![]() The Ascent of Man may be an idea we had better do without. ![]() What do you mean, Man? What about Woman? And which Man? Surely not the European conquerors? And Ascent? Surely you're not implying that western civilisation is superior to everything that's gone before? And so on. Modern political correctness has lodged a suspicion in our mind about the Ascent of Man. Do we still believe in the story of progress? It sits in the attic of our minds like a glorious Victorian antique, as magnificent as a stuffed moose head and just as useless. We now live in ironic, anti-heroic times. The narrative of human progress was understood to be both a material and a moral process not just changing our technologies, but altering our instincts-and for the better. The thinkers of the Enlightenment wanted to replace the Biblical account of time (Genesis, Creation, Fall, Redemption) with a myth which put Man, not God, at the centre of the story. Progress became a theme in European thought in about 1750. These are works of grand humanist affirmation they affirm an idea of human progress, of man becoming master of himself and the world around. The theme allows us to see the lineage which connects, say, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Mahler's Second and Tippett's The Mask of Time. Prompted by these millennial and celestial conjunctions, the BBC is taking the Ascent of Man as the theme of the last Prom of this millennium. Come 31st December, most of the human race will be like children in the back seat of the family car, peeking over their parents' shoulders as all the nines on the speedo suddenly turn to zero and we find ourselves racing along the road of a new millennium. A time for still larger thoughts is looming. It was a moment for large thoughts-about how far we had come since our ancestors ran away in fear at the darkened sky, about how science has changed the way we feel about nature: panic turning into wonder or into that quintessential modern emotion, disenchantment. On viewing this you can judge for yourself whether risking a copyright battle with the BBC et al was/is worth it.On 11th august, hundreds of millions of people, from the Caribbean to the Bay of Bengal, stared skywards to watch the sun go dark. I struggled to find this show on the web, and the copies on Youtube when I last viewed them were awful. The title is also a clever allusion to Charles Darwin's second book on evolution, The Descent of Man. Unfortunately it never quite received the same attention as Cosmos and Carl Sagan - a show which, incidentally, was produced by the guy (Adrian Malone) seven years later. Not many people know about this incredible series, lesser still of the wonderful host. This series received serious acclaim for its accessibility to the layman (in large-part due to Bronowski's skillful, elegant, incisive storytelling ability) and the wide-range and quality of the location shoots. The series is based on a namesake book by Bronowski in which he tells the fascinating and quite unbelievable story of the development of civilisation as we today know it - that is, the story of The Ascent of Man. (5 / 13)įirst aired in 1973, The Ascent of Man is a 13-part documentary series written and presented by the brilliant Dr Jacob Bronowski, and produced by the BBC. Music Of The Spheres The language of numbers and mathematics.
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