That seems a hard lesson. After all, this is a world run by specialists: is not that what we mean by a scientific society? No, it is not. A scientific society is one in which specialists can indeed do the things like making the electric light work. But it is you, it is I, who have to know how nature works, and how (for example) electricity is one of her expressions in the light and in my brain.
We have not advanced the human problems of life and mind that once occupied John von Neumann. Will it be possible to find happy foundations for the forms of behaviour that we prize in a full man and a fulfilled society? We have seen that human behaviour is characterised by a high internal delay in preparation for deferred action. The biological groundwork for this inaction stretches through the long childhood and slow maturation of man. But deferment of action in man goes far beyond that. Our actions as adults, as decision makers, as human beings, are mediated by values, which I interpret as general strategies in which we balance opposing impulses. It is not true that we run our lives by any computer scheme of problem solving. The problems of life are insoluble in this sense. Instead, we shape our conduct by finding principles to guide it. We devise ethical strategies or systems of values to ensure that what is attractive in the short term is weighed in the balance of the ultimate, long-term satisfactions.
And we are really here on a wonderful threshold of knowledge. The ascent of man is always teetering in the balance. There is always a sense of uncertainty, whether when man lifts his foot for the next step it is really going to come down pointing ahead. And what is ahead for us? At last the bringing together of all that we have learned, in physics and in biology, towards an understanding of where we have come: what man is.
Knowledge is not a loose-leaf notebook of facts. Above all, it is a responsibility for the integrity of what we are, primarily of what we are as ethical creatures. You cannot possibly maintain that informed integrity if you let other people run the world for you while you yourself continue to live out of a ragbag of morals that come from past beliefs. That is really crucial today. You can see it is pointless to advise people to learn differential equations, or to do a course in electronics or in computer programming. And yet, fifty years from now, if an understanding of man’s origins, his evolution, his history, his progress is not the commonplace of the schoolbooks, we shall not exist. The commonplace of the schoolbooks of tomorrow is the adventure of today, and that is what we are engaged in.
And I am infinitely saddened to find myself suddenly surrounded in the west by a sense of terrible loss of nerve, a retreat from knowledge into – into what? Into Zen Buddhism; into falsely profound questions about, Are we not really just animals at bottom; into extra-sensory perception and mystery. They do not lie along the line of what we are now able to know if we devote ourselves to it: an understanding of man himself. We are nature’s unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex. Knowledge is our destiny. Self-knowledge, at last bringing together the experience of the arts and the explanations of science, waits ahead of us.
It sounds very pessimistic to talk about western civilisation with a sense of retreat. I have been so optimistic about the ascent of man; am I going to give up at this moment? Of course not. The ascent of man will go on. But do not assume that it will go on carried by western civilisation as we know it. We are being weighed in the balance at this moment. If we give up, the next step will be taken – but not by us. We have not been given any guarantee that Assyria and Egypt and Rome were not given. We are waiting to be somebody’s past too, and not necessarily that of our future.
We are a scientific civilisation: that means, a civilisation in which knowledge and its integrity are crucial. Science is only a Latin word for knowledge. If we do not take the next step in the ascent of man, it will be taken by people elsewhere, in Africa, in China. Should I feel that to be sad? No, not in itself. Humanity has a right to change its colour. And yet, wedded as I am to the civilisation that nurtured me, I should feel it to be infinitely sad. I, whom England made, whom it taught its language and its tolerance and excitement in intellectual pursuits, I should feel it a grave sense of loss (as you would) if a hundred years from now Shakespeare and Newton are historical fossils in the ascent of man, in the way that Homer and Euclid are.
I began this series in the valley of the Omo in East Africa, and I have come back there because something that happened then has remained in my mind ever since. On the morning of the day that we were to take the first sentences of the first programme, a light plane took off from our airstrip with the cameraman and the sound recordist on board, and it crashed within seconds of taking off. By some miracle the pilot and the two men crawled out unhurt.
But naturally the ominous event made a deep impression on me. Here was I preparing to unfold the pageant of the past, and the present quietly put its hand through the printed page of history and said, ‘It is here. It is now.’ History is not events, but people. And it is not just people remembering, it is people acting and living their past in the present. History is the pilot’s instant act of decision, which crystallises all the knowledge, all the science, all that has been learned since man began.
We sat about in the camp for two days waiting for another plane. And I said to the cameraman, kindly, though perhaps not tactfully, that he might prefer to have someone else take the shots that had to be filmed from the air. He said, ‘I’ve thought of that. I’m going to be afraid when I go up tomorrow, but I’m going to do the filming. It’s what I have to do.’
We are all afraid – for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man, every civilisation, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. 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.
Bibliography
CHAPTER ONE
Campbell, Bernard G., Human Evolution: An Introduction to Man’s Adaptations, Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago, 1966, and Heinemann Educational, London, 1967; and ‘Conceptual Progress in Physical Anthropology: Fossil Man’, Annual Review of Anthropology, I, pp. 27–54, 1972.
Clark, Wilfrid Edward Le Gros, The Antecedents of Man, Edinburgh University Press, 1959.
Howells, William, editor, Ideas on Human Evolution: Selected Essays, 1949–1961, Harvard University Press, 1962.
Leakey, Louis S. B., Olduvai Gorge, 1951–61, 3 vols, Cambridge University Press, 1965–71.
Leakey, Richard E. R, ‘Evidence for an Advanced Plio-Pleistocene Hominid from East Rudolf, Kenya’, Nature, 242, pp. 447–50, 13 April 1973.
Lee, Richard B., and Irven De Vore, editors, Man the Hunter, Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago, 1968.
CHAPTER TWO
Kenyon, Kathleen M., Digging up Jericho, Ernest Benn, London, and Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1957.
Kimber, Gordon, and R. S. Athwal, ‘A Reassessment of the Course of Evolution of Wheat’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 69, no. 4, pp. 912–15, April 1972.
Piggott, Stuart, Ancient Europe: From the Beginnings of Agriculture to Classical Antiquity, Edinburgh University Press and Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago, 1965.
Scott, J. P, ‘Evolution and Domestication of the Dog’, pp. 243–75 in Evolutionary Biology, 2, edited by Theodosius Dobzhansky, Max K. Hecht, and William C. Steere, Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York, 1968.
Young, J. Z., An Introduction to the Study of Man, Oxford University Press, 1971.
CHAPTER THREE
Gimpel, Jean, Les Bâtisseurs de Cathédrales, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1958.
Hemming, John, The Conquest of the Incas, Macmillan,
London, 1970. Lorenz, Konrad, On Aggression, Methuen, London, 1966.
Mourant, Arthur Ernest, Ada C. Kopec´ and Kazimiera Domaniewska-Sobczak, The ABO Blood Groups; comprehensive tables and maps of world distribution, Blackwell Scientific Publications, Oxford, 1958.
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Robertson, Donald S., Handbook of Greek and Roman Architecture, Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed., 1943.
Willey, Gordon R., An Introduction to American Archaeology, Vol. I, North and Middle America, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1966.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dalton, John, A New System of Chemical Philosophy, 2 vols, R. Bickerstaff and G. Wilson, London, 1808–27.
Debus, Allen G., ‘Alchemy’, Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Charles Scribner, New York, 1973.
Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilization in China, 1–4, Cambridge University Press, 1954–71.
Pagel, Walter, Paracelsus. An introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance, S. Karger, Basel and New York, 1958.
Smith, Cyril Stanley, A History of Metallography, University of Chicago Press, 1960.
CHAPTER FIVE
Heath, Thomas L., A Manual of Greek Mathematics, 7 vols, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1931; Dover Publications, 1967.
Mieli, Aldo, La Science Arabe, E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1966. Neugebauer, Otto Eduard, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, Brown University Press, 2nd ed., 1957 ; Dover Publications, 1969.
Weyl, Hermann, Symmetry, Princeton University Press, 1952.
White, John, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space, Faber, 1967.
CHAPTER SIX
Drake, Stillman, Galileo Studies, University of Michigan Press, 1970.
Gebler, Karl von, Galileo Galilei und die Römische Curie, Verlag der J. G. Gotta’schen Buchhandlung, Stuttgart, 1876.
Kuhn, Thomas S., The Copernican Revolution, Harvard University Press, 1957.
Thompson, John Eric Sidney, Maya History and Religion, University of Oklahoma Press, 1970.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Einstein, Albert, ‘Autobiographical Notes’ in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed., 1952.
Hoffman, Banesh, and Helen Dukas, Albert Einstein, Viking Press, 1972.
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Nova Methodus pro Maximis et Minimis, Leipzig, 1684.
Newton, Isaac, Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, London, 1687, edited by Alexandre Koyré and I. Bernard Cohen, 2 vols, Cambridge University Press, 3rd ed., 1972.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ashton, T. S., The Industrial Revolution 1760–1830, Oxford University Press, 1948.
Crowther, J. G., British Scientists of the 19th Century, 2 vols, Pelican, 1940–1.
Hobsbawm, E. J., The Age of Revolution: Europe 1789–1848, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962; New American Library, 1965.
Schofield, Robert E., The Lunar Society of Birmingham, Oxford University Press, 1963.
Smiles, Samuel, Lives of the Engineers, 1–3, John Murray, 1861; reprint, David and Charles, 1968.
CHAPTER NINE
Darwin, Francis, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, John Murray, 1887.
Dubos, René Jules, Louis Pasteur, Gollancz, 1951.
Malthus, Thomas Robert, An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the Future Improvement of Society, J. Johnson, London, 1798.
Sanchez, Robert, James Ferris and Leslie E. Orgel, ‘Conditions for purine synthesis: Did prebiotic synthesis occur at low temperatures?’, Science, 153, pp. 72–3, July 1966.
Wallace, Alfred Russel, Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, With an Account of the Native Tribes, and Observations on the Climate, Geology, and Natural History of the Amazon Valley, Ward, Lock, 1853.
CHAPTER TEN
Broda, Engelbert, Ludwig Boltzmann, Franz Deuticke, Vienna, 1955.
Bronowski, J., ‘New Concepts in the Evolution of Complexity’, Synthese, 21, no. 2, pp. 228–46, June 1970.
Burbidge, E. Margaret, Geoffrey R. Burbidge, Williarn A. Fowler, and Fred Hoyle, ‘Synthesis of the Elements in Stars’, Reviews of Modern Physics, 29, no. 4, pp. 547–650, October 1957.
Segrè, Emilio, Enrico Fermi: Physicist, University of Chicago Press, 1970.
Spronsen, J. W. van, The Periodic System of Chemical Elements: A History of the First Hundred Years, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1969.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, De generis humani varietate nativa, A. Vandenhoeck, Göttingen, 1775.
Gillispie, Charles C., The Edge of Objectivity: An Essay in the History of Scientific Ideas, Princeton University Press, 1960.
Heisenberg, Werner, ‘Über den anschaulichen Inhalt der quantentheoretischen Kinematik und Mechanik’, Zeitschrift für Physik, 43, p. 172, 1927.
Szilard, Leo, ‘Reminiscences’, edited by Gertrud Weiss Szilard and Kathleen R. Winsor in Perspectives in American History, II, 1968.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Briggs, Robert W. and Thomas J. King, ‘Transplantation of Living Nuclei from Blastula Cells into Enucleated Frogs’ Eggs’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 38, pp. 455– 63, 1952.
Fisher, Ronald A., The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1930.
Olby, Robert C., The Origins of Mendelism, Constable, 1966.
Schrödinger, Erwin, What is Life?, Cambridge University Press, 1944; new ed., 1967.
Watson, James D., The Double Helix, Atheneum, and Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Braithwaite, R. B., Theory of Games as a tool for the Moral Philosopher, Cambridge University Press, 1955.
Bronowski, J., ‘Human and Animal Languages’, pp. 374–95, in To Honor Roman Jakobson, I. Mouton & Co., The Hague, 1967.
Eccles, John C., editor, Brain and the Unity of Conscious Experience, Springer-Verlag, 1965.
Gregory, Richard, The Intelligent Eye, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970.
Neumann, John von, and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, Princeton University Press, 1943.
Wooldridge, Dean E., The Machinery of the Brain, McGraw-Hill, 1963.
Index
The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet, Yorkshire 207
Acoustics and music, history of 120–1, 132, 136, 139, 287
Adapis parisiensis and Adapis magnus 31–2
Adaptations, animals 19–20; man 41 see also Evolution, cultural
Aegyptopithecus zeuxis 32, 37
Africa 47, 329; man in 22–6
Agression, theories of 284–5; as an instinct in man 70
Air, composition of 114–15
Alchemy 21, 95–6, 104, 105, 107–10, 113, 115–16, 118, 180, 183, 243, 258
Algae, green 295, 308
Alhambra, The, Granada, Spain 21, 131–2
Alhazen (abu-’Ali Al Hasen ibn Al-Haytham) (d. 1038) 138
Allegri, Gregorio (1582–1652) 157
Alloys 104; bronze 100; steel 101, 102; tin 99, 100
Altamira Caves, Santander, Spain 43–4
Amazonian Indians 225–6, 227–9
Amazon River, Peru and Brazil 75, 222, 227, 229; Bates and Wallace’s expedition to 224–5
Amerindian tribes 38, 73–6; of California 19; of Tierra del Fuego 229; use of iron by 101
Anatomy, study of 112, 132, 310; see also Vesalius
Animal behaviour, studies of 310, 314
Anne, queen of England (1665–1714) 181, 182
Ape, compared with man 26, 30–1, 47, 227, 304, 309, 314–15, 318
Aqueduct, Roman, Segovia 85
Arbuthnot, John (1667–1735) 182
Arch, evolution of 82–8
Archimedes (c.287–212 BC) 61, 112, 137, 151
Aristotle (384–322 BC) 113, 147, 158, 173
Astronomy, science of 128–9, 131, 137, 139, 143, 144–5, 146, 147, 150, 169, 273–4
Athlete 28–31
Atomic physics 21, 250–65, 267–84
Atomic structure 21, 78, 135–6, 250–1; Bohr’s view of 252–7; Dalton’s view of 116–18; Mendeleev’s view
of 244–50; Rutherford’s view of 252–3
Atomic weight 246, 247, 250
Aubrey, John (1626–1694), Brief Lives 127
Auschwitz (Ostwiecim), Poland 285
Australopithecus africanus, also known as Homo transvaalensis 12, 26–8, 34–6, 37, 47, 304
Australopithecus robustus 33–4
Automata 201, 312–14, 327
Avebury Ring, England 145
Avery, Oswald (1877–1955) 300
Avicenna (Abu-Ali al-Hasain ibn Abudullah ibn Sina) (980–1037) 113
Baby, human 25–8; kick reflex in 28–9
Babylon, see Sumerian civilisation
Bacon, Francis (1561–1626) 105, 248–9
Bacon, Roger, Viscount St Albans (1214–1294) 138
Bakhtiari, SW Persia 49–52, 64, 320
Ballistics 140, 190–1
Barberini, Maffeo, see Urban VIII
Bates, Henry Walter (1825–1892) 223, 224
Beaumarchais, Comte de, see Caron, Pierre Augustin
Beauvais Cathedral, France 87–8
Bees, breeding mechanisms in 293, 302, 303
Beethoven, Ludwig van (1770–1827) 217
Beetle-collecting 221, 223
Bellarmine, Cardinal Robert (1542–1621) 155, 156, 157, 162
Bering Straits Land Bridge, Alaska, USA 74
Bernini, Gianlorenzo (1598–1680) 157
Bethe, Hans Albrecht (1906) 259
Bible, The 23, 49–59, 65, 127, 128, 158–9, 180, 196, 235, 257
Bingham, Hiram (1875–1956) 79
Biochemistry 109, 238; see also Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), Crystal lattice and Protein structure
Biological revolution, the 21–2, 47–8, 64
Biology 48–64, 128–9, 234–5, 236, 240–1, 287–308, 309, 327; diversity of life 219–21; human, see Evolution, cultural
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