The Ascent of Man Set

I watched this as a child; then my parents bought me the companion book. Jacob Bronowski is the perfect teacher. He was a British Jew who lived through the time of the Holocaust. Nevertheless, he maintained an optimism about the ability of mankind to grow and overcome its worst faults. You can tell this by the very title series, a playful copy of Darwin's "The Descent of Man".Bronowski weaves together the strands of human history, intellectual history, and scientific history for the most enjoyable series of lectures you will ever watch, all filmed on location. Splendid, must buy.

Once upon a time we knew it as National Educational Television and it carried local college classes, on an experimental basis, (My dad taught one of those classes); a few cooking shows, and other odd ball items. I can remember lots about civil defense and how to recognize and avoid blasting caps.Then in 1970 it became the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Public Broadcasting Service. There was very little cable for mainstream America . Through PBS would flow all manner of thoughtful and innovative programming. Among the most ground breaking and important would be from England, and of these Kenneth Clark's Civilization (1969) and Jacob's Bronowski ( 1973) along with Sagan's Cosmos, Burke's Connections and a few others proved that there was a market for thoughtful, intelligent and passionate television.From this discovery came the backing for later cable channels like Arts and Entertainment and The History Channel. Unfortunately for those channels these original programs also proved that this level of discourse required presenters capable of communicating at high level. What's more you had to fill entire schedules in a world where that kind of talent is scarce. And so these channels now give equal time to "reality "programming and ghost hunting.For those would accuse Bronowski of egotism, I suggest some idea of his bio may help. Bronowski left Poland where it was dangerous to be Jewish. He arrived in England with no English. He would develop a dual passion of Mathematics and literature. He married in London in 1941 during a bombing raid. He would serve out the war working in both math and physics as part of the British Nuclear weapons effort. In 1945 he was part of the British Chiefs of Staff Mission to study the effects of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. This would mark the end of his military work and see him more active in fields like scientific ethics and statistical studies of the economics of industry. Appointed as a director of Coal Research Establishment of the National Coal Board; he headed the research into smokeless fuels and one early form of such fuel was called "Bronowski's Bricks".Sources:[...]In the 1950's he was asked to assist in solving a problem in paleontology. It is this experience that will serve as the opening to the Accent of Man Broadcast. His interests would shift to biology but always with an eye to the parallels between arts and science.By the time he was approached to do The Ascent of Man he was a popular lecturer and author of many books. It not an accident that Jacob Bronowski is invited to give us his personal views. To sum up the aforesaid in more modern parlance: He was all that.Professor Bronowski employs a typical lecture style. The episodes are described as "unscripted" but we know he would have had complete lecture notes, if only to maintain continuity between segments that would be filmed far apart. This forms a familiar starting point. He has a tightly designed purpose to each episode and a passionate desire to engage you in his visceral response to events, people and ideas. We are not just told of the phony case against Galileo, we go with him into the secret Vatican Library and he handles each of the documents that prove his points. Note that he is trusted into the Vatican vaults. Bronowski will have direct access to all manner of diaries, working papers and historic homes.In each episode we will travel to the places and touch the things that come together as man learns to observe nature, predict the utility of planting seeds, gain control of his immediate condition and eventually gain mastery of the esoteric and remote facts of the physical world.Bronowski begins by telling us that a defining characteristic of the human is the willingness of the individual to push their limits for the pure joy of this effort. Humans uniquely work /play to capacity not for survival but to lend pleasure to the drab business of survival.A second theme that runs throughout the episodes is the fact that the sciences and the arts developed in parallel, often in cooperation with each other. This is a fact we tend to deny, Bronowski is correct.The emotional moment comes in episode 11 Knowledge or Certainty. He has progressed into the history of his generation. In physics and math the discussion was of the Quantum and the Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. Science had come to realize that there were exact, measurable limits on what could be known. Bronowski would prefer that we call it the Principle of Tolerance arguing that what can be known has a built in margins of tolerance.There is however a darker reason for this suggestion. Just as physics was moving into the post Newtonian world, the political world in Europe, across Russia and into Asia was moving into a world of intolerance and the certainty needed justify the intolerance. Fascism, Communism, Militarism all depend on certainty. Certainty is as much a death knell to proper scientific thinking as it is to art as it is to humanity. If `A' is right, and there can be no discussion, then `B' is wrong and deserve abuse and worse.There can be only a few visuals more tragic and emotional then that of Jacob Bronowski, standing in the stream that runs through the concentration camp at Auschwitz, where members of his family were reduced to ashes and taking a clump of black mass from the bottom of the stream pleads for tolerance.Yes this is old science, but he is speaking to the time when these thoughts were new. These points in time rarely need updating. The computer graphic are extremely out of date, yet they serve. Much of his wardrobe is so out of fashion as to be a history lesson in themselves. These things are minor, period distractions.What is of importance? The story being told, the passion driving the story telling, the depth and creative thinking, the natural story arch and the unifying themes are why The Ascent of Man can reach into your brain and into soul from 1973 to today.

Jacob Bronowski, unusually for an academic, performs admirably as a television presenter. He is charming, persuasive, and intimate as he conveys the gradual forward-march of scientific understanding from pre-history through to his own period at the end of the sixth decade of the twentieth century. He handles complex subjects and trains of events by reducing them to their essentials without undue simplification, and he shows how social factors have so often influenced the development (or conversely the stultification) of science. He conjures up moments in time, important personages, and vital ideas with a few well-chosen words and he is gently passionate in his art of persuasion. For anyone wanting an encapsulation of scientific thought since Euclid, this series is worth every penny for that alone.Yet it is more. Bronowski is above all else a humanist, deeply concerned about the way in which knowledge liberates mankind from suspicion, error, and confusion. In his personal view, the ascent of man is an ascent from ignorance towards understanding, and from actions ruled by dogma and fear to actions guided by reason and tolerance. This is an idealist's series of programs aimed above all else at encouraging the viewer to consider life more carefully and in consequence act more thoughtfully.As such, of course, it can aspire but perhaps not succeed. One of the most revealing moments in the series is when Bronowski talks about evolutionary theory being completely accepted and no longer argued over. He could make that statement in 1971 but in 2008 it is untrue. In the opening of the 1970s Bronowski was worried about the post-hippy tendency towards vague mysticism and escapist fantasy. Some forty years on, the world is a much worse place for humanists than he could ever have imagined. The intellectual life of the USA has been addled by bigoted mythologists and Islam has become a pejorative term through association with barbaric terrorism. Academic discourse in the west has long since been hijacked by irrelevant idealogues preaching illiterate nonsense and the rest of the world lacks almost entirely any domain in which thought may run free. Clearly the ascent of man is far from being a linear process and it is entirely possible that our dazzling inventions will ultimately be the cause of our demise as a species. We have mastered the art of fire, but we have not acquired the cast of mind necessary to use it wisely.From a technical perspective there are several irritations: far too many sequences of pictures with awful music, really bad artwork and worse ties, poor sound quality and grainy video quality. But ultimately none of that matters. We do not disparage Thucydides' writings on the Peloponnesian War because the parchments on which they were transmitted are now yellowed and cracked with age. We do not dicount Newton's masterful account of a clockwork universe because his handwriting was awkward and his terminology somewhat obscure. And so the technical imperfections and stylistic infelicities of this series should not interpose themselves between us and our deep appreciation of this unique work. It is sadly quite unimaginable that any equivalent set of programs could be made today. Our age is darker than Bronowski's time and so we shall not see its successor.

Was much inspired watching this on PBS in the 70's, the first series exhibits poor picture quality...most likely shot on 16m super, the remaining series were better, most likely Time-Life (Warner Bros) didn't have mush to work with....presented at a high school level with impressive historical backdrop locations. If you buy the book, at least the first edition is of such poor paper quality one wonders how it was approved....the book with the DVD series provides an interesting reference companion. The DVD is NOT HD quality but acceptable, wouldn't think how bad the VHS version was....RECOMMEND PURCHASE

Amazing series!! I had seen a few clips in my high school socio/anthro class. I went to a French high school so the TV was on mute and the teacher did her best, but nothing compares to sitting down and listening, I mean REALLY LISTENING to this man!The video quality is above adequate for a DVD transfered 4 years ago, but the sound is sometimes a little dampened. Dr. Bronowski is difficult to understand at times, and the sub-titles will come in handy. As for the box-set; Although attractive on my bookshelf, the packaging for each DVD case is repetitive, and the cardboard box is rather thin. (These aspects don't bother me nearly enough to take a star away from my rating.)Each episode is brimming with great information ranging from human evolution to chemistry, agriculture to physics and architechture to social evolution. The cinematography is often heart-stopping and the mix of music makes for a very abstract score for a documentary (Pink Floyd later in the episodes!!). Some of the images are very risqué for today's easily-bothered standards and might put off some of the younger crowd. Keep in mind, this documentary from the 1970's and was made in Britain. Seeing it once will absolutely NOT be enough!On a side note, I suggest watching Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" before delving into this one. I found that Sagan's Personal Voyage is a great way to ease yourself (or more precisely, the younger crowd) into these unorthodox type of documentaries. Sagan was actually inspired to make "Cosmos" after Bronowski did "Ascent". And Bronowski was inspired after Clark's "Civilisation".

Excellent serie

Jacob Bronowski's epic journey along the ascent of man is brilliant at all levels; he is witty, deeply thoughtful, and erudite to the max. There are only a few minor regrets about this collection of visual essays--they've been too severely edited, so we miss seeing Brobnowski walking between the flying buttresses of Rheims cathedral, the full effect of the striking match, and, most of all, the stop-frame technique as he lets ashes from cremated bodies drop back into a pond at Auschwitz. What is also a real treasure of this saga is that, unlike in North America where the presenter woud be some beauty king/queen, Bronowski is no beauty--but he IS obviously an expert in a myriad of fields! One would wish to have had the chance to chat with him as that experience would have been mind-expanding!

'The Ascent of Mankind'.A truly great (in the real sense) pioneering documentary. Sadly not many are made like this any more, apart from those of David Attenborough, who as Controller of the new BBC 2 in the late 1960s was the pioneer who commissioned this series in early colour. It was intended as the scientific follow up to the worldwide hit series on western european culture presented by Lord Clark 'Civilisation' , and Alastair Cooke's 'America'. also commissioned by BBC 2.What a relief to switch over from the unchallenging TV of today to watch a ground breaking documentary (of its time). A gripping and fascinating history of science with an impressively brilliant presenter, Dr Jacob Bronowski, who assumed an educated audience, able to concentrate.13 mind stretching instalments and a fascinating booklet about its making. 'Civilisation' is now being remade, so let's hope 'The Ascent of Man' will also have a modern sequel.Pity it wasn't titled 'The Ascent of Mankind' though. Not recommended for Tweeting Twits.

Some viewers may think this series dated but nothing made since 1973 has surpassed it as a history of science and the development of mankind's understanding of the physical world.The scene in episode 11 where Bronowski is at Auschwitz is indescibably moving.The only problem with the set is the extremely poor and inaccurate subtitling. The other great series are Kenneth Clark's Civilization and Carl Sagan's Cosmos.