The Big Questions

What is the difference between a story and a scientific explanation? How do the two fit together, and how can we use both in our attempt to make sense of the world? These are the big questions preoccupying award-winning novelist and teacher Bernard Beckett in Falling for Science. Zoologist and filmmaker Lloyd Spencer Davis repeatedly asks "What the hell am I doing here?" - in the scientific, religious and personal senses - in Looking for Darwin, an account of his globetrotting journey in search of his hero. Palaeontologist Hamish Campbell has spent many years searching for explanations for New Zealand's unique physical and geological past and he offers a different theory of what might have happened in In Search of Ancient New Zealand. Three men with a passion for science reflect on life after Darwin and explore the usefulness and the limits of scientific stories in unravelling life's mysteries and meaning with one of New Zealand's most enquiring minds, Kim Hill. Chair: Kim Hill - Panellists: Bernard Beckett, Lloyd Spencer Davis and Hamish Campbell.