Jacob Bronowski: We have to touch people

[longship]

Some blessed person posted a thread here a little while ago about the 1970's BBC/PBS science series, Jacob Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man". I had watched all these programs when they were first broadcast on PBS. I have viewed some of them again, as they were rebroadcast. However, it has been years.

But now I have the entire series on DVD. Watching it again, and again. I've come to some new understandings in science in spite of all my education as a physicist and mathematics educator. It is truly the apotheosis of science documentary.

"Bruno" Bronowski was under five feet tall, but to me, he was a true giant. I have more than a couple books by Bronowski, all of them gems. During the war he used his mathematics to solve problems surrounding the Manhattan Project. After the war, like many of his colleagues--including his friend Leo Szilard--he abandoned physics and went into biology. He was an amazingly compassionate person who used his knowledge to further humanity.

Bronowski paints pictures with words of the likes I've not heard from anybody else, not even Carl Sagan. His words are spoken eloquently and with a wonderful precision. The only revelation to his Polish birth is that he consistently rolls the letter "R". A remarkable fact, related by the producers of this wonderful gem, is how Bronowski never worked from a script preferring to use his own volumnous stream of consciousness. What's sad about it is the fact that the demands of this production likely ended up killing him. During the production of the Easter Island sequence he had to be as much as carried around due to his feebleness. He passed away shortly after the program received its first airings.

For those science fans, if you've never seen this series, it is compellingly intelligent and insightful. It is an unforgettable intellectual experience.

I'd like to quote here the tag lines from episode 11, "Knowledge or Certainty". The episode combines the concepts of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle with that of the human element of the science endeavor in a way that only Bronowski could pull off. At the very end of the essay he is standing ankle deep in the pond at Aushwitz into which the ashes of so many lives were flushed. If only the people of this country would have heard, seen, and understood the following prophetic words, we might not be in the situation we are now.

It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is 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 judgement 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 at Auschwitz, to stand here by the pond 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.
<emphasis mine>

Bronowski squats down and plunges his hand down into the muck in the pond, pulling up a hand full of what must be from the ashes of thousands of dead. The frame freezes and the credits roll silently over the image. This never fails to bring tears to my eyes. This, especially since what we've had to live through the last six years.

As Democrats, and as progressives, we have a similar mandate. We have to touch people.

[Mythsaje]

1. That's my ultimate goal as an author...

To reach out and touch their emotions--both positive and negative.

[longship]

2. I know of what you speak.

Or, write. ;-)

It's very difficult to break through the cultural walls our society has seemingly erected. In my opinion it is these very walls which have resulted in our current dilemma. Bronowski was exactly correct. Culture is a powerful influence. We, as a people, need to steer these influences towards those cultural paths which (to quote a McLuhanism) can massage society to more productive paths.

Unfortunately, so many are reading "People" magazine and watching sitcoms that it's going to take a societal break to shock people awake. But as we've seen in the past six years, even that can produce the most disasterous results. We have to change things.

[Mythsaje]

3. God, I hate sitcoms...n/t

[greyl]

4. Wow, thanks for that.

I must have seen some of that series as a kid, but haven't thought of it since. I'll have to revisit it.

The challenge is to offer an attractive vision to replace the failing one once it is abandoned, and that will , indeed, require tactics of persuasion which could be called fallacious "appeal to emotion" were they not paired with flawless pragmatics.

[longship]

5. Morning self-kick

:kick:

[glitch]

6. K & R beautiful review, very nicely written. Thank you for posting. nt

[petgoat]

7. Thanks, longship, for featuring this.

We have clashed, many times you and I, in the 9/11 dungeon.

I have NEVER forgotten Jacob Bronowski squatting in the ashes
of Auschwitz pleading "Always think you might be wrong."

I'll never forget it my entire life.

We don't know what happened 9/11, but the official investigation
doesn't stand up to scrutiny. We need a new investigation.

[Straight Shooter]

8. Very nice summary, longship. Very nice indeed.

Sometimes there are words written which can stop a person in their tracks:

When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave.

Thank you so much for writing this, for sharing this with DU. I now have something to look forward to; that is, learning more about Jacob Bronowski.

[Joe Chi Minh]

9. The way in which he rolled up his trouser legs and walked into that

pond struck me as a truly sublime gesture. And whatever his past or future achievements, that act of grief-filled self-abasement and identification, would stand alone as the acme.

I wrote to him to tell him that. Not that he'd have needed me to tell him!

I believe he was married and was living with his wife in US at the time.