Lord Robert Winston: Bad Ideas? An arresting history of our inventions

Lord Robert Winston
Professor of Science and Society & Emeritus Professor of Fertility Studies at Imperial College London

Has science benefited the humankind?
Do inventions have negative effects?

Virtually every major idea that we have had – be it to with farming, living in cities, writing, fire, transport, even medicine – has at least at one level made humankind more vulnerable. This talk explores the dangers human societies may face from our inventiveness.

We are born with the instinct to create and invent. Indeed our ability to do so is what separates we humans from the rest of the animal world. The moment man first converted a stone to a useful tool set him on a relentless path toward greater control and power over his environment. But have our creative ideas always produced desirable results in line with their original good intention? How many ill-effects and dangers have they brought about along the way? And have they really served us well?

From the hand axe to modern nanotechnology and the ability to create life in the laboratory, technology has brought positive changes in our lives, but it also has a downside that we had never predicted at the time and it threatens us now. How do we deal with all these problems that we create ourselves? Get ready to be surprised….

To attend this talk a ticket purchase is required.

Prof. Lord Winston is a world-renowned fertility expert, an acclaimed author, and one of Britain’s best known faces of science. A pioneer of in-vitro fertilization (IVF) and treatment of female reproductive diseases, he is an outspoken critic of their commercialisation. A passionate believer in science education, he has taught physicians from 80 countries and is a gifted communicator of often-complex science to the public, through popular science books, TV programmes, and lectures. He is currently Professor of Science and Society at Imperial College London, chair of the Genesis Research Trust and the Royal College of Music and an active member of the House of Lords.