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Isn't this kind of like the reading we had...with the Uncertainty of Knowledge assignment? It talks about how science theories can be true because we believe them to be true, but because time changes and everything is different all the time, they are always easy to be proven wrong, and subject to change. That is like what you said about scientific theories being subject to future questioning. What we perceive to be an atom may not be what Socrates perceived as an atom, or some scientist from year 3000 perceives it. Science is always changing and therefore I agree that the laws that are made are always "refinable".

"Virginia is due to execute a woman, the first in the US state since 1912 and the first anywhere in the country for five years. But why is the execution of a woman such a significant event?"

People who think more about whether they are right have more cells in an area of the brain known as the frontal lobes.

"An ice cream company banned from using an advert displaying a pregnant nun has vowed to position similar posters in London in time for the Pope's visit."

"Protests by atheists against last week's papal visit to the UK have highlighted the age old friction between religion and science. But for hundreds of years thinkers with a foot in both camps have sought to reconcile these two beliefs, says Dr Thomas Dixon."

"Israeli scientists believe they have identified why Arabic is particularly hard to learn to read."

"An Iranian woman sentenced to death by stoning for adultery now faces being whipped for indecency, her son says."

Can one be a moral relativist in this situation?

"Our ability to recall events seems to sharpen as we get older but can it be trusted"

"When covering disasters, reporters can face the ethical question of whether they should help, or remain detached. When is it right for a journalist to help a weak and possibly dying baby?"

"Can men and women ever compete fairly in a sport like running? Yes, but it requires a little bit of maths know-how."

"For years, fans of the Batman comics have puzzled over a mystery at the heart of the series: why doesn't Batman just kill his arch-nemesis, the murderous Joker? The two have engaged in a prolonged game of cat-and-mouse. The Joker commits a crime, Batman catches him, the Joker is locked up, and then invariably escapes. Wouldn't all this be much simpler if Batman just killed the Joker? What's stopping him? Enter philosopher Immanuel Kant and the deontological theory of ethics Now, philosophy professors are finding superheroes and comic books to be exceptionally useful tools in helping students think about the complex moral and ethical debates that have occupied philosophers for centuries."

"Melvyn Bragg and guests Usha Goswami, Annette Karmiloff-Smith and Denis Mareschal discuss what new research reveals about the infant brain. For obvious reasons, what happens in the minds of very young, pre-verbal children is elusive. But over the last century, the psychology of early childhood has become a major subject of study. Some scientists and researchers have argued that children develop skills only gradually, others that many of our mental attributes are innate. Sigmund Freud concluded that infants didn't differentiate themselves from their environment. The pioneering Swiss child psychologist Jean Piaget thought babies' perception of the world began as a 'blooming, buzzing confusion' of colour, light and sound, before they developed a more sophisticated worldview, first through the senses and later through symbol. More recent scholars such as the leading American theoretical linguist Noam Chomsky have argued that the fundamentals of language are there from birth. Chomsky has famously argued that all humans have an innate, universally applicable grammar. Over the last ten to twenty years, new research has shed fresh light on important aspects of the infant brain which have long been shrouded in mystery or mired in dispute, from the way we start to learn to speak to the earliest understanding that other people have their own minds."

"Melvyn Bragg and guests John Barrow, Colva Roney-Dougal and Marcus du Sautoy explore the unintended consequences of mathematical discoveries, from the computer to online encryption, to alternating current and predicting the path of asteroids. In his book The Mathematician's Apology (1941), the Cambridge mathematician GH Hardy expressed his reverence for pure maths, and celebrated its uselessness in the real world. Yet one of the branches of pure mathematics in which Hardy excelled was number theory, and it was this field which played a major role in the work of his younger colleague, Alan Turing, as he worked first to crack Nazi codes at Bletchley Park and then on one of the first computers. Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the many surprising and completely unintended uses to which mathematical discoveries have been put."

"Melvyn Bragg and guests David Jackson, Dorothy Rowe and Alastair Wright discuss the work of the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, focusing on his most famous painting, The Scream. First exhibited in 1893 in Berlin, The Scream was the culmination of Munch's magnum opus, a series of paintings called The Frieze of Life. This depicted the course of human existence through burgeoning love and sexual passion to suffering, despair and death, in Munch's highly original, proto-expressionist style. His titles, from Death in the Sickroom, through Madonna to The Vampire, suggest just how directly and unironically he sought to depict the anxieties of late-19th century Europe. But against all Munch's images, it is The Scream which stands out as the work which has seared itself into the Western imagination. It remains widely celebrated for capturing the torment of existence in what appeared to many in Munch's time to be a frightening, godless world. Munch himself endured a childhood beset by illness, madness and bereavement. At 13, he was told by his father that his tuberculosis was fatal. But he survived and went on to become a major figure first in the Norwegian, then the European, avant-garde. He became involved with two of the great playwrights of the period. He collaborated with his fellow countryman Henrik Ibsen and became a close friend of the tempestuous Swede August Strindberg. He admired the work of Post-Impressionist painters such as Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, all of whom influenced his art. Munch's own influence resonated through the 20th century, from German Expressionism to Andy Warhol and beyond. His work, particularly The Scream, remains powerful today."

"Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss imaginary numbers. In the sixteenth century, a group of mathematicians in Bologna found a solution to a problem that had puzzled generations before them: a completely new kind of number. For more than a century this discovery was greeted with such scepticism that the great French thinker Rene Descartes dismissed it as an "imaginary" number. The name stuck - but so did the numbers. Long dismissed as useless or even fictitious, the imaginary number i and its properties were first explored seriously in the eighteenth century. Today the imaginary numbers are in daily use by engineers, and are vital to our understanding of phenomena including electricity and radio waves."

"David Cannadine reflects on the teaching of history in schools and the moves at home and abroad to reform the curriculum and re-write the textbooks."

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role of animals in humankind's search for knowledge. Since the Greek physician Galen used pigs for anatomical studies in the 2nd century, animals have been used by scientists to further human knowledge. Yet few, if any subjects in this country, raise such violent feelings and passions as animals and their place in our society. With the growing politicisation of animal rights, it is a subject which is increasing in intensity. Do animals have rights and do our needs permit us to use them still to enhance our own lives in the twentieth century? Is it still necessary to experiment on animals for the good of humankind? Or is that morally unacceptable and barbaric - particularly in the light of new research into animal consciousness? With Colin Blakemore, Professor of Physiology, Oxford University, President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of the Royal Society and targeted in the 1980s by animal welfare activists protesting at his research methods; Dr Lynda Birke, biologist, teacher at Lancaster and Warwick Universities, and previously worked for 7 years in animal behaviour at the Open University."

"Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the importance of geography and ecology in determining world history since civilisation began. The 18th century historian Thomas Carlyle said that world history was the history of what great men have accomplished, but this understanding of history is being increasingly called into question. Professor Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel, which won the 1998 Rhone Poulenc Prize for Science and the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, is a re-evaluation of the last 13,000 years of the history of mankind - particularly in the light of geography and ecology. But what are the implications of looking at world history as being determined by geography and ecology? Is environment really the determining factor in history? And if so, what role does cultural heritage play in shaping different histories? With Professor Jared Diamond, ecologist and physiologist at the Los Angeles Medical School, University of California, and author of Guns, Germs and Steel; Richard Evans, Professor of Modern History, Cambridge University."

How fast are your reactions?

"Optical illusions are more than just a bit of fun. Scientist Beau Lotto is finding out what tricking the brain reveals about how our minds work. Here he explains his findings. Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell. We believe what our senses tell us but most of all we trust our eyes. But our brains are extraordinarily powerful organs. Without us realising it, they are instantly processing the information they receive to make sense of the world around us. And that has been crucial to our evolution. "