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Leading philosopher Professor A C Grayling explains what we can still learn from the greatest ever change in the mental outlook of humanity that took place in the 17th century.

In his latest book, The Age of Genius, Grayling describes the birth of the modern mind in the 17th century. He questions what happened to the human mind between 1605, when a crowd watching Shakespeare’s Macbeth could believe that regicide would lead to ghosts bursting out of the ground, and 1649, when a crowd could watch the execution of a king. It was a period that saw science replacing alchemy and astrology and was the era of the likes of Galileo, Newton, Francis Bacon and Descartes. But what lessons does this era still hold for our troubled times?

Grayling is master of New College of the Humanities. He has written and edited more than 30 books on philosophy and other subjects including The Good Book, Ideas That Matter, Liberty in the Age of Terror, To Set Prometheus Free, Friendship and The Challenge of Things. He believes philosophy should take an active and useful role in society.