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This week marks the 50th anniversary of the first human heart transplant. This talk will celebrate that achievement and consider what we have learned over those 50 years and what is to happen in the future.
Alan Turing famously proposed a test of artificial intelligence. What has been achieved? Stephen Hawking has said that real artificial intelligence will mean the end of mankind. Is that a real threat? Are there limits to what a silicon brain might do?
Few people are lucky enough to save lives or change them for the better. Few also experience the horror of losing lives or worsening them. In this lecture I want to share some of the astonishing experiences of a paediatric heart surgeon.
Can we give a purely scientific account of human nature in terms of its physical, chemical and biological components. Richard Dawnkins' 'The Selfish Gene' is considered to see how a scientific narrative about selfish genes might correlate with a theological narrative about sin.
In the long run, in an Internet society, it is claimed, we will neither need nor want doctors, teachers, accountants, architects, the clergy, consultants, lawyers, and many others, to work as they did in the 20th century. - Is this true?
The lecture will cover the history of the western world as seen through the food that nourished builders for the Great Pyramids, free men of the Roman Empire, the expansion of Christianity, and the development of Europe.
There is a tension between clinical teams and the families of devout Jehovah’s Witnesses. This lecture explores that tension, and considers how we might perform open-heart surgery without blood.
A celebration of the heart for St Valentine’s Day. How is it that a simple pump has become a symbol of the highest human emotions of love, truth, conscience and moral courage? How have artists represented this? An interdisciplinary presentation.
Professor Steve Jones will talk about the crafty ways of living creatures, from orchids to ourselves, and about how, beneath every beauty, lies a beast.