James Burke's The Day The Universe Changed (1985)

Episode 1 - The Way We Are Written and presented by James Burke, this 10-part series traces the development of Western thought through its major transformations since the days of ancient Greece. Program one is an overview of the series, showing how a culture's view of the world around it determines how it sees itself, and is reflected even in the smallest details of its customs and habits.

Episode 2 - In the Light of the Above Relates that in the course of overrunning Moorish Spain, Christian Europe discovered libraries, universities, optics, mechanics, and natural philosophy. This rediscovery of classical knowledge led to the founding of universities and the replacement of Augustinian philosophies by Aristotelian theories.

Episode 3 - Point of View Shows that Western EuropeG??s rediscovery of perspective through the study of Arab optics led to revolutions in art and architecture. The WestG??s new-found ability to control things at a distance resulted in new methods of warfare and the confidence to make long voyages of exploration.

Episode 4 - A Matter of Fact Observes that the invention of printing and the advent of cheap paper forever transformed the nature of knowledge from the local and traditional to the systematic and testable. Nationalism, public relations, and propaganda are among the results.

Episode 5 - Infinitely Reasonable Notes that investigators such as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton evolved better explanations of natural phenomena than those of Aristotle. Highlights the theories that led to a new conception of how the universe works and of man's place in it.

Episode 6 - Credit Where It's Due Locates the origins of contemporary consumerism in the English industrial Revolution, powered by religious dissenters barred from all activities except trade. The invention of the steam engine, new forms of credit, surplus wealth and opening markets laid the foundation for industrial society.

Episode 7 - What the Doctor Ordered Traces modern society's recognition of the value of statistics to medical advances stemming from responses to the French Revolution and an English cholera epidemic. Identifies the origins of medicine as a science with the discovery of anesthesia, antiseptics, and bacteriology.

Episode 8 - Fit to Rule Tracks the expectation of change, fundamental to contemporary society, through the developing sciences of botany, geology, and biology to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin's theory, in turn, has been used as a justification for Nazism, communism, and cut-throat capitalism.

Episode 9 - Making Waves Points out that studies of the properties of magnetism, electricity, and light have led scientists to the realization that Newtonian physics is inadequate to explain all that they observe. The public, meanwhile, has continued to concentrate on the technological by-products of science.

Episode 10 - Worlds Without End Observes that over the centuries Western civilization has regularly shifted its conception of the nature of truth. Citing the example of Nepalese Buddhism, a system as complete and satisfactory of Nepal as science is for the West, the series ends with a plea for tolerance.