Lewis Wolpert

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

Mike Costaway this week is a scientist. He was born in South Africa where his childhood was unhappy, and after university there he came to England.

Presenter0:37

Here he rapidly established himself as a leading scientific thinker. His field is embryology, the study of cells and how they develop, but his influence stems from his passionate advocacy of the value of science as a whole.

Presenter0:50

Despite a recent attack of clinical depression, he remains convinced that science provides the only rational foundation for man's beliefs. We must live with uncertainty, he argues, rather than sustain ourselves with improbable beliefs. His job is being the Professor of Biology as Applied to Medicine at University College London, but his public role lies in his position as Chairman of the Committee on Public Understanding of Science. He is Lewis Walpert. You have, however, currently, Professor Walpert, become Professor of Depression, haven't you? You've gone very public about this illness you had. Why did you choose to do that?

Lewis Wolpert1:27

It was the only time I'd ever been depressed, and it was so unspeakably awful.

Lewis Wolpert1:32

in the first instance, and then I realized that people were slightly embarrassed about me having a depression, and that other people who were depressed were somewhat ashamed of it. It has a stigma, being depressed, and I felt it was very important for this to be removed.

Presenter1:49

But what kind of depression was yours? Was it just simply a a very long, low period? No.

Lewis Wolpert1:54

No. No, I think the essence of a clinical depression is that one enters a quite different state. It's very, very hard to describe. But one first of all, depressives are very, very boring. They are totally negative and totally self-involved. So for people who have to live with them, it's a nightmare. It's very difficult to help them. And when you're in it, it's not just the psychological aspect, but there are all sorts of physical aspects. You feel ill, you can't do anything, you feel hopeless. I was very suicidal.

Lewis Wolpert2:22

It's really very, very, very nasty.

Presenter2:24

Completely black. There's nothing you can do.

Lewis Wolpert2:25

There is nothing can give you any pleasure whatsoever.

Presenter2:29

But you in the past, you've written, were a member of the SOC School of Psychiatry, that's to say pull up your socks and get on with you you obviously tried, you couldn't.

Lewis Wolpert2:34

Excessive.

Lewis Wolpert2:36

Yeah.

Lewis Wolpert2:38

I certainly couldn't. And all my support systems were gone. I couldn't work. I think work's a very good antidote to depression. Um I couldn't run. I couldn't cycle. Couldn't play tennis. I couldn't do anything.

Presenter2:51

And you couldn't communicate with people, could I mean, could you say to your family, Look, I just just leave me, I'm sure I'll come out of this at some point or

Lewis Wolpert2:58

No, I couldn't do that. On the contrary, they were all very um nice to be my children, my wife, my ex-wife, were all all very supportive. Um But you thought it was the end, did you or you wanted it to be the end? How

Presenter3:10

How suicidal were you?

Lewis Wolpert3:12

I was very suicidal. Um I thought about nothing else actually.

Lewis Wolpert3:16

Uh what's interesting, though, is I didn't do it, nor did I try didn't know quite how to do it.

Presenter3:21

But you thought about how to do it.

Lewis Wolpert3:22

All the time, all the time about death.

Presenter3:24

How how did you think about doing it?

Lewis Wolpert3:25

Well, I'm frightened of heights, so I couldn't jump from a building. That sounds funny.

Presenter3:30

But in the end you were rescued b by drugs.

Lewis Wolpert3:34

Um I took a drug related to Prozac called Cyroxat and that helped me, or unquestionably helped me, and also I'm totally committed to cognitive therapy. And cognitive therapy is not about trying to find under find the underlying reasons, but trying to ch change one's thought patterns to sort of help you out of your constant negativity. There's this nice phrase about that you've got ants, automatic negative thoughts.

Lewis Wolpert3:58

And you need to be trained to get out of this.

Presenter4:01

So, tell me about your first record.

Lewis Wolpert4:03

Well, I am South African. I left South Africa and I was 23. And I wasn't as unhappy as you suggested in your introduction.

Presenter4:10

Well I'll ask you about that in a minute.

Lewis Wolpert4:12

And I just would like a South African record, and Quella is something that's very South African and relates to what one hears on the streets, and I like it.

Presenter5:20

Lemmy Special and Jimmy Pratt and Lemmy's Jump and Memories, Louis Wolpert, of your South African youth, which you have said was was not of the happiest.

Presenter5:30

There was

Lewis Wolpert5:30

I wasn't unhappy. I loathed school, but liked my friends. I was an only child. I was quite lonely.

Presenter5:35

But you said in the past that you felt like a cuckoo in the nest at home. You didn't fit.

Lewis Wolpert5:38

Oh my goodness. Um I think my parents and I wasn't unhappy, that's unfair. Um my parents wanted me to be a nice Jewish boy.

Presenter5:39

Yeah.

Lewis Wolpert5:47

Um and I'm not.

Lewis Wolpert5:49

Maybe I

Presenter5:50

What was nasty about you?

Lewis Wolpert5:53

I didn't fit into that um kind of Jewish community. Um

Presenter5:57

What were you that you were a non conformist, were you?

Lewis Wolpert5:59

It's just that I was slightly different to my parents, I think, and so I think that th th they were always rather puzzled as to who I was.

Presenter6:07

But Helen Sussman, I think, was an aunt.

Lewis Wolpert6:10

He is an oddest mind.

Presenter6:10

is an aunt of yours, and and she's apparently said quite recently that or told you that your mother was quote a nasty piece of work.

Presenter6:19

How how do you react to that?

Lewis Wolpert6:21

I can understand. My mother was a complicated woman, and she was enormously protective of the family. And for someone like Helen to come into the family, quite young, and marry one of her brothers, I can see that as really my mother could be quite difficult. If you didn't fit with her image as to how Jewish women should behave, you had a very hard time.

Presenter6:44

Well, now, of course, a traditional psychoanalyst would undoubtedly seize on all of that and say, Ah, here is then the root of of this man's depression at long last after all these years it's come out and you would say that's a load of old bologna.

Lewis Wolpert6:57

Blue.

Lewis Wolpert6:58

Bunk'em.

Presenter6:58

Why? Why are you so dismissive about that kind of psychotherapy?

Lewis Wolpert7:02

Because you can make up any story you like. You know, it's just like Kipling's Just So story, how the elephant got its nose by being pulled by the crocodile or whatever it was. You can't ever validate this. It's these are just stories. And they're very attractive stories. I think we all use them in our lives. But my depression had absolutely nothing to do with that. My depression had to do with my anxiety about my heart. I have a slight heart condition. I get atrial fibrillation. And I had a very big trip planned to South Africa.

Lewis Wolpert7:30

And the drugs were making that I was taking was making me depressed, and I got very anxious. I am a hysteric, anyhow.

Presenter7:34

The psychoanalyst would of course say that that you are repressing those early childhood unhappinesses and you're denying that.

Lewis Wolpert7:38

The journey

Lewis Wolpert7:41

That don't happen because

Presenter7:42

So there you go again, you see you're denying it again.

Lewis Wolpert7:46

You're beginning to sound like an analyst.

Presenter7:47

Endless.

Lewis Wolpert7:48

Uh

Lewis Wolpert7:49

It's a very easy role to slip into.

Presenter7:49

It's a very

Presenter7:51

Yes, absolutely. No, it is, and it is why people slip into armchair psychology. It is, isn't it? Yes. But you prefer cognitive therapy, that's to say. Well, you explain to me what that is. Give me an example of it, will you? How it worked for you.

Lewis Wolpert8:03

Course.

Lewis Wolpert8:04

What cognitive therapy, particularly in relation to depression, does, is to point out to you how negative your thoughts are. When I was having cognitive therapy I I had not been to a meeting for a very long time. I'd cancelled everything.

Lewis Wolpert8:18

and I wanted to go to a committee meeting, and I was terrified about going. And what the therapist did was to take me through. She said, Well, now, say you walk out, say say you just can't cope with it, how how bad will your colleagues think of you? and so forth. In other words, by trying to bring reality into my anxiety, she enabled me to go to the meeting, and that was a very, very big um a step towards my recovery.

Presenter8:42

Hmm.

Presenter8:43

But b just going back to to to you as a boy, um from somewhere you inherited, I think, a confidence, didn't you? And and and also a love of science, an aptitude for science, what?

Lewis Wolpert8:54

I always liked scientific things. I felt at home with them. It was almost like a comfort. I enjoyed it.

Presenter9:00

Tell me about record number two.

Lewis Wolpert9:03

Well, record number two is really a reminder of how wonderful it was to go to university. It was terribly exciting. And in my first year, I went to a student conference, which opened up a whole new world for me. And on the way to this conference, I shared a compartment with a friend who sang this song continually. And it's the only song whose words I actually know off by heart. But it does remind me of really a liberation of politics and intellectual life and sort of getting out of school and things like that.

Speaker 49:35

Love all

Speaker 49:39

The melody chimes about you

Speaker 49:50

Above all I want my arms about you.

Presenter10:03

Ella Fitzgerald and Embraceable You. Your scientific pedigree, Lewis Walport, is is a very interesting one for an embryologist because you began by studying civil engineering. Wh what was the attraction of that?

Lewis Wolpert10:15

I was good at mathematics and science at school, and I didn't know what to do, and I chose all on my own to do civil engineering, and I chose civil because it sounded cleaner than mechanical.

Presenter10:26

So you build built bridges, do you?

Lewis Wolpert10:28

Well, be very careful, because in the finals of my exam of civil engineering we had to design a bridge and a water tyre, and my external examiner demonstrated me conclusively that my water tyre would leak and my bridge would fall down, but he put his arm around me and said, But I think you've got the general idea, young man.

Presenter10:45

But weren't you also I mean you had they had to pass you, I understand, because you spotted some mistakes. Yes, we did.

Lewis Wolpert10:49

Yes, we did. In the finals, they made a couple of mistakes in asking us to prove various things, and I went along to them and said, Look, you can't fail me and my friend who work because we'd work together. And

Presenter11:02

Oh you think it was a joint degree, was it? Well it was differently.

Lewis Wolpert11:04

Well it was actually just to be absolutely honest, I loathed being an engineer at this stage. And my friend who did one half and I did the other half and we taught each other.

Presenter11:13

What did you do in the exams?

Lewis Wolpert11:15

A couple of days before the exams we taught each other.

Presenter11:17

Well he doesn't

Lewis Wolpert11:19

Well, he doesn't remember it, but I w we both went along to the head and said, Look, you cannot fail us because you've made these mistakes in two papers. So we were smart enough to pick up the mistakes.

Presenter11:29

Then you came to London, I think, via Israel, where you had something to do with water towers. I hope they didn't leak there. Um and you you studied soil mechanics when you came here. When did you make the big switch to biology?

Lewis Wolpert11:40

Well, I wanted to give up engineering. I was desperate to give up engineering. And I was actually going to a course at the London School of Economics, and exploring doing physiology or biology at Metz and elsewhere, and a friend of mine in South Africa getting married, Wilfred Steyn, knew of my wanting to get out of engineering, and the day before his wedding

Lewis Wolpert12:00

He read an article um in Cape Town by Murdoch Mitcheson and Michael Swann, Michael Swan, who later became chairman of the BBC but who was then professor of zoology in Edinburgh, and they were looking at the mechanical properties of the cell membrane, and he wrote to me and said, Lewis, I found what you should do. So my my PhD was on the mechanical properties of the cell membrane.

Presenter12:20

And did you know, when you got into all of that and began, what did you know you'd found your field at last?

Lewis Wolpert12:25

Yes, I think so, yes.

Presenter12:26

What was the fascination about it? Tell me, I mean, what what what turns you on about it?

Lewis Wolpert12:29

But it's absolutely amazing. You come from one small little egg, one single cell, all of you.

Lewis Wolpert12:38

I mean, everybody should get out of bed in the morning and realize that they come from one single cell, the fertilized egg, and here you are. That's what we try to understand.

Presenter12:47

And that's what you've been doing for forty years in the same place. Attached to London University, I think.

Lewis Wolpert12:50

Yes.

Lewis Wolpert12:52

Yes, I was at King's College originally and now I'm part of University College.

Presenter12:54

Two

Presenter12:56

Mm. And never look back. It's always been good to be

Lewis Wolpert12:58

It's been magical, wonderful.

Presenter13:00

Tell me about record number three.

Lewis Wolpert13:02

I worked in Israel for a year, and I had a friend there who was a music teacher, and she introduced me to chamber music, and she used to take me to concerts, and when the theme changed he would nudge me.

Lewis Wolpert13:14

And so I learnt to love chamber music.

Presenter14:16

Part of Beethoven's string quartet, number fifteen in A minor, opus one thirty two, played by the Femier Quartet. Obviously, Lewis, you advocate science as a career, and indeed there's been heavy promotion of it in education for some years now. How do you explain the fact then that it's still not as popular as the arts? I mean, one one statistic which I think seems to be a a good example of that is that the number of physics A-level students has fallen by twenty percent since the early nineteen eighties.

Lewis Wolpert14:44

Although, just to put that in context, the applications for engineering and science courses is really very high, I heard recently.

Lewis Wolpert14:51

Science is hard and um it isn't the way to express your personality. What I mean by that is that if you want a subject

Lewis Wolpert15:00

where you can, as it were, give your opinion at an early stage. You can do that, say, in English, or

Lewis Wolpert15:07

In history. I'm afraid that's not true if you're doing science. I mean, for example, at early stages in mathematics, just to make the the hardest one is, your opinions are rather irrelevant. You have to know really quite a lot before you can make any contribution to all. So it is tough.

Presenter15:22

Yet, but it's also

Presenter15:23

I suppose not so attractive. I mean, as one of your critics, the journalist Simon Jenkins has written, you know, people would far rather read Shakespeare than learn about the second law of thermodynamics. Why can't you get it across to people that it it is that important than make it somehow more interesting?

Lewis Wolpert15:38

Well, I think that some people do do it very well. I think that science programmes, like Horizon, for example, on the B B C, do extremely well. They have um a large audience.

Presenter15:48

But then you blame the media for ghettoising science.

Lewis Wolpert15:51

Oh, I blame the media for everything. Oh, yes Look at the B B C and the paranormal at the moment. They are so really just playing to the crowd.

Presenter16:02

Well, it's not just the BBC, but people enjoy the paranormal. People want to watch programmes about the paranormal. I'm sure.

Lewis Wolpert16:05

Yeah.

Presenter16:08

I don't know this for a fact, but I'm sure in greater numbers than they want to watch programmes about sign.

Lewis Wolpert16:13

I regret that's probably true, and I must confess that I do like the X-Wiles.

Presenter16:18

Well there you are.

Lewis Wolpert16:19

However, there there is a difference between having a fictional programme like the X Files and having programmes about the paranormal as if it were true and totally uncritical.

Lewis Wolpert16:31

You would never put on a programme saying, Well, as a matter of fact, Shakespeare was a woman, you see, who lived in Hampstead. You know it it's that sort of junk that one has presented with with the paranormal, and no one is is allowed to stand up and say, Look, this is all nonsense.

Presenter16:46

But let's get back to this point about the point I was making about science, which is your point, you wrote a very good book, The Unnatural Nature of Science, which was written for Lehman, and what you were saying there is, you know, science is not common sense, which a lot of people assume that, oh, well, if I really put my mind to it, it's very factual, you know, I would be able to sense what was right and what was wrong and which way everything was going, because there's a logic to it. Not true, you say.

Lewis Wolpert16:47

Yeah.

Lewis Wolpert16:52

Yeah.

Lewis Wolpert17:00

Mm-hmm.

Lewis Wolpert17:14

I'm afraid not. I it's nobody's fault, but the world just isn't built on a common sense basis. In fact, if an idea fits with common sense about the way the world works, you can be virtually certain it will be false.

Presenter17:25

Give me an example of that, because that's that what about that very good one in your book uh about the bullets?

Lewis Wolpert17:27

Yeah.

Lewis Wolpert17:30

Oh yes. Um if you go into a completely flat field and I've got two bullets, uh one in my hand, one in a gun, and I fire one horizontally at exactly the same time as I drop the other one, which hits the ground first? And the answer is they both hit the ground at the same time. But one's intuition says us the one one shot will get there later. But uh uh that's m too complicated. Just think about the tides.

Lewis Wolpert17:54

I'll bet you're very happy with the idea the moon causes the tides. And if I say to you why, and I'm holding up my hands now, I say Oh, well, here's the moon, and it's near to the earth, and it's pulling on the water here, and that's why it's high tide. But hold on, it's high tide on the other side. It's very complicated.

Presenter18:03

To the earth and it's

Lewis Wolpert18:11

Common sense doesn't bear any relationship to the way the world works.

Presenter18:14

So are we therefore saying that that we lack natural curiosity? Is that the explanation as to why young people don't naturally go for the sciences as easily as they go for the arts? Or because it's easier to bluff in the one than in the other?

Lewis Wolpert18:19

Is that the

Lewis Wolpert18:29

I think it's just easier.

Lewis Wolpert18:30

I also personally think, but I have no direct evidence for that, is that you can make your l it's more personal. You can make your you know, you can talk you can anybody can make a criticism of a poem.

Lewis Wolpert18:42

I'm afraid there's nothing much you can do with the second law of thermodynamics. You've got to try and understand it.

Presenter18:48

Tell me about record number four.

Lewis Wolpert18:50

Record number four um really relates to my ex-wife, um, Betty Walbert. She's the mother of my four children, and um it's Elizabeth Welsh as a singer that she's very fond of.

Speaker 419:02

No war

Speaker 419:06

There's no sun up in the sky

Speaker 419:09

Stormy weather

Speaker 419:13

Since my man and I ain't together.

Speaker 419:21

It's raining all the time

Speaker 419:29

Life is bad.

Presenter19:32

Elizabeth Welsh singing stormy weather. Let me, Lewis, while put one other proposition to you in this discussion about the two cultures, science versus the arts, the humanities. Science isn't attractive because it's not creative.

Presenter19:46

If Watson and Crick hadn't discovered the structure of DNA, then somebody else eventually would do. If Shakespeare hadn't written King Lear, we'd never have had King Lear.

Presenter19:55

Ergo.

Lewis Wolpert19:56

What you said is both true and not true.

Lewis Wolpert20:00

Science is very creative. Watson and Crick working out the structure of DNA was a highly creative act. We know that um Cluck and F um Franklin would have got there about a year later, and simultaneous discovery is common in science. But that means that they're all being creative. You've got to be very creative and science

Presenter20:17

Yes, but it makes it less unique, if one can say that.

Lewis Wolpert20:21

As an association.

Lewis Wolpert20:24

That is absolutely true, and that's one of the differences between the arts and the sciences. Science is a is a communal activity.

Lewis Wolpert20:32

If no Watson and Crick, then somebody else. If no Einstein, I dunno. Ferguson, who knows?

Presenter20:38

But it's worse than that, isn't it? Because every bit of science, every bit of development in science that occ that that occurs either uses up or negates that which has gone before, whereas again and I think you've used this analogy yourself in your time, you know, Wagner didn't make Mozart irrelevant.

Lewis Wolpert20:53

And that is well, there is this marvellous remark by David Hilbert that the measure of a good scientific paper is how many other papers it makes irrelevant. But that's just the nature of science.

Presenter21:04

But it's not.

Lewis Wolpert21:05

No, on the contrary.

Lewis Wolpert21:08

Um the very fact that you can discover and make some contribution to this wonderful communal structure is an extremely exciting and we can all share in it. Look, just thinking up a good experiment

Lewis Wolpert21:20

I like to think is a very creative act.

Presenter21:22

I still find it very difficult, though, to understand the comparison between the two, because I mean, if we look back at that Beethoven string quartet you played just now, you know, that there was no.

Lewis Wolpert21:29

Good

Presenter21:32

Sudden piece of inspiration or luck that went into that, though it was just it was.

Presenter21:38

Pure creative genius, wasn't it?

Presenter21:40

that wrote that.

Lewis Wolpert21:43

Yes, and I would accept it's quite different from Darwin coming to the theory of evolution and in fact I'm the one that goes round in saying that there is very little similar between creativity in the arts and creativity in science.

Lewis Wolpert21:57

And um but all sorts of scientists go round saying and and those in the arts saying creativity in both is very the same. It's a sort of intellectual snobbery of artists want to be like scientists and scientists want to be like artists. I think it is very different. But it's

Presenter22:11

Do do artists want to be like scientists?

Lewis Wolpert22:14

Oh yes.

Presenter22:14

Or is it more the case that scientists want to do that?

Lewis Wolpert22:16

Well, I think science envy.

Lewis Wolpert22:18

is very pervasive in our society. A lot of the hostility towards science by the intellectuals in this country, they don't understand a word of it. Here you have the the most wonderful triumph of Western culture not Western culture of the twentieth century, because not not peculiarly Western in any way at all and here they don't understand a word of it.

Lewis Wolpert22:37

Record number five.

Lewis Wolpert22:40

I came to Wagner quite late, when I was in England, and I am totally devoted to his music. I am absolutely amazed not only by how wonderful it is, but by his confidence.

Speaker 423:07

Dost ru the territory.

Speaker 423:18

Yeah.

Speaker 423:25

Or is it

Speaker 423:30

Los each begin, does mine for the king.

Presenter23:50

Regine Crespin singing the aria Vares Schmelich from the final act of Wagner's Die Walker with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Carian. Tell me, going back to your your your breakdown, um how did your family that must be very difficult for a family. I mean, you suddenly aged what were you at the time, sixty four?

Lewis Wolpert24:08

No, it was only a year ago. I was some sixty five.

Presenter24:11

Yes. I mean, just for a family who've always known this strong, independent man, suddenly to be confronted with somebody who who couldn't live, couldn't exist outside a hospital.

Lewis Wolpert24:21

That's true.

Lewis Wolpert24:23

But you went back in your night. I went back every night. I needed to be in hospital.

Presenter24:24

But you went back in your mind.

Lewis Wolpert24:27

They were very, very worried, um and everyone was very, very kind to me.

Presenter24:31

Hmm.

Lewis Wolpert24:31

Very nice.

Presenter24:32

Dif very difficult.

Lewis Wolpert24:34

I think that people who live with depressives, and I particularly worry about children who have depressed parents, have a very, very hard time.

Presenter24:43

Is it do you know uh statistically extraordinary that you should suddenly be hit by this thing in your mid sixties with having had no real

Presenter24:52

showing of it ever before.

Lewis Wolpert24:55

I blame it on the drugs. That's the easiest way of dealing.

Lewis Wolpert24:59

You know, we all make up stories. I I have a problem with arrhythmia with my heart, and we all make up stories as to why

Lewis Wolpert25:07

the arrhythmia curves. It's because you ate the cheese or you drank too much or you drink. Or you went to work too And we all try to find these correlations and I'm just very

Presenter25:12

Yeah.

Lewis Wolpert25:19

suspicious of all of them.

Presenter25:21

Hmm.

Presenter25:22

So you prefer to think what? That there is simply a b a biological a a chemical thing in the brain that caused this, that over which you have no control. That's what my preferred explanation.

Lewis Wolpert25:31

Well, no, no. I think there are psychological

Lewis Wolpert25:37

Factors which cause chemical changes, which cause psychological factors. It's like a positive feedback loop.

Presenter25:43

Hmm. Mm.

Lewis Wolpert25:45

But the blunt fact is it's not understood.

Presenter25:47

What therefore, sending you away to this desert island, what's going to happen to you there, do you think?

Presenter25:54

Are you more likely to sink into some kind of psychosomatic depression that you describe as as a result of

Presenter26:01

Being lonely, or will sort of respite from the work and the pressures perhaps help it? What do you think?

Lewis Wolpert26:06

I think I'll be bad on a desert island. I once went camping on my own in South Africa. After one day I was talking to the sheep. I didn't like it.

Presenter26:15

And practically, I mean being a good person, yes.

Lewis Wolpert26:21

I'm Leaky Watertown. You must understand that I'm the one who cannot understand why anybody wants to cook if they live near a Marks and Spencer.

Lewis Wolpert26:30

It's impenetrable to me.

Presenter26:31

So you really won't last long, will you? I mean, both physically and and mentally.

Lewis Wolpert26:36

No, no, hopeless, hopeless.

Presenter26:38

Tell me about record number six.

Lewis Wolpert26:40

This is how I wooed my present wife, Jill Neville.

Speaker 426:46

Simply that.

Lewis Wolpert26:47

Yes.

Speaker 426:48

I've flown around the world in a plane.

Speaker 426:55

I've settled revolutions in Spain.

Speaker 427:01

And the North Pole I have chartered.

Speaker 427:06

Till I can get started with you

Speaker 427:14

On the golf course.

Speaker 427:16

I am under par.

Presenter27:18

I Can't Get Started sung by Gail Reese and Bunny Berrigan.

Presenter27:23

It's difficult to interview a scientist these days without talking about God because all you seem to want to do really is is deny a place for him with the argument that ul ultimately everything will be explained by science. Why why can't you scientists just leave it why can't you shrug and turn away and say, well, look, it's unlikely that we can prove God doesn't exist but

Presenter27:42

Leave it alone.

Lewis Wolpert27:44

I have to say that I'm not the one who who sort of raised it. I'm the token atheist.

Lewis Wolpert27:51

Approached by those involved in religion all the time. It it's not me going out and, as it were, singing my song.

Presenter27:58

But i I'm asking you really in your role as chairman of the Society for the Public Understanding of Science, I mean that is I think what people feel about science, that there's

Lewis Wolpert28:01

Oh, but

Presenter28:06

It's become a kind of tyranny really. They find it quite threatening that there is no place allowed for God in all of this.

Lewis Wolpert28:13

My position is really very different.

Lewis Wolpert28:18

I'm in love with David Hume, the Scottish eighteenth century philosopher, whose ideas about religion I have nothing to which I have nothing to add to them. And he said, Look, it's perfectly reasonable to believe in a Creator.

Lewis Wolpert28:32

But what you cannot do is infer any properties of that Creator. Now I am not against religion.

Lewis Wolpert28:38

My position is very clear.

Lewis Wolpert28:40

I think there's no evidence for a God, and I'm like David Hume, and th th th you know, why should I believe believe in it? The evidence is very poor. In fact, I was at a meeting on God and Science very recently, and I was saying I didn't believe in the resurrection.

Lewis Wolpert28:54

Um they said, why not?

Lewis Wolpert28:56

I said, Well, you know, it goes against everything we know. Once you're dead, you're dead.

Lewis Wolpert29:01

And they said, What would persuade you? Would a miracle persuade you? And I said, Well, it would be a very good beginning.

Lewis Wolpert29:07

Um but you can only go on what evidence we have.

Presenter29:11

Well, yes, except that people want to say, look, we want to believe without any evidence. So why can't you leave us to believe that?

Lewis Wolpert29:11

Except that people want to say look

Lewis Wolpert29:15

Why can't you leave us to? I'm sorry, science. The idea that science is anti-religious is simply false. If you look at scientists in this country, I can bring you scientist after science, distinguished scientist after science who's deeply religious.

Presenter29:29

But as far as you personally are concerned, religion is on a par with the paranormal in astrology.

Lewis Wolpert29:34

Oh, yes, there's no question about that. In fact, I now hold the following position, that when human beings became conscious in our evolution, one of the things that happened to them was that they could now think about tomorrow, think about yesterday, think about who they were, think about other human beings. And of course, one of the key things about being human was they could learn how to manipulate their environ and find explanations for things. Now there were many things for which they had no explanation at all, not the least being death.

Lewis Wolpert30:06

And I think those people who found explanations by believing in the supernatural became less anxious than those who didn't, and I think there was a selection for those who did.

Presenter30:17

So that explains why people are so hooked on programmes about the paranormal.

Lewis Wolpert30:19

Yeah.

Lewis Wolpert30:21

Absolutely.

Lewis Wolpert30:22

It is the na it is our natural condition.

Presenter30:24

We need it.

Lewis Wolpert30:25

Historically you needed it. When I say you I mean everyone. Yes.

Presenter30:29

So are you a superior being because you don't need it?

Lewis Wolpert30:33

Yes.

Presenter30:36

I see. Tell me about your seventh record.

Lewis Wolpert30:43

I think

Lewis Wolpert30:46

Of course, Ivantutti is a truly wonderful opera. And as a friend of mine pointed out, it tells you really something about love. And if you tell someone long enough that you love them, you can actually seduce them by love. It's also a very funny opera. And also I think the music is wonderful.

Speaker 431:26

All the birds fall.

Speaker 431:43

Uh

Speaker 431:48

Essex.

Speaker 431:52

And boys.

Presenter32:04

Carita Mattilla, Anna Sophie von Otter, Francisco Arissa, and Thomas Allen, singing the quartet from the final act of Mozart's Cosifantute, with the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner. You're a passionate cyclist, Professor Walpot. Is this a is this a green consideration, or would you just like your bike?

Lewis Wolpert32:22

No, it's my illusion of youth. When I'm on my bicycle, I'm sixteen. I remain sixteen. And I cycle everywhere. I love my bicycle in fact, my bicycle was just stolen.

Lewis Wolpert32:32

from University College, locked to a cycle rack while I was at a lecture.

Lewis Wolpert32:37

And I've bought this unbelievably wonderful new one, I must confess. It's a mountain bike, and it's just wonderful, and it's so comfortable, and I'm so happy on it.

Presenter32:45

59 gears.

Lewis Wolpert32:48

Twenty four.

Presenter32:50

Do you get withdrawal symptoms when you don't bike? I mean, is it necessary for you physically? Is it part of

Lewis Wolpert32:54

I need to do something like that. I mean, I do run and I play tennis and I cycle.

Presenter32:59

Have we stumbled on your desert island luxury here? Oh, yes. I see. And as you sit there on this island, um, waiting for rescue to come, let me ask you this.

Lewis Wolpert33:01

Who is?

Presenter33:07

Um, you know, if you had a choice, if God, dare I say, blessed you with the the ability to to to solve one problem that you'd wrestled with all your professional life, what would it be?

Lewis Wolpert33:17

Oh, yes, our embryos develop, there's no question about that.

Lewis Wolpert33:21

I have a particular conceptual framework about how I think, how you came from the single egg, and I have this concept of positional information, and um I'd just like to know whether it's right. I really would.

Presenter33:34

Yeah.

Presenter33:36

But there is no God, so you're not going to be blessed with this.

Lewis Wolpert33:38

Well I think I am right anyhow.

Presenter33:40

Last record.

Lewis Wolpert33:43

Um I've only just really come to Mathenais Manon recently and it's just very beautiful music, rather romantic.

Lewis Wolpert34:20

Why you're re swallowed?

Speaker 434:25

Close a near for you.

Speaker 434:34

Oh.

Speaker 434:38

Trot and wave was war.

Lewis Wolpert34:38

What at all

Presenter34:50

Alfredo Kraus singing the aria en Fermant Lesieux from Massenet's Manon, with the Toulouse orchestra conducted by Michel Plasson. If you could only take one of those eight records, Lewis.

Lewis Wolpert35:01

Um the bait haven't caught it.

Presenter35:03

Mhm. And your book

Lewis Wolpert35:05

HUME'S INQUIRIES INTO HUMAN NATURE

Presenter35:09

Don't you don't you know it by heart?

Lewis Wolpert35:09

Don't you?

Lewis Wolpert35:11

Now I've only read bits I've only read bits of it, I'm afraid, and I'm not keen on philosophers at all. But Hume is something completely different, and it would keep me thinking for as long as I was there.

Presenter35:21

And your luxury is the bike?

Lewis Wolpert35:23

Unquestionably, I never go anywhere without my bicycle.

Presenter35:26

And you can go round and round in circles for as long as you like.

Lewis Wolpert35:28

Personal

Presenter35:31

Professor Lewis Wolpert, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Lewis Wolpert35:35

Thank you.

Speaker 335:44

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.