The Ascent of Man

Through the ages of man has grown thought,
The ascent has been hard and close fought.
First we fell then arose,
Climbing paths that we chose.
At this peak, this "New-Age" appears fraught.

The Ascent of Man (1973) was a landmark BBC documentary series, written and presented by Jacob Bronowski. The book and the series explored the cultural evolution of mankind, centered on science. It was depicted as an ascent through man's ages of understanding and thought.

In a sense it was Bronowski's challenge to the emerging "New-Age" thinking; Bronowski's view was that man be understood to have his proper place in the natural world. However threatened the individual may feel, he must "accept the subtle but closely woven evidence that man is not different in kind from other forms of life; that living matter is not different in kind from dead matter; and therefore that a man is an assembly of atoms that obeys natural laws of the same kind that a star does." Bronowski realized the profound impact of this statement, "the crisis of confidence that springs from each man's wish to be a mind and a person, in the face of the nagging fear that he is a mechanism . . . can man be both a machine and a self?"

Perhaps "New-Age" thought is a reaction from extreme skpetical claims that seek to deny mankind has any spiritual identity. For many this is a bleak outlook that conflicts with their experience and results in a retreat into pre-Christian (in some cases pre-Abrahamic traditions). What is needed is a reconciliation between science and religion, a Post New-Age Age.