Bernard Beckett
Bernard Beckett
Bernard Beckettis a New Zealand writer of fiction for young adults. His work includes novels and plays. Beckett has taught Drama, Mathematics and English at a number of high schools in the Wellington Region, and is currently teaching students at Hutt Valley High School in Lower Hutt...
NationalityNew Zealander
ProfessionWriter
ideas together host
The only thing binding individuals together is ideas. Ideas mutate and spread; they change their hosts as much as their hosts change them.
mind trying faces
I try not to be surprised. Surprise is the public face of a mind that has been closed.
century god great limited machinery men mostly quest scientists uncover
Our world is limited by the machinery we carry. It's very different to the 18th and 19th century Enlightenment scientists who were mostly men of God and thought it was their quest to uncover God's great plan.
beyond books centre daniel fellowship high matt people research richard school science spent study wilson work year
I didn't study science beyond high school level, but I'd been reading a lot of science books by people like Richard Dawkins, Matt Ridley and Daniel Dennett. I also spent a year working on a fellowship in a research centre - the Allan Wilson Centre - where I got a hands-on look at their work sequencing DNA.
ability access beyond evidence good great humans material particular
I can't see any great evidence that humans have any ability to access anything other than the material world. Beyond that, who knows, but there's no good evidence that would take me to any particular belief.
concept
I like the concept of teenagers and philosophy.
became education formal interested later past school science teacher
I'm a school teacher, and later on, well past my formal education, I became very interested in science.
against build defend enters fights finds forms furniture picks themselves
The Idea enters the brain from the outside. It rearranges the furniture to make it more to its liking. It finds other Ideas already in residence, and picks fights or forms alliances. The alliances build new structures, to defend themselves against intruders.
fear
There is a fascination with fear. It grabs our attention.
claiming mind travels
The successful Idea travels from mind to mind, claiming new territory, mutating as it goes.
fear vantage-point population
... from our vantage point it is now clear that the only thing the population had to fear was fear itself.
memories routine time-passes
But time passes. Fear becomes a memory. Terror becomes routine; it loses its grip.
fear people monsters
Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.
thinking littles way
Science is a little bit more than a wonderful way of modelling and predicting; its a wonderful technical abstraction. I think science is a really wonderful technical abstraction.