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The Century That Wrote Itself

Adam Nicolson

The Century That Wrote Itself: Episode 2: The Rewritten Universe

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

The Rewritten Universe

Episode 2

Episode 2: The Rewritten Universe

BBC Four - The Century That Wrote Itself, The Rewritten Universe

How the 17th century's writing revolution helped rewrite our vision of the world.

Adam Nicolson explores how the 17th century's writing revolution helped alter our vision of the world and differing attitudes towards the nature of reality.

Adam Nicolson explores the 17th century's contradictory attitudes towards the nature of reality. While a puritan struggled to accept God's will, an early naturalist accepted nothing without testing it first. How did God work? How did the world work? What was our place within it? These questions overflow from the era's diaries and notebooks, famous and unknown alike. Curiouser and curiouser, spreading literacy allowed explosive ideas not just to be recorded but shared, as Adam reveals the texts that rewrote our world.

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Adam Nicolson takes an intimate look at the 17th century's diarists and letter writers.

Author Adam Nicolson takes an intimate look at the 17th century's diarists and letter writers and how they produced the first great age of self-depiction.

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The Century That Wrote Itself

Episode 2: The Rewritten Universe

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