narratives also continue. For instance, in Guatemala as recently as the 1980s, some 200,000 Mayans were massacred and 800 villages destroyed at the behest of the dictator General Rios Montt. They were, he said, agents of the devil.

Christian preachers still invade North American communities in search of converts and in Peru a fight is underway to protect uncontacted tribes.

Ten years ago scores of Nahua people in the Camisea region of Peru died after coming into contact with outsiders for the first time. Disease swept through them just as it had centuries before in Northern America. British and American anthropologists are now working with the surviving Nahua to prevent disease ravaging other uncontacted tribes as US-Argentinean companies renew oil exploration.

In 2004 the 2.5 million Indians of the USA were still the nation's poorest community, despite the pockets of prosperity brought by the opening of casinos on some reservations.

Even among the largest and richest tribe, the 180,000 Navajo, whose reservation, the size of France, sprawls across Utah, New Mexico and Arizona, more than half still live below the poverty line. It is forcing them into tough choices.

Some drift from the community and assimilate, but to remain true to their cultures Indians usually must remain on the reservations where there is little work and the corrosive effects of poverty.

But change is in the air. Until recently Native Americans still defined themselves by tribal identity but many now see the value of working together as Indians. This has been strengthened by working with other non-Indian indigenous peoples in the US - Polynesian people in Hawaii and Inuit of Alaska.

Senator Daniel Inouye from Hawaii is one of the prime movers in creating a new narrative for Indians in the US. A few years ago he pledged himself to seeing the first Indian museum, now open, the first Indian national bank, which started trading a couple of years ago and the first Indian university which has yet to be established..

Now he says that before he retires he wants to see the road to ending poverty on the reservations firmly put in place. And that too is beginning.

One of the key figures helping get this underway, Washington Attorney Dan Press was recently involved in complex negotiations to get e US Defence Department contracts assigned to Indians on reservations - the developing nation within the USA - rather than outsourcing the work to cheap labour in other parts of the world. Other such contracts are in the pipeline… designed to bring work to the most economically depressed community in the USA.

The story of the American Indian is far from over and it also has sharp resonances internationally for other tribal and indigenous groups in an increasingly globalised world, but one full of fault lines bequeathed by the aftermath of empire or the resurgence of nationalism.

These groups are as diverse as the Kurds, the Hmong of Laos, the Chechens,. Palestinians and Bedouin, tribal groups across Africa and the astonishing patchwork of ethnicities subsumed by the Han dominated state of modern China. They have lessons to learn from the ongoing experience of the first peoples of the Americas in confronting their own difficulties.

This picure was taken on the Great Wall of China away from the normal section visited by tourists. We travelled there in the late afternoon as a blue light was settling on the distant hills. Yep - sorry for the smug expression but this was such an exciting place to be. And it was free! I was in China for two weeks to make a film about the first major exhibition of Henry Moore's work there. The film "A Never Ending Discovery - Henry Moore In China:" can now be purchased at various Tate Gallery shops.

The author of this blog

This is a picture of me taken in Edinburgh a couple of years ago.

Charles Jencks

A feature on the post modernist thinker and writer Charles Jencks. Published in the Times Higher Educatiion Supplement in the late 1990s.


The new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao is casting long shadows in the twilight of the 20th century. Frank Gehry’s stunning titanium clad structure has already achieved iconic status and been widely hailed as the building of the epoch.

Beyond its beauty is its economic impact on the Basque region. This has given it a persuasive power that may have helped overcome resistance to other equally bold new architectural ventures.

The Post-Modernist theorist and architectural historian Charles Jencks is enraptured by the building too - it features on the covers of both his last and his next book - for its arrival is the first major sign of what he believes is a significant shift in architectural ideas and, perhaps, our world view.

In a recent essay he wrote: “Along with Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum in Berlin and Peter Eisenman’s school of architecture in Cincinnati, it is a building which confirms the new paradigm of what could be called Complexity Architecture or Nonlinear Architecture. It extends ideas which are at the edge of knowledge.”

Jencks thrives at this edge. He was born in New England and educated at Harvard. In 1965 he came to London as a Fulbright scholar and studied architecture, gaining his PhD under Reyner Banham. He has lived here since.

He has spent his career thinking, writing and teaching about architecture and its place in the broader culture.

Increasingly this wider context - perceived through the focus of a detailed understanding of architectural theory and practice - has dominated his work.

As one of the century’s most articulate explainers of architectural Modernism his work led him to become a founder and leading theorist of Post Modernism.

Since 1969 he has produced nearly 30 books on architecture and on Post Modernism including, perhaps, the most lucid manifesto for this still much misunderstood movement - his 1986 book “What Is Post Modernism?” It offers succinct summations: “An intense commitment to pluralism is perhaps the only thing that unites every post-modern movement and also something that marks the tradition as a Western invention, the part of the world where pluralism is most developed.

In architecture it questions: “The hegemony of Modernism; its elitism, reductivism and exclusivism and its anti-city and anti-history stance.
Today I still partly define post modernism as I did in 1978 as double coding - the combination of modern techniques with something else.

“Double coding means elite/popular, accommodating/subversive and new/old.....Post modernism has the essential double meaning: the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence.”

Modernism’s blessings have been mixed. It has created a political landscape crucial to the emergence of a liberalism in which the Post-Modern and pluralist idea of multi-culturalism can take root. Tolerance emerges from this pluralism. So do values.


“Social values are constructed in conflict and if you’re missing this conflict you are going to miss the creativity. That is where Post-Modernism differs because we don’t want to win because we lose if we do! Value emerges from struggle. Thomas Jefferson, for instance, understood that. He wanted the U.S. constitution to guarantee the right of revolution to every generation.”

But equally Jencks is worried by the climate of opinion created by the contemporary dominance of Darwinism and Modernism. He is particularly critical of Stephen Pinker and Richard Dawkins whom he labels authoritarian sociobiologists. “Pinker and several others suggest that genes are extremely determinative of our thoughts, our actions, behaviour - the culture. He and Dawkins convey to readers and the general public a dog-eat-dog survivalist morality and this climate of opinion shapes people’s interactions and I think it lowers culture terrifically. It is entropic in a cultural sense. It means we treat each other as means, not ends. These ideas don’t create concentration camps or third world exploitation, nor the vast exploitation that you get in economically driven societies, but the ideology helps channel those patterns.”

“People like Stephen Jay Gould are very strong on the implications of Darwinism. If you really understand Darwin you don’t just get weeding out. You get mass decimation. You get the killing of nine in ten. Anything has to be killed off for the one in ten to survive. The implications are extremely repressive of us as human beings.”

Alongside such considerations issues such as decoration in architecture may seem slight. But Jencks see connections. He criticises Robert Venturi’s Sainsbury wing to the National Gallery for instance.

“I thought ‘How crazy’ when Venturi put Egyptian columns on the National Gallery- a renaissance building for renaissance art. The guy is barmy and the British should have said: ‘What the hell are you doing Mr Venturi.’ ” The sin, in Jencks view, was a lack of meaning - the use of meaningless symbols in ornamentation. The roots of Jencks’ understanding of the importance of symbolism and meaning go back to his Harvard days - and exposure to ideas seldom encountered by architects.

At Harvard Jencks studied English literature and arrived at ideas still central to his thinking. From the philosopher George Boas he got the theory of multivalence - of many meanings in a work of art.

“Then through Coleridge and I. A. Richards I got the important idea that what really matters in a work of art is imagination as opposed to fancy. Coleridge says fancy puts things together mechanically and adds one thing to another, whereas the synthetic power of the imagination reconstitutes as it fuses parts into each other. There is a real difference between addition or the conjunction of things and their fusion and that difference is creativity and that struck me as a good measure of multivalence. So my early work was from literary criticism trying to formulate what I called a theory of value and in time two ideas came together. One was this theory of multiple meaning being important and the other was creativity by imaginative fusion as opposed to fancy -- and therefore you could distinguish between good and bad literature, good and bad architecture, good and bad anything.”

Jencks, now nearing 60, continues to be furiously creative. He recently visited Chandigarh in India, the Punjab capital planned and built by Le Corbusier. He is now rewriting his landmark work, "Le Corbusier And the Tragic View of Architecture," presenting him as the "architect of the century". In between he lectures regularly and has another book published this month entitled "Ecstatic Architecture".

However while writing and teaching - he has lectured at more than 40 universities around the world - Jencks has had little chance to work as an architect. Houses in New England, California and London plus a scatter of other smaller projects comprise his portfolio.

But over the past decade he has spent a fair bit of time gardening - on a grand scale. His gardens are about the nature of the universe and its underlying creative principles. They’re in the grounds of his late wife Maggie Keswick's family home in Scotland and are still in progress. The largest is the Garden of Cosmic Speculation - a landscape transformed with spirals, fractal patterns, soliton waves, folds, and other metaphorical representations of such non-linear scientific ideas as complexity theory and chaos.

Jencks has often explored his creative ideas in solid form as well as words. Every detail of the interior of his Georgian house on an elegant West London street, for instance, has been reworked into a dense complex of symbols - representing the multiple meanings of time - cosmic and everyday. It is a stunning creation - sadly visible to the public only in his book: “Towards a Symbolic Architecture”.

In the gardens Jencks is exploring the deeper ideas which increasingly dominate his writing - and of which Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum is an early signpost - the concept of Cosmogenesis.

In 1985 Jencks wrote: “Historically we are placed at a point of scepticism - scientists, cosmologists and theologians cannot even begin to agree on the nature of the universe and many recent architects have celebrated relatively trivial subjects.”

It was about this time that Jencks and his wife Maggie Keswick, an expert on Chinese landscapes, began the gardens. The ideas they embody are a response to this crisis - the lack of a shared global philosophy or uniting “metanarrative.”

His most recent book “The Architecture Of The Jumping Universe” is subtitled: “ A polemic: How complexity science is changing architecture and culture”. It addresses this crisis of meaning.

He writes: “Against this background of dissent and decline is an unnoticed growth. A new world-view has started to spring up. For the first time in the West since the 12th century we are beginning to construct an all-encompassing story that could unite people of the globe, a metanarrative of the universe and its creation. This is emerging from contemporary science and cosmology which are again asking deep questions: Where do we come from? Who are we? How do we fit into an evolving world?”

Jencks argues that the present scientific paradigm. is being challenged by new scientific ideas such as complexity theory, fractal geometry, quantum theory and non-linear mathematics. He argues that the standard science and historical theology which view the Universe as developing gradually and deterministically contrast with the post-modern ‘Sciences of complexity’ which:”taken together paint an entity that is more like a dynamic organism than a dead machine.”

He sums up the Cosmogenic view, as: “The idea that the Universe is a single, unfolding self-organising event, something more like an animal than a machine, something radically interconnected and creative, an entity that jumps suddenly to higher levels of organisation and delights us as it does. Complexity Theory, the Gaia hypothesis, Chaos and Quantum theories all point in this direction. We know truths that have been revealed to no other generation and they can give us great hope and strength”.

He argues that the new understanding of reality overturns “the four great enslaving isms of modernity: determinism, mechanism, reductivism and materialism. The new concepts which have replaced them are emergence, self-organisation, evolution by punctuated equilibria and cosmogenesis - creativity as basic in the universe.”

“They refute the nihilistic view, developed because of Modern determinism and materialism, that our place in the Universe is accidental, tangential, absurd and discontinuous with the rest of nature. Rather they show, in Paul Davies’ words that: ‘We are built into the laws of the universe in some fundamental ways.’ Mind, consciousness and sentient creatures with intelligence are not alien to but central to the Cosmogenic process.”

But Jencks is not without critics. The New Yorker writer Brendan Gill reviewing "The Architecture Of The Jumping Universe" likened him to a Shelley grown middle aged, writing love poems to the Cosmos.

And the Sokal hoax and the subsequent book "Intellectual Impostures" by Allan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, while not naming Jencks, offers a pungent critique of the misuse of new science by French Post-Modernist theorists - accusing them of a fundamental failure to understand scientific concepts.

However Jencks' prescience has proved remarkable and, whether a new paradigm is emerging or not, a new architecture is taking shape. Architects as diverse as Frank Gehry, Peter Eisenman, Zaha Hadid, Daniel Libeskind and the engineer Cecil Balmond share common ground in investigating new mathematical and scientific ideas.

“At the end of the day we are seeking another architecture which more accurately reflects the new world view, the truth that we inhabit a self-organising universe, more surprising and open ended than previously imagined. “

“We have lived through a modernist, Darwinian, nihilist period which denied there was value in the universe - that it was all a pathetic fallacy. We were the great accident because we could speak and think and see our own mortality. Yet it all added up to nothing. I think they were wrong. The Universe has meaning.”