成人论坛

Frances Stonor Saunders explores the life and work of Jacob Bronowski through the uncertain prism of the archive.

Jacob Bronowski was a scientist, a poet and a prolific broadcaster. He is most well-known for the epic 1973 television series The Ascent of Man. It was a landmark of its time: a globe-trotting distillation of Bronowski鈥檚 thought 鈥� tracing the upward development of human culture across history, via its understanding of science and technology.

Jacob Bronowski had been a familiar figure on the 成人论坛 for almost 30 years by the time of the Ascent of Man. He was a public intellectual, communicating difficult ideas in an accessible manner for a wide audience 鈥� about literature, art, society. But primarily about science: the essential truthfulness of science and its progressive potential.

Bronowski died in August 1974, a year after the Ascent of Man was first broadcast. And so his greatest work was also his final work.

In the years since, one extract from the series has been seen more than any other 鈥� become one of those television moments that lives beyond its own time. And beyond Jacob Bronowski鈥檚. Detached from the larger series 鈥� to float free on the internet and social media.

It was filmed at Auschwitz. Jacob Bronowski stands at the edge of a pond into which the ashes of those cremated in the camp鈥檚 ovens had been tipped. He makes an impassioned plea for tolerance and against certainty. And then, unrehearsed, he steps into the water: 鈥淲e 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.鈥� He clasps a handful of the muddy remains: 鈥淲e have to touch people.鈥�

This short clip, barely three minutes long, viscerally encapsulates Bronowski鈥檚 ideas about the dangers of dogma and certainty.

But it also captures, obliquely, other things as well.

One person who could see things in that clip that others couldn鈥檛 was Bronowski鈥檚 daughter Lisa Jardine. As a professional historian she was used to constructing stories from archival fragments. The 16th and 17th centuries were her usual research terrain, but towards the end of her own life she鈥檇 moved closer to home, working on a memoir about the father she always called Bruno, provisionally titled Things I Never Knew About My Father.

Through the lens of Lisa Jardine鈥檚 research, writer and historian Frances Stonor Saunders returns to that extract from Ascent of Man and finds within it clues to something more personal and puzzling about Jacob Bronowski鈥檚 life and ideas 鈥� and the unreliability of the archive.

With Judith Bronowski, Ralph Desmarais, John Hare and David Hendy.

Grateful thanks to Gideon Brower, Michael Hodder, Stephen Moss and Paul Reynolds.

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