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The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Free Thinking 2017

The Essay: Free Thinking 2017: Episode 1: Monks, Models and Medieval Time

Monks, Models and Medieval Time

Episode 1

Episode 1: Monks, Models and Medieval Time

Free Thinking 2017

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Seb Falk discusses the 14th-century monks who studied astronomy.

New Generation Thinker Seb Falk discusses the 14th-century monks who studied astronomy, wrote treatises and computing tables and designed new instruments.

The ruined priory of Tynemouth nestles on a Northumbrian clifftop, staring out at the fog and foam of the North Sea. In the 14th century it was a proving ground - and occasional prison camp - for monks from the wealthy mother monastery of St Albans. But the monks here didn't just isolate themselves, pray and complain about the food (though they did do those things). They also studied astronomy. Writing treatises, computing tables and designing new instruments, they contemplated the nature of a divinely-wound clockwork universe.

New Generation Thinker Seb Falk from the University of Cambridge brings to life a world where science and religion went hand-in-hand, where monks loved their gadgets, and where a wooden disc, a brass ring and some silk threads were all you needed to model the motions of the stars.

Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

New Generation Thinkers give talks in front of an audience at Free Thinking 2017

Talks given in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead by New Generation Thinkers, for the 2017 Free Thinking festival. The theme is 'the speed of life'

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Episode 1: Monks, Models and Medieval Time

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