The Ascent of Man

by Bronowski, Jacob

• ISBN13: 9780316109307
• ISBN10: 0316109304
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1974-04-01
• Publisher: Little Brown & Co

Summary

An account of the history and philosophy of science drawn from the BBC television series created by Dr. Bronowski

Table of Contents

Foreword	13	(6)
Chapter 1 Lower than the Angels Animal adaptation--The human alternative--Beginning in Africa--Fossil evidence--The gift of foresight--Evolution of the head--The mosaic of man--The cultures of the hunter--Across the ice ages--Transhumance cul cultures: the Lapps--Imagination in cave art.	19	(40)
Chapter 2 The Harvest of the Seasons The pace of cultural evolution--Nomad cultures: the Bakhtiari--Beginnings of agriculture: wheat--Jericho--Earthquake country--Technology in the village--The wheel--Domestication of animals: the horse--War games: Buz Kashi--Settled civilisation.	59	(32)
Chapter 3 The Grain in the Stone Coming to the New World--Blood group evidence of migrations--The actions of shaping and splitting--Structure and hierarchy--The city: Machu Picchu--Straight-edge architecture: Paestum--The Roman arch: Segovia--The Gothic adventure: Rheims--Science as architecture--The hidden figure: Michelangelo to Moore--Pleasure in construction--Below the visible.	91	(32)
Chapter 4 The Hidden Structure Fire, the transforming element--Extraction of metals: copper--The structure of alloys--Bronze as a work of art--Iron to steel: the Japanese sword--Gold--The incorruptible--Alchemical theory of man and nature--Paracelsus and the coming of chemistry--Fire and air: Joseph Priestley--Antoine Lavoisier: combination can be quantified--John Dalton's atomic theory.	123	(32)
Chapter 5 The Music of the Spheres The language of numbers--The key to harmony: Pythagoras--The right-angled triangle--Euclid and Ptolemy at Alexandria--Rise of Islam--Arabic numbers--The Alhambra: patterns of space--Crystal symmetries--Perspective from Alhazen--Movement in time, the new dynamic--The mathematics of change.	155	(34)
Chapter 6 The Starry Messenger The cycle of seasons--The unmapped sky: Easter Island--Ptolemy's system in the Dondi Clock--Copernicus: the sun as centre--The telescope--Galileo opens the scientific method--Prohibition of the Copernican system--Dialogue on the two systems--The Inquisition--Galileo recants--The Scientific Revolution moves north.	189	(32)
Chapter 7 The Majestic Clockwork Kepler's laws--The centre of the world--Isaac Newton's innovations: fluxions--Unfolding the spectrum--Gravitation and the Principia--The intellectual dictator--Challenge in satire--Newton's absolute space--Absolute time--Albert Einstein--The traveller carries his own space and time--Relativity is proved--The new philosophy.	221	(38)
Chapter 8 The Drive for Power The English revolution--Everyday technology: James Brindley--The revolt against privilege: Figaro--Benjamin Franklin and the American revolution--The new men: masters of iron--The new outlook: Wedgwood and the Lu Lunar society--The driving factory--The new preoccupation: energy--The cornucopia of invention--The unity of nature.	259	(32)
Chapter 9 The Ladder of Creation The naturalists--Charles Darwin--Alfred Wallace--Impact of South America--The wealth of species--Wallace loses his collection--Natural selection conceived--The continuity of evolution--Louis Pasteur: right hand, left hand--Chemical constants in evolution--The origin of life--The four bases--Are other forms of life possible?	291	(30)
Chapter 10 World Within World The cube of salt--Its elements--Mendeleev's game of patience--The periodic table--J.J. Thomson: the atom has parts--Structure in new art--Structure in the atom: Rutherford and Niels Bohr--The life cycle of a theory--The nucleus has parts--The neutron: Chadwick and Fermi--Evolution of the elements--The second law as statistics--Stratified stability--Copying the physics of nature--Ludwig Boltzmann: atoms are real.	321	(32)
Chapter 11 Knowledge or Certainty There is no absolute knowledge--The spectrum of invisible radiations--The refinement of detail--Gauss and the idea of uncertainty--The sub-structure of reality: Max Born--Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty--The principle of tolerance: Leo Szilard--Science is human.	353	(26)
Chapter 12 Generation upon Generation The voice of insurrection--The kitchen garden naturalist: Gregor Mendel--Genetics of the pea--Instant oblivion--An all-or-nothing model of inheritance--The magic number two: sex--Crick and Watson's model o of DNA--Replication and growth--Cloning of identical forms--Sexual choice in human diversity.	379	(32)
Chapter 13 The Long Childhood Man, the social solitary--Human specificity--Specific development of the brain--Precision of the hand--The speech areas--The postponement of decision--The mind as an instrument of preparation--The democracy of the intellect--The moral imagination--The brain and the computer: John von Neumann--The strategy of values--Knowledge is our destiny--The commitment of man.	411	(29)
Bibliography	440	(3)
Index	443