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The Ascent of Man (عالم المعرفة #39)

4.22 of 5 stars 4.22 · rating details · 1,727 ratings · 65 reviews

Lauded by critics and devoured by countless readers as a companion to the acclaimed PBS series, this work traces the development of science as an expression of the special gifts that characterize man and make him preeminent among animals. Bronowski's exciting, splendidly illustrated investigation offers a new perspective not just on science, but on civilization itself. Pho...more

Paperback, 448 pages

Published August 1st 1976 by Little Brown and Company (first published 1973)

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Feb 08, 2012 Joshua Nomen-Mutatio rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Joshua Nomen-Mutatio by: Bobby Trigg

Shelves: evolutionary-theory, history, miscellaneous-natural-science

"It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how the...more

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Jul 04, 2009 Jee Koh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Based on the BBC television series of the same name, The Ascent of Man charts the development of human civilization through the lens of scientific progress. Though clearly intended to be only an introduction to its subjects, the book is tremendously wide in scope, taking in paleontology, architecture, alchemy, industrialization, quantum physics and genetics; noticeably, it has little to say about psychology. It is organised in powerful thematic chapters that are also more or less chronological....more Based on the BBC television series of the same name, The Ascent of Man charts the development of human civilization through the lens of scientific progress. Though clearly intended to be only an introduction to its subjects, the book is tremendously wide in scope, taking in paleontology, architecture, alchemy, industrialization, quantum physics and genetics; noticeably, it has little to say about psychology. It is organised in powerful thematic chapters that are also more or less chronological. So it begins by looking at human fossils in Chapter 1 Lower than the Angels, and ends by discussing John von Neumann and game theory in Chapter 13 The Long Childhood. Since the book was published in 1973, I expect its discussion of contemporary science (and perhaps historical events and figures) needs updating. But, as the chapter titles suggest, the book is not so much concerned with presenting up-to-date facts as with creating "a philosophy for the twentieth century which shall be all of one piece" (from the Foreword).

It is a philosophy that puts man at the center of things. He is, in this book, the seeker of knowledge, and seek using the tools of observation, reasoning, and conversation. I guess the philosophy can be called scientific rationalism. And one of the many achievements of this lucid and learned book is to restore the viability of this view. It does so by not ignoring the fall-out from technological progress, whether it be the harsh factories of the Industrial Revolution or the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagaski. It does so also by reminding us of the responsible actions taken by some industrialists and innovators in their respective situations, and so proves its point that science was not to blame, but man's uses of it were. Related to this, Bronowski deplores what he calls "the aristocracy of the intellect," scientists who move away from the needs of people, and into the arms of government, industry and corporations. Bronowski calls for, instead, "a democracy of the intellect." By that he means a society that not only allows the specialist to do specialist things, but also educates the non-specialists like us on how nature works.

Jacob Bronowski was a British mathematician, biologist, poet and playwright. In reflection of the different facets of his mind, his prose is clear, organizing, poetic, with a strong feel for the dramatic illustration or detail. I read all 438 pages of the book in the course of two leisurely days. The accompanying pictures are often revelatory as well. At his death in 1974, a year after the publication of the book, he was a Fellow of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California.

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Jan 13, 2013 mahatma rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

saya membaca ini versi lamanya di tahun 80-an,
ketika dikenalkan oleh pak yuswadi saliya, pengajar sejarah arsitektur kami.
nemu buku ini lagi di goodreads, ketika sudah lupa lagi isi buku ini secara detailnya. hihi..

meski pun nama bronowski bener-bener asing bagi kami waktu itu, tapi pak yuswadi tidak hanya mengenalkan buku ini namun juga buku-buku bronowski yang lain lagi: the visionary eye dan the origin of knowledge and imagination. ini semua buku-buku mengenai sejarah ilmu pengetahuan dan sen...more

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Dec 19, 2012 Smcleish rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned

Originally published on my blog here in August 2001.

Like Kenneth Clarke's Civilisation, The Ascent of Man is a series looked up to by every producer of factual, educational TV programmes. It probably wouldn't get made today, as its broad canvas is not really fashionable, and it is not about ordinary people. Its subject is the history of science, far removed from the pseudo-anthropology of "Reality TV".

The arrangement of material is a little unusual; it is basically thematic, each chapter trackin...more

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Nov 05, 2012 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science

THE ASCENT OF MAN. (1973; this ed. 2011). Jacob Bronowski. ****.
It’s hard to believe that almost forty years ago I was watching this series on PBS. I immediately went out and bought the companion book to the series and read it straight through. This edition, published by The Folio Society, is a reprint of that edition with a new foreword by Mervyn Bragg, and was one of the presentation volumes for 2012 members. After reading it again, I found that some of its contents were slightly dated, but o...more

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Aug 31, 2012 Paul Brogan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science

There are two things to remember about this book. First, it was published in 1973: it is surprising how, in the course of only 40 years, our knowledge of our evolutionary history has advanced. Second, it was originally a TV series made by the BBC, so the book is arranged into 13 essays, I assume based on the original episodes.

The book starts logically enough, at our roots in east Africa five million years ago. Bronowski doesn’t make nearly enough, however, of how touch-and-go it was, not only th...more There are two things to remember about this book. First, it was published in 1973: it is surprising how, in the course of only 40 years, our knowledge of our evolutionary history has advanced. Second, it was originally a TV series made by the BBC, so the book is arranged into 13 essays, I assume based on the original episodes.

The book starts logically enough, at our roots in east Africa five million years ago. Bronowski doesn’t make nearly enough, however, of how touch-and-go it was, not only then but at several points later, when we could easily have just become extinct. I think that this is mainly because much of what we have learned about the tenuousness of our evolution we have done so quite recently. Indeed, several human branches did die out, including the Neanderthal, and, if a new book on this topic were to be written, I’d like to see more attention paid to the possible reasons for these demises.

He does make the valid point, however, that our weakness, as well as our strength, lay in the fact that we were not nearly as shaped by our environment as other animals were, honed over time into a perfect fit with those things we ate, and those that would eat us. Rather, it is the brain-hand relationship of the human that caused us rather to shape our environment, gradually. While this was an eventual advantage, is was not always so, and things like climate change forced us to migrate or to face inevitable annihilation.

It is also interesting how, at the time, the main source of our information concerning how both Homo erectus and Homo sapiens migrated across the globe was blood groups. DNA analysis was then still a young science. However, blood groups did allow us a very good guess at the process. For example, it enabled us to determine that humans crossed the Bering Strait into North America, not in one, but in two separate migrations, something confirmed by DNA analysis, albeit with more precision.

The next chapter deals with the transition from a nomad culture, tracking the paths of animal herds, to one of agriculture. This, according to Bronowski, starts 12,000 years ago, which leaves an enormous gap from the appearance of Homo sapiens, 150,000 years ago, and even earlier in the case of Homo erectus, in which it is assumed that our ancestors happily continued their hunting and gathering lifestyle. What evidence we have, especially here in Africa, indeed points in that direction, but it is sparse. It’s as if several chapters are missing from the human story, the bit between the development of tools and the domestication of both animals and plants. Again, I should have liked a more thorough attempt at fleshing out the gaps.

The ensuing chapters spend time on particular human achievements, such as mathematics, architecture, music, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and so on. This read like a history book and, while interesting, it was not so much about the ascent of man — some may say that he had already ascended when he founded his first city, his first enclosure against the vagaries of the elements — as it was about his applying the finishing touches to a remarkable project that started five million years ago, that was not always assured of success, and that will forever be a work in progress.

Summarizing, I enjoyed the book, but knowledge moves on, man continues to ascend, and an update would be welcome.(less)

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May 12, 2011 Koen Crolla rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I never thought I'd say this, but this book would be better if it had been written by an anthropologist rather than a mathematician.

The Ascent of Man is the companion book to the 1973 BBC documentary of the same name; I didn't realise this when I bought it (I haven't seen it), but I remembered I knew of its existence upon reading the introduction. It certainly reads like a BBC documentary, with a tediously slow and pompous prose that works better for television narration by David Attenborough or...more I never thought I'd say this, but this book would be better if it had been written by an anthropologist rather than a mathematician.

The Ascent of Man is the companion book to the 1973 BBC documentary of the same name; I didn't realise this when I bought it (I haven't seen it), but I remembered I knew of its existence upon reading the introduction. It certainly reads like a BBC documentary, with a tediously slow and pompous prose that works better for television narration by David Attenborough or indeed Jacob Bronowski than for a book.
It sets out to give an overview of the whole of human history, briefly going over our biological evolution, and then covering in some detail our cultural evolution.

It's worth noting that Bronowski isn't, despite what seems to be a sincere effort, a biologist, historian, or anthropologist, but a mathematician with a background in physics. Maybe this is why his discussion of our evolutionary origins is often too sloppy (for instance, he explains that he does not like the name Australopithecus because it means ``southern ape'', which is confusing for something that ``for the first time was not an ape'', which is obviously wrong; I considered that probably to be an artefact of his native Polish, which, like most languages, does not have a colloquial distinction between monkeys and apes but does have one between monkeys and non-human apes on the one hand (małpa) and humans on the other, but Bronowski made it clear later on that he doesn't speak a word of Polish anymore), and his discussion of history just repeats a whole lot of layperson misconceptions and ancient canards (starting with the idea that nomadic cultures are culturally arid, because nomads don't have time to create artifacts that aren't strictly practical or the ability to cart them around with them, and just continuing on from there until he reaches the 20th century).
Or maybe it's just because the book was written in 1973, before many of the things we now know were well-known (for instance, the reason the New World lagged behind the Old in terms of technology; Bronowski suggests it's because it was colonised later, around the end of the last ice age, ignoring his earlier statement that that's also the time period cultural evolution began in earnest in the Old World as well) and when the kind of cultural condescension he exhibits (casually referring to Europe as ``the civilised world'', completely disregarding China and ``the Mohammedans'' (though he calls Mohammed ``Mahomet'') even as he patronisingly praises the latter for their Golden Age mathematics elsewhere) was more acceptable. I don't know.

Either way, and high-profile accolades notwithstanding (Dawkins, Sagan, Singh), The Ascent of Man could be a lot better than it is. Bronowski should have gotten a historian to punch him in the chest from time to time.(less)

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Sep 21, 2012 Roberta McDonnell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Though I enjoyed the book and dvd, there are a few quirks that have set a number of social anthropologists off - things like stating that some cultures are somehow more primitive or less civilized. I think there was a little bit of unconscious channeling of the mode of talk of the time (late 60s, early 70s) and perhaps an unfortunate choice of words. If you can suspend the inevitable cringe at those moments then the series is really a very enjoyable and informative one. And there are some real p...more

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May 13, 2012 Alicia rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I assume you already know that this is a survey course of history. I read this book centuries ago -- perhaps in my 20s. I seem to recall that it (documentary and book) came out shortly before James Burke's "Connections", a similar series on the serendipitous advances in science. I know I was fascinated.

I would highly recommend The Ascent of Man to the bright young person with a curious turn of mind. History gets a bum rap (though I'm prejudiced) until one is reminded that it is woven, not drawn,...more

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Nov 28, 2011 Nicholas rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science

I picked a copy of this up on the strength of the recommendations made by David Deutsch in his "The Beginning Of Infinity" book.It is basically a potted history of human innovation from prehistory and the developement of bronze and iron to genetics and game theory.
I found his explanations where clear and thorough and far surpassed those of more recent authors such as Richard Dawkins and Matt Ridley when it came to biology and evolutionary theory, although at times the prose was a little convol...more

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Apr 26, 2012 Dick Edwards rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 22, 2011 Jason Estrin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Brilliant. This book inspired me in a way that I've never been before. What is explained by the man, is nothing short of crystal clear descriptions of Humankind's physical, scientific, sociological and theological discoveries from the very first roaming tribes to our modern era. It is presented, stripped of the wordy, overly philosophical ramblings and data heavy meanderings found in other books that cover similar subject matter. Concise, endearing, earthy, genius. A must for anybody who needs a...more

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Sep 29, 2012 Timothy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Amazing and inspiring insights, Bronowski expresses a beautiful world view. I only wish this was something I would have experienced when I was very young, or could have walked with him and chatted on that same San Diego beach that I recognize so well.

I highly recommend watching the series alongside reading the book; there's a remarkable charm to this man, and once you see even one episode it becomes difficult to read the book without hearing his voice... with those lovely rolling r's and the imp...more

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Jul 03, 2010 Nick rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Patricia Edie

Finished after 3 weeks of slogging through it. I took that long, not because it isn't interesting, but because it is. With a book like this one I like to read and give thought and analysis what I have read. It is just the way my thinking works, I guess I'm not that "quick".
The Ascent of Man is our scientific development from the start using small ancient hand tools and the emergence of our humanity through the development of quantum physics, DNA, cognitive science, artificial intelligence. and b...more

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Jun 05, 2012 Ahlam al-jurdi rated it 5 of 5 stars

الكتاب عندي 257 صفحة فقط ..
بعد أن انتهيت وذهلت أستطيع أن أقول أنه نسخة أصغر فلسفياً وشمولاً لكنها أمتع أدبياً من كتاب كيف تغير العالم لجيمس بيرك .. عرض المؤلف بتسلسل ذكي خطوات ارتقاء الإنسان منذ أصوله الأقل بيولوجياً حتى عصره هو .. عصر ثورة العلم وإنجازاته .. مر على مستعمرات الصيد وحضارات كانت عامرة كالإنكا والإغريق عرّج على ديار الإسلام .. ثم عصر النهضة تناول قفزاته المذهلة بتركيز أكثر. كان ممتعاً فعلاً حس الكاتب العلمي أولاً ثم الأدبي والفلسفي مزج باقتدار .. في النهاية توصل إلى ذات النتيجة "م...more

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Feb 01, 2013 Alex Pasternak rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm very glad a friend of mine lent me this book. I loved its unique approach to human progress: revisiting our various scientific and intellectual milestones. There's some dense material occasionally, but most of it was kept at a very readable level.

Bronowski obviously knew his stuff, and even had personal connections to some of the scientific breakthroughs he describes. Moreover, he has a clear love for science and for intellectual pursuits; he's not a dispassionate observer, but one arguing t...more

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May 10, 2009 Todd Martin rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: environment-science

This book is based on a television documentary series produced in 1973 by the BBC in association with Time-Life Films. The title alludes to The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin. The book traces the development of human society through its understanding of science.

The book is written in a rather odd and stilted style which I found completely bizarre at times. Here's an example:
"The role of women in nomad tribes is narrowly defined. Above all, the function of women is to produce men-children; too...more

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Jan 04, 2008 Seizure Romero rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, anthropology, college

This book was assigned for a college course I took about a thousand years ago. The instructor was obsessed with Jacob Bronowski, so he played many, if not all of the documentary episodes that went along with the book, probably so he could sit in the corner and hide his boner (c'mon, the course was called "The Ascent of Man" fer chrissakes. It should have been called "The Life and Times of Jacob Bronowski Plus Some Stuff That Might Make You Ungrateful Wankers Appreciate Not Living in Mud Huts." T...more

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Sep 11, 2009 Sin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, non-fiction

I really liked this book.
It's full of fascinating facts and stories from our past. It consists of many episodes but it is essentially one long story. It's our story. How did we, human beings, rise from the animal world and become what we are today.
I will always remember the story about the appearance of first hybrid wheat in the Middle East and raise of agricultural societies.
There is also a lot of interesting stories about scientists. I’ve heard about all of them but I found so many amazing de...more

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Jul 25, 2012 Brenton rated it 4 of 5 stars

After a ridiculous narrative of the history of 50 million years from six skull fragments (including the long-discredited Ramapithecus), this becomes a fun history. Bronowski's celebration of man's achievements can better be appreciated when we understand them to be God's image bearers. The author surprisingly questions his whole project after visiting the ash-strewn marshes surrounding Aushwitz.

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Mar 22, 2010 Lobstergirl added it

Shelves: childhood

I was assigned to read this in an 8th grade science class and it seemed way above my head, which made me feel stupid, confused, and helpless. The teacher was a young hippie woman, bony and skinny, with long stringy blond hair and the quiet enthusiasm unique to science hippies. I can still picture the bony way she looked in her jeans though I've long forgotten her name.

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Dec 06, 2008 Jose rated it 5 of 5 stars

I fell in love with this book during my college days. The UP Main Lib was my home on Saturdays and it was here where I discovered Bronowski's great writing... A very scholarly yet highly readable exposition of the history of man. Many years later, serendipity led me to an obscure book sale and I stumbled upon an unused hardbound copy that now graces my library.

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Apr 11, 2013 Aurelien rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science

Pleasant and quick to read, this is mainly aimed at a very large audience -it's actually based on a docu' TV. That means, of course, that it's very basic and simple. More, so much has been published on the topic since then that, even though it's a precursor in its genre there's not a lot to learn here. A good read none-the-less.

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Jan 07, 2011 Denae rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: recommended-by-a-friend

An excellent book if you are looking for an overview of humanity. I really wish the documentary series on which it is based was available in a decent format. From what I understand, it is better simply because of the visuals and Bronowski's energy while he was actually in the places of which he spoke. Overall though, fantastic.

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Apr 15, 2011 Hazel marked it as to-read

I remember the series only vaguely: couldn't have been more than 10 or so during its first run. Today the Guardian published this article to mark the re-issue of the book. Sounds marvellous.

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Jul 15, 2012 Harald rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book feels a bit aged (it's published approx 1972). It does a good job of telling the story of how we got here, but doesn't really want to address the "why" question, despite exuding a boundless optimism that the direction we're going is "right".

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May 03, 2012 niloy rated it 4 of 5 stars

"The personal commitment of a man to his skill, the intellectual commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man."

Amazing book, very cool. Saw the series as a kid, now finally got to read the book.

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May 12, 2013 Eddy Allen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: arts-and-historical

Dr Jacob Bronowksi's The Ascent of Man traces the development of human society through our understanding of science. First published in 1973 to accompany the groundbreaking BBC television series, it is considered one of the first works of 'popular science', illuminating the historical and social context of scientific development for a generation of readers. In his highly accessible style, Dr Bronowski discusses human invention from the flint tool to geometry, agriculture to genetics, and from al...more

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Apr 25, 2012 Chris Gould rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wonderfully uplifting. Recommended it by my university economics professor and really enjoyed reading about the positives of man's progress. Being half Polish myself I have a natural affinity with Bronowski.

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Jul 03, 2010 Paul Fenlon rated it 4 of 5 stars

The material in this book is a touch out of date but it is still a nice overview of many fields of study. It's a pretty light read so if that sort of thing interests you why not check it out.

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About Jacob Bronowski

Jacob Bronowski was a British mathematician and biologist of Polish-Jewish origin. He is best remembered as the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man.

In 1950, Bronowski was given the Taung child's fossilized skull and asked to try, using his statistical skills, to combine a measure of the size of the skull's teeth with their shape in order to discrim...more Jacob Bronowski was a British mathematician and biologist of Polish-Jewish origin. He is best remembered as the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man.

In 1950, Bronowski was given the Taung child's fossilized skull and asked to try, using his statistical skills, to combine a measure of the size of the skull's teeth with their shape in order to discriminate them from the teeth of apes. Work on this turned his interests towards the human biology of humanity's intellectual products.

In 1967 Bronowski delivered the six Silliman Memorial Lectures at Yale University and chose as his subject the role of imagination and symbolic language in the progress of scientific knowledge. Transcripts of the lectures were published posthumously in 1978 as The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination and remain in print.

He first became familiar to the British public through appearances on the BBC television version of The Brains Trust in the late 1950s. His ability to answer questions on many varied subjects led to an offhand reference in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus where one character states that "He knows everything." However Bronowski is best remembered for his thirteen part series The Ascent of Man (1973), a documentary about the history of human beings through scientific endeavour. This project was intended to parallel art historian Kenneth Clark's earlier "personal view" series Civilisation (1969) which had covered cultural history.

During the making of The Ascent of Man, Bronowski was interviewed by the popular British chat show host Michael Parkinson. Parkinson later recounted that Bronowski's description of a visit to Auschwitz—Bronowski had lost many family members during the Nazi era—was one of Parkinson's most memorable interviews.

Jacob Bronowski married Rita Coblentz in 1941. The couple had four children, all daughters, the eldest being the British academic Lisa Jardine and another being the filmmaker Judith Bronowski. He died in 1974 of a heart attack in East Hampton, New York a year after The Ascent of Man was completed, and was buried in the western side of London's Highgate Cemetery, near the entrance.(less)

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Quotes from The Ascent of Man

“It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.” — 158 people liked it

“It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."

I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.” — 17 people liked it

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