Jacob Bronowski; The Danger of Dogma

[tomhagen]

[nuxvomica]

1. Brilliant

If you haven't seen the complete series of The Ascent of Man, you must. I first saw it when it aired on PBS back in the '70s. I re-watched a few episodes again last year and was amazed how much of my epistemological worldview was formed by this great teacher.

[Warpy]

2. Thank you for posting this

It was the most powerful part of an incredibly powerful series.

Bronowski had no way of knowing if he was touching any of his own family, but he knew they were there and he knew what had put them there.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. Oliver Cromwell

Wow

[longship]

4. I have that entire series on DVD and occasionally revisit it.

Bronowski was short of stature, less than 5' tall, but a person of giant ideas.

The episode that this comes from is Knowledge or Certainty and was directed by Mick Jackson, the director of Threads, HBO's great film Temple Grandin, and recently Denial.

Whenever I revisit AoM, I always watch this episode from beginning to end in rapt attention. It is supposedly about quantum theory, but ends being much more than that. That Bronowski ends the program at Auschwitz becomes inevitable by the time one gets to the end.

It is a stunning conclusion to a brilliant essay on science.

This scene was not scripted, like most of the series. When Bronowski stoops down to plunge his hand into the muck Mick Jackson kept the camera running. He knew that he had the episode's ending. It is a stunner.

People need to be reminded: When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when aspire to the knowledge of gods.