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OU on the BBC: Thinking Allowed

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Thinking Allowed puts the focus on the latest thinking about how society works. Read exclusive academic insights every week as each show airs

23 May
2012

Thinking Allowed is BBC Radio 4's weekly focus on the social sciences. Each week on OpenLearn, we bring you exclusive content from The Open University's academic experts responding to the subjects Laurie Taylor and his guests explore, as well as links to teaching materials such as the Open University module, Introducing The Social Sciences. See what our academics have to say about this week's episode by looking at the link below and share your views using the comments facility. 

Thinking Allowed is on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesdays at 4.00pm and repeated on Monday mornings at 12.15am. Full transmission details, and listen again links, can be found on bbc.co.uk.

This week's exclusive academic insights

Previous episodes

Earlier programmes

Thinking Allowed and The Open University have come together before - find out about some of our earlier collaborations.

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Ann Fearon

I often listen to "Thinking Allowed", which seems like an intelligent programme for adults, so when, in reply to a comment I had posted, I received an email offering a link to a "discussion page", I duly clicked - and found myself in a strange Alice-in-Wonderland world where words had lost their meaning and nothing made sense!
"OpenLearn" - what's that supposed to mean? "Explore Try Study" - what? I was invited to "discover more" about my "passions"; although I can't see how the OU can tell me more about my passions than my lover and I between us already know!
A number of words were floating about on the screen, but "discussion" wasn't one of them. I thought I'd try "OU community". There, I was invited to "find out what we're playing with". Just a minute, is this a university or a kindergarten? I learnt that you are "giving away cool stuff". Is this a university or Hello magazine?
I read that "the OU has been working with external partners to create spaces for you to experience what we have to offer"; couldn't you just tell me what you have to offer?
You say:"We want everyone to reach their own conclusions"; thank you very much, but being an intelligent adult, I always do!
Ah, here's something called "Platform" where there is discussion apparently. I click again; still no discussion, but news of "member offers and discounts". I thought that was the job of the Students' Union, while the actual University got on with teaching and researching!
Oh, and "competitions" as well! Not so much a university, more a game show, then!
It seems to me that if I wanted to study with the OU again, I would need an introductory course in Teenspeak, Woolly Thinking, Being Patronised and General Silliness!

Hi Anne, Thanks for your

Openlearn Moderator

Hi Anne,

Thanks for your feedback. The websites you have found are designed to appeal to the general public as part of the Open University's mission to be open to all. When writing we keep in mind that many of the people using this site won't have studied at a University and the use of academic terminology can be off-putting. We aim to write in a way that is friendly and accessible. We'll review the pages you've mentioned to ensure we are using plain and concise language.

Thanks again.

OpenLearn Moderator

Decline of violence in History

Nick Rumble

The Decline of violence.
Let me declare at outset that I am usually persuaded by Dr Pinkers work and his conclusions: now for the but; not Dr Pangloss.
Some refutations
Maybe one reason for the decline in violent fatalties, especially since the Enlightment has been the rise in science specifically Public Health, for example the single most significant cause of death in the Crimean war was not shot or sabre, but cholera and typhoid.
Secondly the evidence seems to refute the notion of tolerance flowing in one direction, eg our suggested increasing tolerance/indifferance to homosexual behaviour- I dont think thats true in equatorial Africa. Indeed wasnt Ancient Greece a homophilic society? And is now no longer.
Thirdly, DrO'Hear's priviliging of the Christian new testament? Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think the only religion that has not waged a Holy War is Bhuddism.
Lets see what happens in Greece? Lets see what happens when the water runs out, and crops fail- would Pinker have come to these rIdiculous conclusion if he had lived not on a Harvard campus, but modern Somalia? Is this taking his theories of language too far, cosmopolitanism requires the precondition of food and welfare, not the other way round-see Abraham Maslow

Decline of violence in History

Nic McGerr

I agree absolutely with Nick Rumble's assessment of Pinkers work especially as it comes out of the Harvard mentality which has brought on the worst amount of calamity in the 21st and now going on into the 2nd century in an absurd Milton Freeman meets pnac scenario.
Decline of violence by the U.S.A. has not occurred but has increased intervening by force to change non-complimentary administrations from 1950's Guadaloupe through Cuba, Angola, Chile, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan and now peering at Iran for a first strike opportunity.
Decline in violence will not come about by the failure and collapse of Harvard inspired global monetary "systems" generated by the not so clever but intellectually fascinating prospect bundling up CDO's with the etc.'s etc.'s which will increase change but most likely more deprivation, death, injury and destruction
A reader of Voltaire's "Candide" has to warn anyone adopting the Panglossian/ Liebnitz course of philosophy that there is a liability to incur much buttock excising whenever a sharp blade is not engaged with the cutting of heads - a likely and and somewhat complimentary prospect that academics have often to suffer when not protected by the wealth of the US fed.
At Sussex with International Relations it became abundantly clear to me while attempting to wade through the corrupted language of american academic treatises that "Linguistic Analysis" had in fact become a weapon of war - "pacification" being the simile for dropping more TNT on neutral Laos than was dropped on Nazi Germany during WW2.
So Pinker try a better academic linguistic - Leary's "drop out turn on tune in" to a reality other than a pay check.

Decline of violence in History

Nic McGerr

I agree absolutely with Nick Rumble's assessment of Pinkers work especially as it comes out of the Harvard mentality which has brought on the worst amount of calamity in the 21st and now going on into the 2nd century in an absurd Milton Freeman meets pnac scenario.
Decline of violence by the U.S.A. has not occurred but has increased intervening by force to change non-complimentary administrations from 1950's Guadaloupe through Cuba, Angola, Chile, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan and now peering at Iran for a first strike opportunity.
Decline in violence will not come about by the failure and collapse of Harvard inspired global monetary "systems" generated by the not so clever but intellectually fascinating prospect bundling up CDO's with the etc.'s etc.'s which will increase change but most likely more deprivation, death, injury and destruction
A reader of Voltaire's "Candide" has to warn anyone adopting the Panglossian/ Liebnitz course of philosophy that there is a liability to incur much buttock excising whenever a sharp blade is not engaged with the cutting of heads - a likely and and somewhat complimentary prospect that academics have often to suffer when not protected by the wealth of the US fed.
At Sussex with International Relations it became abundantly clear to me while attempting to wade through the corrupted language of american academic treatises that "Linguistic Analysis" had in fact become a weapon of war - "pacification" being the simile for dropping more TNT on neutral Laos than was dropped on Nazi Germany during WW2.
So Pinker try a better academic linguistic - Leary's "drop out turn on tune in" to a reality other than a pay check.

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Monday, 10th December 2007
Wednesday, 23rd May 2012

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