Ascent of Man

• Few notes on Chapter 2 of the ‘Ascent of Man’
  • Interesting idea comparing the pace of biological evolution vs cultural evolution. A cultural revolution is what the agricultural revolution was. It’s pace is much faster than crafting from our environment. Confusingly then, Bronowski refers to this as the ‘Biological revolution’ we evolved in tandem with our environment, wheat evolving for us to disperse it’s seeds is used as an example.

    When I was a young man, we all thought that mastery came from man’s domination of his physical environment. Now we have learned that real mastery comes from understanding and moulding the living environment

  • B describes the life a group of nomads. saying

    The Bakhtiari [nomads] life is too narrow to have time or skill for specialisation. There is no room for innovation…the only habits that survive are the old habits. The only ambition of the son is to be like the father

  • In this chapter too B attributes all the natural disaster fall of the walls of Jericho, great flood, to earthquakes and tremors (or at least to natural causes)
  • The notion of the invention of the wheel and how that changed our perpspective on form. It becomes a norm, a heavenly symbol

  • Every machine is a kind of draught animal - even the nuclear reactor. It increases the surplus that man has won from nature since the beginning of agriculture. And therefore every machine re-enacts the original dilemma: does it deliver energy in response to the demand of its specific use, or is it a maverick source of energy beyond the limits of constructive use? The conflict in the scale of power goes back all the way to that formative time in human history

  • The chapter also finishes with the idea of the mongol hoard as the last ‘debate’ of nomad vs settled. Eventually they had to settle of course. Someone had to produce all they were stealing.