topics: |  history | philosophy-western

I do believe that my father thought that the Ascent of Man was the
culmination of his life's work. At the time, that was an unfashionable view
to hold, to believe that TV might be a more important memorial than a book,
however accessible, but the challenge to produce the rounded intellectual
history of mankind was one to which he gave his whole life and it was the
memorial he wished to be remembered by.  - Lisa Jardine

review: Ilmas Futehally:
Jacob Bronowski, a mathematician trained in physics, examines the scientific
and intellectual history of humankind in his book The Ascent of Man. Though
the book is based on the television series aired on BBC in the 1970s, it is
far from outdated. Over 30 years after it was first published; The Ascent of
Man still invokes pride in our past and instils hope for our future in the
reader.

Covering a wide canvas from the dawn of man until the modern times, Bronowski
examines how man has been the shaper of his surroundings rather than being
shaped by it. Every other species has been adapted to fit into a certain
ecological niche; they have evolved for a particular environment. Man,
despite his comparatively weak physical attributes has been able to shape the
world with his unique set of gifts. Bronowski believes that it was not so
much biological evolution, but cultural evolution that has made man what he
is today.

Tracing the evolution of human from their hunter gather phase to the present
one, he says that the change in diet from plant to animal based materials
gave humans more time free to spend on building capabilities to get food from
sources that could not be tackled by brute force. The most marked effect of
this was to foster group action and communication. The next single largest
step in the ascent of man was the change from a nomadic way of life to
village agriculture, made possible by a set of natural and human
events. Settled agriculture creates a technology from which all sciences take
off.

Taking the reader on a journey through time, Bronowski delights in the
inventions and scientific discoveries made over the last ten thousand years-
from the domestication of wheat in 8000 BC to the double helix structure of
the DNA in the 1950s. He describes the tools that extend the human hand as an
instrument of vision- they reveal new structures and make it possible to put
them together in imaginative combinations.

By delving deep into the lives and thoughts of an extraordinary range of
people, Bronowski discusses a wider range of complex subjects from
Anthropology to Astronomy and from Mathematics to the Life Sciences. He
reveals the linkages that bring together cultures by introducing us to
Pythagoras, who found a basic relation between musical harmony and
mathematics, Euclid, Ptolemy and Arab scholars who delighted in calculation
and geometry. The author demonstrates how the spread of ideas along the trade
routes - the spread of the numeral system for notation of numbers from the
Arab world and the decimal system from India - changed mathematics forever.

From mathematics to astronomy is a logical step. The Mayan civilization
housed their astronomers in pyramid like structures and developed calendars
to trace the journey of the stars, Copernicus placed the sun at the centre of
the planetary system and Galileo gave his life to prove that this was so. The
lives of these people have a profound impact on the modern way of life. While
no account of the ascent of man can leave out Isaac Newton and Albert
Einstein, Bronowski describes more than their work. He shows us how they
thought and how their characters defined their work.

The Industrial Revolution was the greatest discoverer of power- a time when
new sources of energy were discovered and used. With this came many of the
characteristics of the modern world that we abhor- the factory system with
inhuman work hours, tyrannical bosses, pollution and the domination of men by
machines. While bringing these to our notice, Bronowski does not leave out
the other side of this age - the delight of discovery and the sense of fun in
finding new ways of doing things. He believes that this revolution is as
important as the Renaissance in the ascent of man- while one established the
dignity of man; the other established the unity of nature.

Describing the theory of evolution by natural selection put forward by
Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, Bronowski says that it was the most
important single scientific innovation of the nineteenth century. It shows
that the world is in movement and that creation is not static; it changes
with time unlike the physical world. Another discovery that has shaped
biology is one by contemporary scientists, which express the cycle of life in
a chemical form that links them to nature as a whole.

Turning to the physical sciences, Bronowski says that the aim of the physical
sciences has been to give an exact picture of the material world. One
achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that aim is
unattainable! Physicists have shown that there is no absolute knowledge; all
information is imperfect and we have to treat it with humility.

In the last chapter in book, titled The Long Childhood, Bronowski goes back
to what makes man human and what has made the ascent of man possible. He
says, “We are all afraid - for our confidence, for the future, for the
world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man, every
civilization has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set
itself to do. The personal commitment of man to his skill, the intellectual
commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the
Ascent of Man.”