The Ascent of Man

While I was as captivated as all who enjoyed the release of this series on UK television, back when there were only three terrestrial TV channels available to us, a lot has developed in the last 50 years.

We were truly in awe of JB's knowledge. A super communicator, who had an such a warm delivery. Like your favourite teacher at school. I felt enriched. To be enlightened with the knowledge he shared. At the time you would have to visit many libraries, many times to come close to the knowledge that he had on the subject. The locations, the people, flora, fauna... we're way beyond the average citizens remit.

He was rightly held in high regard by his audiences and academic peers.

However, it appears slightly condescending at points, how he describes the pointless lives of the nomads whose toils in the bleakest of locations, well... amounted to nothing; how women and old people, were disregarded by the menfolk and left to die alone on mountainsides etc... It actually spoiled my memory of what was, in its day, a wonderfully produced educational masterpiece.

It is too simplistic to say that he constructed the series in a linear manner. Bronowski knew what he was doing, and he said that simple questions needed difficullt answers. But not in the space of 12 and a bit hours of televison. This was a (perfect) way in, to encourage complex thoughts, problem analysis and definition. Nothing else like it has appeared on broadcast media, certainly not the populism od Sagan or Burke.

If only he could speak today.

This landmark BBC series from 1973 covers, in thirteen episodes, humanity's scientific and technological discoveries, more or less chronologically. Its host is Jacob Bronowski, a Polish born, British based Jewish mathematician. Clearly an influence on Carl Sagan's Cosmos, this was a sort of an answer to Kenneth Clark's great series Civilization, which despite its title, did not cover science but only art (and only Western European art at that).

The short, brilliant Bronowski reminisces about his personal anecdotes with some of the greatest scientists and intellectuals of the 20th century, like Enrico Fermi, John Von Neumann, Leo Szilard and Aldous Huxley. As did Sagan in Cosmos, he puts himself ideologically in the humanist pro science center left (though he is not as strident an atheist as Sagan). Bronowski would die a year later after this was released from a heart attack. At times, during the series, he looks worn and tired (he was in his mid sixties when he filmed this). The shooting of this series in several countries (including places quite remote in the 1970s such as Easter Island and Machu Picchu or as emotionally moving as Auschwitz, where a large portion of his family died) must have been quite strenuous on him.

In 40 years, some of it has dated, naturally (the computer graphics look very crude now, and some of the scientific information has been surpassed by more recent knowledge) but this is still a very worthwhile, informative TV series to watch.

This extraordinary series, thirteen fifty-minute episodes, is one of television's highest achievements; nearly forty years after its completion, it has lost little of its luster.

A mathematician whose professional journey included work on the Manhattan Project, later at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, as well as an editor and scholar of the works of William Blake, Dr. Jacob Bronowski was one of the last true Renaissance men.

Presented here is a veritable smörgåsbord of human history cast against scientific advancements and technological innovations that take the viewer around the world, from the dawn of Man to the then-present of 1972. Along the way, Dr. Bronowski stops to examine some of humanity's greatest accomplishments - and lowest depths. One outstanding quality of this remarkable series is that he speaks to the viewer directly and very personally through the lens of the camera; the book of the same name is a virtual transcript of his remarks.

Not simply lectures (nor read from a script), these extemporaneous essays offer Bronowski's "personal view" on a wide range of human, scientific and technological history, presented in both a dramatic and memorable fashion. For example, the episodes are sprinkled with delightful (and sometimes moving) anecdotes of various people, some of whom Bronowski knew and worked with - such as Leo Szilard (who first conceived the concept of sustained nuclear fission - even coining the term "chain reaction" - and who subsequently wrote the letter which Einstein signed that was sent to FDR, bringing about the Manhattan Project) and John von Neumann (one of the great mathematicians of the twentieth century and the "Father of Electronic Computing").

Anyone with even a passing interest in the history of our species and its place amongst the stars, or of science in general, will be astonished, delighted, deeply moved and profoundly affected by "The Ascent of Man." The production value is of the highest order throughout (and, now in its second DVD incarnation, the sound, which was always somewhat problematic, has been greatly improved, matching the often stunning visuals).

(NOTE: Viewers who enjoy this series will also enjoy both the seven-part BBC miniseries "Oppenheimer" (1980) and their production of Michael Frayen's play "Copenhagen" (2002), both available on DVD.)

Highest possible recommendation.

Before Sagan's "Cosmos" and before James Burke's "Connections", Jacob Bronowski brought us a thoughtful examination of the history of mankind and his achievements. The angle here was to look at how those achievements effected events and shaped society as a whole.

I saw the series when it first aired, and was fascinated by it, but the series seemed non-linear, and I supposed to a young mind would seem disjointed. I still get some of that feeling when I rewatch episodes of this very good TV documentary.

I'll also add that a lot of factual history is correct, but I think Bronowski, as a social scientist, perhaps social psychologist, draws some of the wrong conclusions. Then again social science, like all sciences, is a field of research branching from the major hard sciences, so in this regard everyone is entitled to an opinion. The only way to nod or shake your head at Bronowski is to double check your own facts to see if he's right or not.

Bronowski takes us from man's humble beginnings in Africa, and shows us our primate ancestor's migratory pattern and how we populated the world today. But the real genius of the program is him showing us how our advances in understanding formed our civilization.

I applaud the program, but disagree with some of Bronowski's conclusions, though for the supermajority of the series, he does have things aright.

If you've seen Sagan or Burke do their thing with their TV series, then have a look at Bronowski's version from the early 70s. Definitely one to see for the scientist history buff in all of us.

Enjoy.