Ascent Of Man Research Articles

"Heir of All the Universe": Evolutionary Epistemology in Mathilde Blind's Birds of Passage: Songs of the Orient and Occident

In Prelude to her Birds of Passage: of and Occident (1895), Mathilde Blind tracks an autumn migration of birds in corporate motion from the cliffs of to the sacred Isle of in Nile River near Aswan, Egypt. (1) When this commonwealth in arrives at its destination some eighteen lines later and perches reverently in cracks and crevices of temples and monuments, it unites fallen gods of with men's generations that have waned and vanished into night and thus seems to bind Europe and Egypt, Occident and Orient, through common fate of human transience, symbolized in shadows [the birds] cast upon their onward flight. However, spatio-temporal organization of Blind's panorama-which encompasses Greece, Italy, and old Egypt's desert--also retraces an imperial geneology from present to past, to East, inverting conventional plot of western civilization she herself had presented in The Ascent of Man, her Darwinian epic (1889). This combination of bird's eye view and reverse chronology signals double discourse of colonialism woven into Birds of Passage. On one hand, Bird of Time from Rubayait of Omar Khayyam, which appears in book's epigraph, these birds in their transnational flight would seem to bridge distance between two cultures in their recognition of vanitas. Having arrived inside holy halls of Death and Birth, gaily twittering swallows, good tourists, hush their breath. On other hand, migration to Egypt is strangely counterproductive. The birds have traveled from falling leaves of England, past fair Sicilian ... meadows, to Nile seeking still an ampler light. But instead of this anticipated sunny, warm climate, they find Philae floating like some rapt Opium eater's labyrinthine lotos dream, strewn with twilight-litten ruins. In other words, journey ostensibly allegorizes human mortality, but it also emplots passage from to as a fascinating opportunity for Western subject vicariously to regress and, thus, re-inscribes an Orientalist theme. This discursive double-cross is one indication of how Blind's representations of Egypt, Italy, and England in Birds of Passage participate in ideologies of imperialism despite her political radicalism and her usual emphasis in her poetry on liberatory or progressive narratives. In her book Home and Harem: Nation, Gender, Empire, and Cultures of Travel, Inderpal Grewal suggests that rather than debating whether middle-class Englishwomen or working-class men and women in England were anti-imperialist or not, it is more productive to examine the way they were interpellated as subjects ... through colonial discourses. (2) Blind's Birds of Passage (1895), with its balanced opposition of Songs of Orient and Songs of Occident, demonstrates how subjectivity of an independent woman in Victorian period (3)--or at least subjectivity constructed in a book of her verse-may be reliant nevertheless on binaries of East and West fundamental to imperialist ideology and produced through discourses of romanticism, comparative mythology, evolutionary science, and tourism that Blind weaves into her text. Blind's radical politics were grounded in her upbringing, developed through education, and expressed throughout her writing. She was stepdaughter to Karl Blind, a leader of Baden insurrection of 1848, and her brother Ferdinand attempted to assassinate Bismarck in 1866, subsequently committing suicide in prison. Her family moved to England after failure of revolution, and their home became a gathering place for political exiles, such as Garibaldi and Mazzini. Blind's education included study at a London girls' school, a failed attempt to crash university lectures restricted to men in Zurich, and a solitary walking tour of Swiss Alps, which she later dramatized in an autobiographical fragment that may have been part of an unfinished second novel. …

The ascent of man?

Anyone who cares about the moral and social implications of genomics, genetic engineering and biotechnology should read Michael J. Sandel's article, 'The Case Against Perfection', in the April 2004 issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

Man's ascent to reason: the secularization of Western culture

The rise of science and the ascent to reason in Ancient Greece Greece conquers Rome reason assails faith - from Epicurus to retellings of the 1990sAvicenna reason precedes faith - from Abelard to Johann Muller transition to the Renaissance and the reformation the age of Copernicus non-conformist thought in England, France, the Netherlands and Germany characteristics of the Enlightenment in England and France understanding mankind American technology, sociology and secular humanism - the triumph of reason.

"My love is a force that will force you to care": Subversive Sexuality in Mathilde Blind's Dramatic Monologues

MALE REVIEWERS STRUGGLED TO CHARACTERIZE THE POEMS MATHILDE BLIND awarded pride of place in her 1891 collection Dramas in Miniature. Up to this time Blind was best known as an accomplished writer of sonnets and lyrics, and as a less accomplished but admirably ambitious writer of longer poems on the Highland Clearances ("The Heather on Fire," 1884) and Darwinian theory ("The Ascent of Man," 1889). 1 The eight "dramas" that begin the 1891 volume seemed a departure, and generated considerable interpretive anxiety. Eric Robertson begins his Academy review by confessing his confusion over the title: "Does it promise us real condensed drama—brief stories containing plots that a more diffuse writer might be glad to expand into a novel? Does it rather suggest a kind of toy-drama—stories of which the plots may be sharply articulated, while yet their interests are mock-heroic? Or, again, is it intended to denote nothing more than dramatic episodes?" 2 As he confronts the poems themselves, it becomes clear that Robertson's uneasiness stems more from their subject matter (adultery, prostitution, sexual violence, female sexual aggression, eroticized religious reverie) than from their generic affiliations. Robertson is especially struck by the frankness of "The Battle of Flowers," which he notes "gives us a contrasting picture of the courtesan triumphant, as she drives along the Quai Anglais at Nice":

Transforming the disciplines: a women's studies primer

Contents * About the Editors * Contributors * Foreword * Introduction * Section I: Humanities * Chapter 1. The Impact of Studies on Rhetoric and Composition * Chapter 2. Feminism and Philosophy * Chapter 3. The Impact of Studies on the Study of Religion * Chapter 4. Transgressing to Transform: The Feminist Engagement with Art History * Chapter 5. Women in Music * Chapter 6. Listening to Voices and Reading Words: How Studies Has Helped to Transform the Teaching of Literature * Chapter 7. Feminism and Film Studies * Chapter 8. Refusing to Close the Curtains Before Putting on the Light: Literature and Studies * Section II: Social Sciences * Chapter 9. Using Feminism to Improve Economics * Chapter 10. Is Women's History? * Chapter 11. Reconsidering the Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociology * Chapter 12. Gender and Culture * Chapter 13. What Were Women Doing During the Ascent of Man?: Gender and Archaeology * Chapter 14. Feminism and Communication Studies * Chapter 15. Language and Gender Research: Not Just for Women Anymore * Chapter 16. Gender Jail: A Look at Psychology and Gender * Section III: Natural Sciences * Chapter 17. Feminist Contributions to Bioethics * Chapter 18. First Steps Toward a More Feminist, Multicultural Physics * Chapter 19. Science and Feminism: Partners or Rivals? * Chapter 20. Mathematics: A Dilemma for Feminists * Chapter 21. History of Women in Science and Technology * Section IV: Professions * Chapter 22. Behind School Doors: Feminism and Education * Chapter 23. Law and Feminism * Chapter 24. Place: Architecture and Feminism * Chapter 25. The Impact of Feminism on the Library Science Profession * Chapter 26. The Forgotten Discipline: Sport Studies and Physical Education * Index * Reference Notes Included

Closing the Knowledge Gap Between Scientist and Nonscientist

Closing the Knowledge Gap Between Scientist and Nonscientist

The Ascent of Man: Legal Systems and the Discovery of an Environmental Ethic

The Ascent of Man: Legal Systems and the Discovery of an Environmental Ethic

Bright paradise: Victorian scientific travellers

This is an account of the great burst of scientific exploration in the 19th century: the search for the North-West passage; the penetration of the Australian outback; and the hunt for the sources of the Nile, Niger, Amazon and Brahmaputra. There are the individual stories of personalities such as Charles Darwin, ALfred Wallace, Henry Bates and Richard Spruce, but the focal point of the book is how these journeys were linked to wider issues: the growth of knowledge; the spread of Empire; the image of the wild; and the great Victorian questions of the creation, origins and ascent of man.

Irrigation and Drainage—Systems Policy Analysis and India Case Study

Irrigation was one of the earliest efforts, supplementing agriculture, in the ascent of man. With the recent population explosion, it has become a critical issue in man’s survival, and in environmental conservation. Irrigation and drainage, however, continue to be practiced, by and large, in a primitive manner, despite the fact that if the present practice continues, serious food scarcity and environmental degradation may have to be faced. Advances have taken place that can avert this bleak scenario. In this context, some policy issues are discussed, followed by the case study of irrigation and drainage in India. A brief overview of irrigation and drainage is undertaken. Modern systems concepts are used to analyze the policy. Objectives and evaluation criteria are briefly developed, followed by some important technological and environmental issues. An overview of the policy, as it evolved historically in the context of the technological and socioeconomic milieu, is undertaken. Modernization issues are identified. The subject is highlighted by reviewing the scene in India with policy formulation for modernization, with reference to detailed studies.

Western Tradition

The Western Tradition is a major new college television course constructed around the western civilization lectures of Eugen Weber, Professor of History at UCIA, and the author of A Modem History of Europe (1971) and the highly praised Peasants into Frenchmen (1976). The tendency in recent successful telecourses, such as Kenneth Clark's Civilizalion, J. Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, or the recent Annenberg/CPB Project, Art of the Western World, has been to consciously take the host or scholar of the series out of the classroom, away from the lectern, and transport him to some dramatic historical backdrop such as the palace of Versailles or the Parthenon.

The great heretics

"In every age," writes Bronowski (1973), in The Ascent of Man, ''there is a turning point, a new way of seeing and asserting the coherence of the world." Similarly, Abraham Lincoln (1862) said, "As our case is new, we must think and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves . . ." It seems clear that the great forward leaps of human progress have been made by people who "disenthrall" themselves and develop "a new way of seeing and asserting the coherence of the world." We see this in Galileo and Copernicus, who had the audacity to claim the earth was not the center of the universe. We see this in Charles Darwin, who took on the religious establishment with the heretical idea that man was a product of evolution. We see it in political systems where Locke and Jefferson had the revolutionary ideas that humankind could govern themselves. We see it in Freud with his upsetting idea that man was not always a rational animal. All of these people challenged the current ordained wisdom of the time and all of them proved correct. These people were labeled heretics. Their ideas were aired amidst great controversy. Huxley once observed that, "All great truths begin as heresy." Humankind falls into a routine way of viewing the world and then, breaking the continuity, someone observes that the current orthodoxy is at variance with reality. A great debate ensues. New ideas are upsetting. Attempts are made to shout down new opinion. If the idea is grounded in

Mathematics: A Vehicle for Better Global Understanding

Jacob Bronowski, in his prefatory comments to the magnificent public television series “The Ascent of Man,” related the particular event that drew his attention, as a scientist, to the changing human condition. In 1924 a humanoid fossil skull was uncovered at Taung in southern Africa.

On the Integrity of Science: The Issues Since Bronowski

On the Integrity of Science: The Issues Since Bronowski

The Next Evolutionary Step in the Ascent of Man in the Cosmos

The Next Evolutionary Step in the Ascent of Man in the Cosmos

Bruno: A Personal View

The author offers a brief biography of her husband, Jacob Bronowski. She traces his life from his early years as a student and poet in Europe to his work as a scientist and educator during World War II. His later philosophical and scientific investigations of evolution and civilization led to many publications and culminated in his television series The Ascent of Man. She describes Bronowski as a humanist and an intellectual for whom art and science were equal expressions of the human imagination.

DE-POPULATION AND HILL COUNTRY DEVELOPMENT

The Ascent of Man T.V. Series traced the evolution of civilisation and clearly established that a necessary ingredient in the process was a degree of specialisation to improve productivity and to permit a degree of urbanisation. This process has continued to the present day, aided by major technological advances in transportation, communications and the expansion of trade.

Nietzsche and the Ascent of Man in a Cyclical Cosmos

I. ANYONE WHO IS either innocent or determined enough to take the myriad speculative genealogies and prophesies of Nietzsche's work at face value will readily allow that it tenders an evolutionary theory of history. The Birth of Tragedy claims that we are nearing the end of a Socratic era and that the change impending will be for the better as we overcome in ourselves a debilitating, scientific outlook and acquire a more healthy mode of perception drawn from the arts. Later books insist on parallel historical divisions and make similar, equally celebrated prophesies. On the Genealogy of Morals, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Antichrist all identify our earliest ancestors as pagan, naive, innocent beasts whose Christian descendants, owing in part to the harsh repressions of military and priestly elites, have evolved into self-conscious, guilty in need of redemption. These same works suggest that that redemption will come to our own descendants only by way of further evolution in an age now beginning that will result in self-conscious, but innocent supermen. According to Thus Spake Zarathustra man is but a bridge between the prehuman and the posthuman, and the great noon that will mark the second advance of the race is upon us.l A new habit, Nietzsche speculates in Human, All-too-Human, is forming in us that in time may be powerful enough to give humanity the strength to produce conscious, wise, innocent men as it now produces conscious, unwise, guilty men. 2 Our old sick ideals are now fighting their last fight, he avows in The Joyful Wisdom. 3 Indeed, according to The Antichrist* and On the Genealogy of Morals s a new age of emancipation and innocence has already begun. Thus it would seem transparently clear that for Nietzsche we live at a pivotal point in our race's history, with a grim era behind us but with brighter prospects before us . It would seem, too, that that assessment of our age allowed him to flirt with a sense of historical mission, for--al though one may find an element of ironic bravado in his boasts he was ready to claim for his writings a millennial import in marking the end of one stage in our development and the beginning of another. I might shoot the history of mankind into two halves, he wrote to his friend Overbeck, 6 thereby commenting in private on his public, Messianic stance

Chemistry in "The Ascent of Man"

Review of the chemistry topics considered in the BBC film series The Ascent of Man, and a University of Colorado course based loosely on the same series.

A Sense of the Future: Essays in Natural Philosophy by Jacob Bronowski (review)

BOOK REVIEWS A Sense ofthe Future: Essays in Natural Philosophy. By Jacob Bronowski; selected and edited by P. E. Ariotti with Rita Bronowski. Cambridge: M.LT. Press, 1977. Pp. 286. $12.50. Jacob Bronowski was an incredible man! He wrote books and lectured widely. He produced poems, plays, essays, and scientific papers. His publications range from mathematics through philosophy and history to the technology of coal. Later in life he became an articulate interpreter and spokesman for science; his masterwork was no doubt the enormously successful BBC television series (and book) called the "Ascent of Man." Like his hero, Leonardo de Vinci, it could be said of him that he "might have been a really great scientist, had he not been so versatile." This book is a collection of some of the seminal essays of this "last of the Renaissance Men." It includes 19 selections from 1952 to 1974 in his fluent and witty style. And he wrote clearly too, as clear as a cold winter sky. At the same time, this book sparks and flares and twinkles with the warmth of his wisdom, erudition, and insight. Well worth the price for that alone! But the thought of the man is more important than his style. . . . All of his life he was convinced (as all scientists must be) that the universe was knowable and that the search for knowledge was fundamentally human. And this search is basically the same, whether in ballet or ballistics, mathematics or music. Science, in particular, stems from man's ability to handle and shape objects , from what Bronowski called the "analytic hand." He said, then, "science is experiment; science is trying things. It is trying each possible alternative in turn, intelligently and systematically; and throwing away what won't work, and accepting what will. . . ." He approached the science process from the point ofview ofmathematics and was, therefore, often concerned with problems of truth, language, logic, and so on. Later, after working with W. Le Gros Clark, he became intensely interested in "humanity" and human evolution and continued to work in this area until his death in 1974. Several essays on each of these topics are included. Throughout his life, he was particularly concerned with the relationship between science and values, and a number of the essays are devoted to this topic also. One frequent theme is the "civilizing" nature of the scientific enterprise. Thus, the (admittedly external) standards of openness, cooperation, public scrutiny of evidence, repeated peer review, etc., that are the core of scientific Permission to reprint a book review printed in this section may be obtained only from the author. 454 Book Reviews advance are conceived by Bronowski as significant pressures—and models—for humanizing all of man's activity. This, then, is a useful collection for anyone who wants to know what an eminent and articulate scientist thought of his art. The only criticisms I have are these: first, the title is a little misleading (how about "A Sense of Science"?); and, second, there is some repetition of thought—such as in chapters 7 and 8 and in chapters 12, 13, 15, and 16—which might possibly have been eliminated. This book is especially useful in an era when faith in science is unfashionable, for Bronowski's faith was enormous. On the suppression of science, this gentle man said, "Whoever discovered the destructive effect of atomic energy [or before that nitroglycerine or the radiation effects of long-lived cobalt or long-lived strontium isotopes] and withheld that discovery from mankind is a maniac." In spite of his intimate involvement with Dachau, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, he acutely observed, "We are not afraid of the future because of a bomb, we are afraid of bombs because we have no faith in the future." He, for one, was not afraid. R. J. Doyle Department of Biology University of Windsor, Ontario The Conquest of Smallpox: The Impact of Inoculation on Smallpox Mortality in Eighteenth Century Great Britain. By Peter Razzell. Firle, Sussex: Caliban Books, 1977. Pp. x+190. £8.00. EdwardJenner's Cowpox Vaccine: The Hktory ofa Medical Myth. By Peter Razzell. Firle, Sussex: Caliban Books, 1977. Pp. 130. $16.50 (soft cover). The titles of...

The Ascent of Man. No.4: The Hidden Structure. No. 10: World Within World (film)

<i>The</i> <i>Ascent</i> <i>of</i> <i>Man</i>. <i>No</i>.4: <i>The</i> <i>Hidden</i> <i>Structure</i>. <i>No</i>. 10: <i>World</i> <i>Within</i> <i>World</i> (film)