The
book was released to correspond to a 13-episode
BBC commentary on the evolution of humankind. It is worth noting that the
series’ title is a pun on Charles Darwin’s book The Descent of Man. For the record, you can still watch the entire series
on the BBC website.
Jacob
Bronowski (18 January 1908 – 22 August 1974) was a Polish-British mathematician
and philosopher, according to an extensive write-up in Wikipedia, which
says “He is best known for developing a humanistic approach to science, and as
the presenter and writer of the thirteen-part 1973 BBC television documentary
series, and accompanying book, The Ascent of Man.
I
chose to buy the book because I had been totally mesmerized by the BBC series.
I think I got DVDs from the public library, but I checked: If they were once
available there, they aren’t anymore.
There
is a vast amount of depth in this book, from start to finish. To whet your
collective appetites, I will end these notes by quoting the first two
paragraphs of Chapter One, which is titled “Lower than the Angels.”:
Man is a singular creature. He has a
set of gifts which make him unique among the animals: so that, unlike them, he
is not a figure in the landscape – he is a shaper of the landscape. In body and
in mind he is the explorer of nature, the ubiquitous animal, who did not find
but has made his home in every continent.
It is reported that when the Spaniards
arrived overland at the Pacific Ocean in 1769 the California Indians used to
say that at the full moon the fish came and danced on these beaches. And it is
true that there is a local variety of fish, the grunion, that comes up out of
the water and lays its eggs above the normal high-tide mark. The full moon is
important, because it gives the time needed for the eggs to incubate
undisturbed in the sand, nine or tend days, between these very high tides and
the next ones that will wash the hatched fish out to sea again….
What
makes humankind different, he continues, is that humankind “is distinguished
from other animals by his imaginative gifts. He makes plans, inventions, new
discoveries, by putting different talents together; and his discoveries become
more subtle and penetrating, as he learns to combine his talents in more
complex and intimate ways. So the great discoveries of different ages and
different cultures, in techniques, in science, in the arts, express in their
progression a richer and more intricate conjunction of human facilities, an
ascending trellis of his gifts.”
That
quote comes from page 20 of this superb text. Don’t miss the 320 pages that
follow.
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