4 documentales científicos fuera de serie

Luego de la fantástica reedición de Cosmos, está vez por Neil deGrasse Tyson, vale la pena recordar los grandes documentales que le precedieron.  Hay muchos documentales acerca de temas específicos, pero estos me gustan especialmente por la visión global de como la ciencia, humanismo, historia y arte que entregan y como estas confluyen para identificar el rol del ser humano en el universo.

The Ascent of Man, 1973

1. Lower than the Angels - Evolution of man from proto-ape to 400,000 years ago.
2. The Harvest of the Seasons - Early human migration, agriculture and the first settlements, war.
3. The Grain in the Stone - Tools, development of architecture and sculpture.
4. The Hidden Structure - Fire, metals and alchemy.
5. Music of the Spheres - The language of numbers.
6. The Starry Messenger - Galileo's universe.
7. The Majestic Clockwork - Explores Newton and Einstein's laws.
8. The Drive for Power - The Industrial Revolution.
9. The Ladder of Creation - Darwin and Wallace's ideas on the origin of species.
10. World within World - The story of the periodic table.
11. Knowledge or Certainty - Physics and the clash of absolute knowledge, the oppressive state, and its misgivings realizing the result of its terrible outcome.
12. Generation upon Generation - Life, genetics, and the cloning of identical forms.
13. The Long Childhood - Bronowski's treatise on the commitment of man.

James Burke: Connections, 1978

1. The Trigger Effect details the world’s present dependence on complex technological networks through a detailed narrative of New York City and the power blackout of 1965.
2. Death in the Morning examines the standardization of precious metal with the touchstone in the ancient world.
3. Distant Voices suggests that telecommunications exist because Normans had stirrups for horse riding which in turn led them to further advancements in warfare.
4. Faith in Numbers examines the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance from the perspective of how commercialism, climate change and the Black Death influenced cultural development.
5. The Wheel of Fortune traces astrological knowledge in ancient Greek manuscripts from Baghdad’s founder, Caliph Al-Mansur, via the Muslim monastery/medical school at Gundeshapur, to the medieval Church’s need for alarm clocks (the water horologium and the verge and foliot clock).
6. Thunder in the Skies implicates the Little Ice Age (ca. 1250-1300 AD) in the invention of the chimney, as well as knitting, buttons, wainscoting, wall tapestries, wall plastering, glass windows, and the practice of privacy for sleeping and sex.
7. The Long Chain traces the invention of the Fluyt freighter in Holland in the 1500s. Voyages were insured by Edward Lloyd (Lloyd's of London) if the ships hulls were covered in pitch and tar which came from the colonies until the American Revolution in 1776.
8. Eat, Drink and Be Merry begins with plastic, the plastic credit card and the concept of credit then leaps back in time to to the Dukes of Burgundy, which was the first state to use credit.
9. Countdown connects the invention of the movie projector to improvements in castle fortifications caused by the invention and use of the cannon.
10. Yesterday, Tomorrow and You. A bit of a recap: change causes more change. Start with the plow, you get craftsmen, civilization, irrigation, pottery and writing, mathematics, a calendar to predict floods, empires, and a modern world where change happens so rapidly you can't keep up.

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage

1. The Shores Of the Cosmos
2. One Voice In the Cosmic Fugue
3. The Harmony Of the Worlds
4. Heaven and Hell
5. Blues For A Red Planet 
6. Travellers' Tales 
7. The Backbone of Night 
8. Travels In Space and Time
9. The Lives Of the Stars
10. The Edge Of Forever
11. The Persistence Of Memory
12. Encyclopedia Galactica
13. Who Speaks For Earth?

Bonus track: la banda de sonido de Cosmos original por Vangelis aquí

The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion

1. What Is Out There? How we came to understand our planet was not at the center of everything in the cosmos.
2. What Is The World Made Of? How atomic theories and concepts of quantum physics underpin modern technology.
3. How Did We Get Here? Michael Mosley tells how scientists came to explain the diversity of life on earth.
4. Can We Have Unlimited Power? The story of how power has been harnessed from wind, steam and from inside the atom.
5. What is the Secret of Life? Michael Moseley tells the story of how the secret of life has been unraveled through the prism of the most complex organism known - the human body.
6. Who Are We? The twin sciences of brain anatomy and psychology have offered different visions of who we are. Now these sciences are coming together and in the process have revealed some surprising and uncomfortable truths about what really shapes our thoughts, feelings and desires.

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