Human Intelligence

Aristotle was a philosopher, teacher, collector and all-round polymath. He was also, importantly, a traveller, who allowed new places, especially the rich biodiversity he encountered on the island of Lesbos, to shape his thinking profoundly.

Aristotle’s observations about the natural world were remarkably accurate. Many were proved correct by modern science thousands of years later. He dissected animals, not as his contemporaries did, to understand the will of the gods, but to understand animals for their own sakes. He believed – and encouraged us to consider – that everyone has an innate curiosity about the world, that everyone can try to understand its wonder.

Special thanks to  Sophia Connell, Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London.

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Presenter: Naomi Alderman Executive editor: Philip Sellars Series producer: Sarah Goodman Script editor: Sara Joyner Researchers: Harry Burton and Miriam O'Byrne Production coordinator: Amelia Paul

Naomi Alderman looks at the mindset and legacy of Ida Pfeiffer, a woman who changed the very idea of travel, who is allowed to do it and why.

Traditionally, travelling had always had a purpose – conquering, discovering, negotiating, pilgrimaging. Women were always accompanied by men – husbands, fathers, brothers, guardians. But in the mid-nineteenth century, a separated mother of two upped sticks and travelled twice around the world, all because she wanted to.

Ida Pfeiffer went on bush expeditions with tiger hunters in India and had dinner with Queen Pomare IV of Tahiti. She spent her fiftieth birthday riding camels through Iran. So many people must have yearned for this kind of adventure, thought about it, but never turned the idea into reality. Pfeiffer made it happen. But what was so different about her thinking?

Special thanks to John van Wyhe, historian of science at the National University of Singapore and author of Wanderlust: The Amazing Ida Pfeiffer, the First Female Tourist (National University of Singapore Press, 2020).

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.

Sir Patrick Manson shook the medical world when he first understood the infection route for vector-borne diseases like malaria. Naomi Alderman dissects the thinking of a scientific pioneer.

In the late 1800s, no one knew how this kind of illness was spread. Manson, a Scottish physician working in China and later in a home laboratory in London, doggedly pursued the answer. Known as the father of tropical medicine, his understanding has undoubtedly saved lives, although he hoped it would also further the Empire. Where might his discovery take us in future?

Special thanks to Kristin Hussey, Lecturer in Environmental History at Newcastle University and author of Imperial Bodies in London (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2021).

Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.