Ascent of Man Episode Guide

Episode Guide

• Season 1 Episode 13: Ladder of Creation

  Dr Jacob Bronowski explores the discoveries of Victorian naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace

• Season 1 Episode 12: Drive for Power

  Jacob Bronowski examines the impact of the Industrial Revolution on British society

• Season 1 Episode 11: Majestic Clockwork

  Dr Jacob Bronowski explores links between the theories of Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton

• Season 1 Episode 10: Starry Messenger

  In early civilizations the wheel represents poetry, science and the Earth as the center of the universe.

• Season 1 Episode 9: Music of the Spheres

  Dr Jacob Bronowski examines how mans' understanding of mathematics has brought the world closer to understanding the forces of nature

• Season 1 Episode 8: The Hidden Structure

  Jacob Bronowski traces the evolution of chemistry, from early Chinese metallurgists to Dalton's atomic theory

• Season 1 Episode 7: Grain in the Stone

  The responses of the Pueblos, Incas, Greeks, Romans and modern civilization to the discovery of nature.

• Season 1 Episode 6: Harvest of the Seasons

  Dr Jacob Bronowski examines human social and intellectual evolution as affected by the move from nomadic lifestyle to settled agriculture

• Season 1 Episode 5: The Long Childhood

  An examination of humankind's rise to dominance, focusing on the facilities which separate humans from other animals and promote the desire for self-knowledge

• Season 1 Episode 4: Generation Upon Generation

  Jacob Bronowski traces the history of genetics, from the early experiments of Gregor Mendel to the discovery of the structure of DNA, offering his own views on human sexuality

• Season 1 Episode 3: Knowledge or Certainty

  Jacob Bronowski takes his appraisal of different stages of human evolution into the 20th century, assessing the realisation among physicists that there is no such thing as absolute certainty

• Season 1 Episode 2: World Within World

  Dr Jacob Bronowski examines the history of ideas that led to man's discovery of atoms, electrons and neutrons

• Season 1 Episode 1: Lower Than the Angels

  Dr Jacob Bronowski explores the development of man's gifts of foresight and imagination, examining Ice Age relics in Africa's Great Rift Valley to chart the evolution of homo sapiens