A Glorious Accident

Last updated

Een schitterend ongeluk (translated "A Glorious Accident" in English) was a 1993 documentary series featuring six prominent scientists and philosophers. Hosted by Wim Kayzer, a Dutch television producer, and filmed in seven parts, A Glorious Accident included interviews with Daniel Dennett, Freeman Dyson, Stephen Jay Gould, Oliver Sacks, Rupert Sheldrake, and Stephen Toulmin. [1] [2]

Contents

During six individual interviews with each guest and a final round table, the attendees discussed their vision of their work and the world with the central themes introduced by Kayzer: "How far did you come in your understanding of our thoughts and actions? What did science really bring us at the end of the 20th century: knowledge or also understanding?" [1] "What is consciousness?" "What is memory?" [3]

The roundtable discussion was filmed in the Netherlands. [3] The film was released by VPRO and produced by Nellie Kamer and Wim Kayzer. [4] The film broke viewing records in the Netherlands in 1993. [5]

In the United States, A Glorious Accident was broadcast twice in June 1994 on PBS member station WNET. [3] In September 1996, PBS member station KCET in Los Angeles also broadcast the series. [6] [4] The film was over 15 hours in length. [3] The title phrase "glorious accident" is attributed to Stephen Jay Gould [7] who referred to the asteroid-induced extinction of the dinosaurs which preceded the development of humanity. [4]

Book

Together with the series, a book with the same title containing the text from the interviews was also published in the Netherlands in 1993. [8] It was a number one bestseller in Holland for several months. [3] The publisher summary reads: [8]

Transcripts of six interviews and a group discussion [...] with six leading contemporary scientists from various disciplines on the possibilities and limitations of (scientific) intelligence.

In 1997, a book titled A Glorious Accident: Understanding Our Place in the Cosmic Puzzle was also published in English. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rupert Sheldrake</span> English author and parapsychological researcher

Alfred Rupert Sheldrake is an English author and parapsychology researcher. He proposed the concept of morphic resonance, a conjecture which lacks mainstream acceptance and has been criticized as pseudoscience. He has worked as a biochemist at Cambridge University, Harvard scholar, researcher at the Royal Society, and plant physiologist for ICRISAT in India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oliver Sacks</span> British neurologist and writer (1933–2015)

Oliver Wolf Sacks was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer. Born in Britain, Sacks received his medical degree in 1958 from The Queen's College, Oxford, before moving to the United States, where he spent most of his career. He interned at Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco and completed his residency in neurology and neuropathology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After a fellowship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, he served as neurologist at Beth Abraham Hospital's chronic-care facility in the Bronx, where he worked with a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness encephalitis lethargica, who had been unable to move on their own for decades. His treatment of those patients became the basis of his 1973 book Awakenings, which was adapted into an Academy Award-nominated feature film in 1990, starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VPRO</span> Dutch public broadcaster

The VPRO is a Dutch public broadcaster, which forms a part of the Dutch public broadcasting system. Founded in 1926 as a liberal Protestant broadcasting organization, it gradually became more social liberal than Protestant in the 1950s and 1960s, and the original meaning of the acronym was eventually dropped.

Three Businessmen is a 1998 comedy film directed by Alex Cox and written by Tod Davies, who was also the producer. It is an international co-production between the United Kingdom, Netherlands, and United States. Two businessmen, played by Miguel Sandoval and Cox, wander Liverpool in search of a meal. After wandering through Liverpool, they end up at various locations throughout the world and are eventually joined by a third businessman, played by Robert Wisdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wim Crouwel</span> Dutch graphic designer, type designer, and typographer (1928–2019)

Willem Hendrik "Wim" Crouwel was a Dutch graphic designer, type designer, and typographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wim Jonk</span> Dutch footballer and manager

Wilhelmus Maria "Wim" Jonk is a Dutch professional football manager and former player, who is the current head coach of Eredivisie club FC Volendam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wim T. Schippers</span>

Willem Theodoor "Wim T." Schippers is a Dutch artist, comedian, television director, and voice actor. During the 1960s, he worked mostly as a visual artist, associated with the international Fluxus-movement. As a television writer, director, and actor he is responsible for some of the most notable and controversial shows on Dutch televisions from the 1960s to the 1990s, creating a number of lasting characters and enriching the language with terms and expressions first coined in his shows. In addition, he voiced the characters of Ernie and Kermit the Frog on Sesamstraat, the Dutch version of Sesame Street. For his shows, he has written over three hundred songs, and his reputation has changed from being Dutch television's "enfant terrible" to an acknowledged master in a variety of genres.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Netherlands Film Festival</span> Annual film festival held in Utrecht, Netherlands

The Netherlands Film Festival is an annual film festival, held in September and October of each year in the city of Utrecht.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim Page (music critic)</span> American journalist (born 1954)

Tim Page is an American writer, music critic, editor, producer and professor who won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for his music criticism for The Washington Post. Anthony Tommasini, the chief music critic for The New York Times, has praised Page's criticism for its "extensive knowledge of cultural history, especially literature; the instincts and news sense of a sharp beat reporter; the skills of a good storyteller; infectious inquisitiveness; immunity to dogma; and an always-running pomposity detector." Other notable writings by Page include his biography of the novelist Dawn Powell, which is credited for helping to spark the revival of Powell's work, and a memoir that chronicles growing up with undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regi Blinker</span> Footballer (born 1969)

Reginald Waldie Blinker is a former professional footballer who played as a left winger. During his 17-year senior career, he amassed Eredivisie totals of 307 games and 57 goals over 12 seasons, mainly with Feyenoord. He also played three years in Scotland with Celtic. Born in Suriname, he represented the Netherlands national team at international level.

Charles Davenport Champlin was an American film critic and writer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wim Hof</span> Dutch extreme athlete (born 1959)

Wim Hof, also known as The Iceman, is a Dutch motivational speaker and extreme athlete noted for his ability to withstand low temperatures. He previously held a Guinness World Record for swimming under ice and prolonged full-body contact with ice, and holds a record for a barefoot half marathon on ice and snow. He attributes these feats to his Wim Hof Method (WHM), a combination of frequent cold exposure, breathing techniques and meditation. Hof has been the subject of several medical assessments and The New York Times bestselling book What Doesn't Kill Us written by investigative journalist Scott Carney.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Willy Mullens</span>

Willy Mullens was a Dutch producer, director, and promoter of movies. He is considered to be one of the early pioneers of Dutch cinema, and one of his movies was recently elected as one of only sixteen "Canonical Dutch movies." With his brother Bernardus Albertus (Albert) he started around the turn of the 20th century one of the earliest Dutch film production companies, Alberts Frères. By the second decade of that century he was making documentary films that premiered for royalty. His second company, Haghefilm, dominated the Dutch film market between the two World Wars.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rhacel Parreñas</span> Filipino sociologist

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at USC. She previously taught at Brown University, the University of California, Davis and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research has been featured in NPR's "The World", Bloomberg News, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, de Volkskrant, and the American Prospect. Parreñas has written five monographs, co-edited three anthologies, and published a number of peer-reviewed articles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jaime Levy</span> American interface designer and user experience strategists

Jaime Levy is an American author, lecturer, interface designer, and user experience strategist. She first became known for her new media projects in the 1990s. Her best-known projects include the floppy disk distributed with Billy Idol’s album Cyberpunk, WORD, an online magazine, and an online cartoon series, CyberSlacker. She is the author of the business book UX Strategy, which was first published by O’Reilly Media in 2015. It is widely regarded as the definitive work on the practice of user experience strategy and has been translated into nine languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gied Jaspars</span> Dutch television producer

Gied Jaspars was a Dutch television maker who gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s making progressive and controversial TV shows for the VPRO; he is well known for his collaboration with writer and director Wim T. Schippers. After he left the television and film industry he started a career as a business man; throughout his career he had a great interest in nature, expressed in narrative, meditative reflections in television and radio series which were later bundled as a single collection.

Johannes Cornelis Christiaan "Joop" Wilhelmus was a Dutch pornographer and entrepreneur, known for co-founding and publishing pornographic magazine Chick, founding and publishing child pornography magazine Lolita, and for pedophile advocacy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ger Blok</span>

Ger Blok was a Dutch football manager.

<i>Gay Meets Girl</i> 2013 Dutch TV series or program

Gay Meets Girl is a 2013 Dutch documentary film written, directed by and starring Tim den Besten and Nicolaas Veul. The documentary film explores the subjects of sexual fluidity and bisexuality through a gay man's quest to have sex with a woman. The original Dutch title translates to "A man doesn't know what he's missing" and references a gay man's not knowing what he is missing out on by not having sex with women. The documentary aired on Dutch public television.

References

  1. 1 2 "Oliver Sacks - Een schitterend ongeluk". VPRO. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  2. A Glorious Accident , retrieved 2023-01-31
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Angier, Natalie (12 June 1994). "TELEVISION; Six Smart Guys Sitting Around Talking". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 Everett, Todd (1996-09-06). "A Glorious Accident". Variety. Retrieved 2023-01-31.
  5. Goodman, Walter (1994-06-10). "TV Weekend; Serious Entertainment From a Rare Resource". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-01-31.
  6. "USC in the News". USC News. 1996-10-13. Retrieved 2023-01-31.
  7. Panosian, Claire B. (1996-10-07). "KCET Needs New Science Formula". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2023-01-31.
  8. 1 2 Kayzer, Wim (1993). Een schitterend ongeluk. Amsterdam: Contact. ISBN   9789025403959. OCLC   66099260 . Retrieved 30 October 2020.
  9. Kayzer, Wim; Sacks, Oliver W. (1997). A Glorious Accident: Understanding Our Place in the Cosmic Puzzle. W.H. Freeman. ISBN   978-0-7167-3144-3.