The Ascent of Man

Hardcover Cloth 448 pages. Condition Very Good Dust Jacket Very Good. Stated first edition Seventh printing 1973. Attractive orange buckram boards and gilt embossing shows off this Clean, tight, square copy with no marks, highlights or bookplates. Book well kept and carefully stored in unread condition. Slight shelf wear and some bumped corners. Price clipped dust jacket smooth, clean and brilliant with slight shelf wear - a few scratches and wrinkles. Not an ex-library, book club or remainder copy.

Lauded by critics & devoured by readers, this companion to the BBC series traces the development of science as an expression of the special gifts that characterize humans & make us preeminent animals. Bronowski's exciting, illustrated investigation offers a perspective not just on science, but on civilization itself.

"It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.

Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible. In the end, the words were said by Oliver Cromwell: "I beseech you in the bowels of Christ: Think it possible you may be mistaken."

I owe it as a scientist to my friend Leo Szilard, I owe it as a human being to the many members of my family who died here, to stand here as a survivor and a witness. We 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. We have to touch people."

Jacob Bronowski was a British mathematician and biologist.