The Day the Universe Changed

- Season 1

(1985)

The Ancient Greece based origins of modern Western Civilization's primary value of individuality driven curiosity that drives it to question and explore reality.

Introduction of the knowledge from captured Islamic Spanish libraries transforms the Europe's conception of knowledge and the fact that it can advance.

The introduction of perspective techniques transforms Europe's use of art, architecture, geography and navigation among others with its revolutionary concept of remote positioning.

The introduction of practical mass printing ends Europe's predominate reliance on memory and its related concepts of reality and authority.

The Catholic Counter-Reformation inadvertently sparks the Scientific Revolution that begins to profoundly challenge Europe's concept of the universe and the authority of the Church.

The rise of land enclosure and advances in engineering help transform the West's major economic philosophies.

The advance of modern medicine and public health comes at the cost of the fields becoming depersonalized with their increasing use of statistics and microbiology.

The introduction of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution undermines the concept of divine creation while providing a rationale for both capitalism and communism.

As modern theoretical physics becomes more ambiguous in nature, the Western lay public increasingly confuses advances in engineering with pure science.

James sums up his ideas about the effect of different worldviews on science by showing how different cultures approach it in their own way.