Jacob
Bronowski
“The Ascent of Man”
(1973)
Book
review by Peter Stoler
Time
magazine June 1974
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ
The
Ascent of Man
Two years
ago, Jacob Bronowski, a Polish born,
English educated mathematician, historian and biologist, traced man’s
scientific development in a widely acclaimed 13-part BBC television series, The
Ascent of Man. Now he has adapted his scripts into a book. The result is a long
(100,000 words), fascinating, beautifully illustrated essay about the qualities
of curiosity, imagination and inventiveness that lead man to explore the world
and the invisible laws that order it. The book is also an exercise in optimism,
With so many scientists predicting that humanity will destroy itself, anyone
who writes as enthusiastically about man as Bronowski does is practically
inviting a pie in the face from his apprehensive colleagues.
Bronowski
begins in the Great Rift Valley of Africa where, it is believed, the creature
that was to become man first put his footprints on the earth. The book ends in
the 20th century at the same location with Bronowski’s fearful, yet hopeful
look into the future. In between he leads the way through a catalogue of human
accomplishment, from Pythagoras on the mathematical laws that govern the
universe to the revolutionary observations of Ptolemy, Copernicus and Galileo;
from Newton's experiments on the diffraction of light to James Watson and
Francis Crick’s discovery of the key to the alphabet of life, the master
molecule DNA.
Bronowski
often bridges the gap between the two cultures, discoursing on everything from
the Mona Lisa to the construction of Rheims Cathedral. He demonstrates how the
flowering of art and architecture was a natural out-growth of expanding
knowledge in mathematics and the rules of perspective.
Bronowski
also corrects the popular notion that the Industrial Revolution simply forced
man to give up rural pleasures for urban horrors. This revolution, he points
out, freed man from age-old social strictures, creating a new aristocracy of
talent.
The
Industrial Revolution also gave Science a conscience. Men like Galileo and
Newton believed that science’s only responsibility was to tell the truth. The
idea that science is a social enterprise dates from the Industrial Revolution,
when both scientists and politicians faintly began to grasp the impact of
invention and technology on man and nature. “We are surprised that we cannot
trace a social sense further back,” writes Bronowski, “because we nurse the
illusion that the Industrial Revolution ended a golden age.”
The author
wisely does not predict where man’s skills will take him. As a scientist, he
recognizes that human progress is governed by the same uncertainty principle
that applies to the movement of electrons. Science can specify where a moving
electron is at any given moment, but cannot tell where the electron started
from or where it will stop. Nor can science be any more exact when it comes to
man. His origins are shrouded in mystery. All that is certain is that man is
still evolving and, if the past is really a prologue, ascending.
® Peter Stoler
Time magazine, June 3, 1974, [column:
Books], p. 78.
Jacob Bronowski, “The Ascent of Man”, January 1973.
ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΟΓΡΑΦΟΣ
[ ανάρτηση 30 Δεκεμβρίου 2024 :
Jacob Bronowski
“ The Ascent of Man ”
(1973)
Book review by Peter Stoler
Time magazine June 1974
ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΚΗ ΣΚΕΨΗ ]
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