The Ascent of Man

Fifty years ago today, the first episode of Jacob Bronowski's ground-breaking series, The Ascent of Man, was broadcast on BBC2. I can dimly remember watching it and wondering at how far we had come as a human race. 

(image: Wikimedia Commons)

The thirteen episodes followed the development of humankind through the lens of our understanding of science. The first five programmes dealt with our evolution from the earliest stages of human life to the height of the Middle Ages. Episodes six onwards covered the beginnings of modern science, from Galileo's discovery of Copernicus's theory of a heliocentric universe, through the laws of Newton and Einstein, the effects of science and technology as seen in the Industrial Revolution, and Darwin and Wallace's theories on the origin of species, to developments in modern chemistry, biology and physics.

In episodes 11 and 12 in particular, Bronowski shared his misgivings about what people do with their imperfect knowledge of science, which can lead to dreadful, or at best, ambiguous, outcomes - the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and modern developments in genetics, such as cloning. It was a fascinating series, and the book which came from it is well worth reading.

I wonder what Bronowski would have made of the developments in our world in the fifty years since the programme was broadcast - the many ways in which we have raped and pillaged the natural world in the name of human progress, let alone the many examples of "man's inhumanity to man" to quote Robert Burns. Sadly, we will never know, as he died the year after the programmes were broadcast.

Interestingly, the series was commissioned by David Attenborough, then Controller of BBC2, who has been a staunch speaker on the high costs of human progress in terms of the rest of the world with whom we share this planet.