Che Vancouver Sun The ascent of | ARCH}\ jira SPN AG Ae

and the fate of Rome If we are anything, we must be a democracy of the intellect. We must not perish by the distance between people and government, between people and power, by which Babylon and Egypt and Rome failed. And that distance ean only be closed if knowledge siis in the homes and heads of people with no ambition to con- trol others, and not up in the isolated seats of power, ‘YVhat seems a hard lesson. After all, this is a world run bs specialists: is not that what we mean by a scientific socie- ty? No, tt is not. A scientific society is one in which spectalists ean indeed do the things like making the electric light work. But 1 ts you, 1! is I, who have to know how Nature works, and how, tor example, clecirierty is one of her ex- pressions tr the light and im my brain. farm aiminsy lv saddened to find myself sudden!y surrounded in the West by a sense oc terrih! loss of nerve, a retreat from knowledge into— into what? Into Zen Buddbisiy. into falsely profound questions about whether we are not real- Iv just anieidis at bottom: into extrasen- sory perception and mvsterv Thes do not 'e along the line of what we are now able to know if we devote ourselves to il an understanding of man hnisclf We are nature's unique expert- ment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex Knowledzre is our destiny. Sel!- knowledge, a! jast bringing together the experience of the arts and the explana- tions of science, waits ahead o! us It sounds very pessimistic to talk about Western civilization with a sense of retreat. I have been so optimistic about the ascent of man: am | 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 being carried by Western civilization as we know it. J. Bronowski From the corclusion of Dr. Bronow- ski’s 13-part teleriston sertes The As- cent of Man, produced for the Britt Broadcastg Corporation. 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 a scientific civilization: that means, a civilization in which knowledge and its integrity are crucial. Science is only a Latin word for knowl- edge. 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 color. And yet, wedded as I am to the civili- zation that nurtured me, | should feel it to be infinitely sad. I. whom England made. whom it taught its language and its tolerance and excitement in intellec- tual pursuits I should feel it a grave sense of loss if 100 years trom now Shakespeare and Newton are historical fossils in) the ascent of man. in the way that Homer and Fuchd are. I began this series in the valley of the Omo in bast Atrica, and I finish 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 program). 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. 8ut 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 crystallizes 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 tomor- row, but I’m going to do the filming. It’s what | 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 civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do. The per- sonal commitment of a man to his skill, the intellectual commitment and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man.