The Ontogenetic Ground of Value

Abstract

I THE LAST CHAPTER of script for his recent popular television series on The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski raises question about man's continued ascent. For the ascent of man is always teetering in balance. There is always a sense of uncertainty, whether when man lifts his foot for next step is really going to come down pointing ahead. For Bronowski, this is finally a question today of moral ascent of man, of our ability and willingness through knowledgeable, responsible decisions to take deliberate control of our own lives in a fully way. Our actions as adults, as decision makers, as beings, he says, mediated by values And, to Bronowski, fact of human development means are concerned in our early education actually with postponement of decisions We have to put off decision making process, in order to accumulate enough as a preparation for future. But this knowledge is not a loose-leaf notebook of facts. Above all, says Bronowski, it is a responsibility for integrity of what are as ethical creatures. You cannot possibly maintain that informed integrity, he claims, if you let other people run world for you while you yourself continue to live out of a ragbag of morals that come from past beliefs. This is really crucial today. For, in Bronowski's view, we are nature's unique experiment to make rational intelligence prove itself sounder than reflex. Knowledge is our destiny. Self-knowledge, at last bringing together experience of arts and explanations of science, waits ahead of us. For Bronowski, then, question of man's continued ascent turns on this moral issue of self-knowledge. Will meet challenge of our destiny to take our lives into our own hands, to direct them by informed decisions of our own personal consciences, or, through a loss of nerve, as Bronowski puts it, will retreat into a hand-me-down morality whose authority is the way things have always been and whose ultimate commandment is Thou shalt not question. Bronowski, of course, makes no attempt in his closing remarks on The Ascent of Man to specify character of this crucial self-knowledge. He means only to