The Day the Universe Changed

Did You Know?

• In the PBS screening, an afterword segment after each episode featured Professor Benjamin Dunlap of the University of South Carolina discussing details with Burke.
• The series was rebroadcast on The Learning Channel in 1993.
• A companion book with the same title, also by Burke, was published in 1985.

Episodes

The series runs in roughly chronological order from the Middle Ages to the present. Episode 1, "The Way We Are: It Started with the Greeks," opens the sequence. Episode 2, "In the Light of the Above: Medieval Conflict: Faith & Reason," traces the shift from mysticism toward structured logic and reason. Episode 3, "Point of View: Scientific Imagination in the Renaissance," covers geometry's influence on art, cartography, and warfare.

Episode 4, "A Matter of Fact: Printing Transforms Knowledge," addresses printing's impact on knowledge perception and language standardization. Episode 5, "Infinitely Reasonable: Science Revises the Heavens," examines mathematics in astronomy and its effect on religious belief. Episode 6, "Credit Where It's Due: The Factory & Marketplace Revolution," looks at commerce's effects on work, identity, and rights. Episode 7, "What the Doctor Ordered: Social Impacts of New Medical Knowledge," discusses public health and medicine's changing status.

Episode 8, "Fit to Rule: Darwin's Revolution," covers systematization from Linnaeus to Darwin. Episode 9, "Making Waves: The New Physics: Newton Revised," explores magnetism, electricity, and light challenging Newtonian physics.

Reception

Alfred Unger of The Christian Science Monitor wrote that the series is "studded with flashes of insight amid its potpourri of intellectual revelations" and that Burke believes it will encourage viewers to examine what they know and possibly develop a new way of looking at things. John Corry of The New York Times described it as "television on a grand scale" and noted that Burke is interested in ideas that "bubble and perk throughout," adding that viewers may get lost but will likely stay interested. Diana Simmonds of The Sydney Morning Herald called the series "exciting" and compared Burke's television style to that of Robert Hughes or J.K. Galbraith, adding that Burke is also "naughty – like a mischievous elf."

Music

Carl Davis composed the main title theme and some incidental music. The series also made extensive use of brief extracts from classical music. Episode 1 includes works by Krzysztof Penderecki, William Walton, Ottorino Respighi, Michael Praetorius, Olivier Messiaen, Richard Wagner, Marcel Landowski, Vangelis, Dmitri Shostakovich, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Prokofiev. Episode 2 features Messiaen, Respighi, Walton, Michael Tippett, and Benjamin Britten.

Episode 3 uses Respighi, Tomás Luis de Victoria, and Praetorius. Episode 4 includes Carl Orff, Giuseppe Verdi, and Camille Saint-Saëns. Episode 5 features Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Annibale Padovano, Vincenzo Galilei, David Bedford, Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, and Henry Purcell. Episode 6 includes Vaughan Williams, Thomas Arne, George Lloyd, and Hubert Parry.

Episode 7 uses Igor Stravinsky, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, Johann Sebastian Bach, Shostakovich, Saint-Saëns, Aaron Copland, and Franz Liszt. Episode 8 features Franz von Suppe, Georg Friedrich Handel, Ludwig van Beethoven, Antonín Dvořák, Robert Busby, Wagner, Roberto Pregardio, Carl Nielsen, Arthur Honegger, and Pierre De Geyter.