The Lemon Fool

I see that BBC4 are airing the Michael Parkinson interview with Dr Jacob Bronowski this evening at 10.25 pm. I think I will forgo my beauty sleep to watch this. I have always been a great admirer of Bronowski since his series on the Ascent of Man, unless between now and then I can discover how to record it anyway.

Dod

Dod101 wrote:
I see that BBC4 are airing the Michael Parkinson interview with Dr Jacob Bronowski this evening at 10.25 pm.

I think I will forgo my beauty sleep to watch this.

I have always been a great admirer of Bronowski since his series on the Ascent of Man, unless between now and then I can discover how to record it anyway.

It's on iPlayer for the next 12 months Dod, so you can watch it any time you like -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00nyy41/parkinson-dr-jacob-bronowski

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Itsallaguess wrote:

Dod101 wrote:
I see that BBC4 are airing the Michael Parkinson interview with Dr Jacob Bronowski this evening at 10.25 pm.

I think I will forgo my beauty sleep to watch this.

I have always been a great admirer of Bronowski since his series on the Ascent of Man, unless between now and then I can discover how to record it anyway.

It's on iPlayer for the next 12 months Dod, so you can watch it any time you like -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00nyy41/parkinson-dr-jacob-bronowski

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

Many thanks for that. I watch very little television so that is great to hear. I watched it many years ago and Bronowski has been one of my heroes ever since. Still have his book on the Ascent of Man series. I love listening to great minds articulating their thoughts.

Dod

I don't know if you are aware, but the full series is currently being shown on TV and is available on Iplayer.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/ ... ent-of-man

He was obviously a very bright chap with a Cambridge maths PhD, wide interests and was a fine lecturer and presenter to camera.

I remember one comment that I think is from The Ascent of Man on a discussion he had with John von Neumann about some topic that had a mathematical interpretation. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall listening to these two polymaths, since von Neumann himself was phenomenally gifted and had probably the widest mathematical understanding of anyone of his era.

It raises the obvious question: where are today's polymaths?

stewamax wrote:He was obviously a very bright chap with a Cambridge maths PhD, wide interests and was a fine lecturer and presenter to camera.

I remember one comment that I think is from The Ascent of Man on a discussion he had with John von Neumann about some topic that had a mathematical interpretation. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall listening to these two polymaths, since von Neumann himself was phenomenally gifted and had probably the widest mathematical understanding of anyone of his era.

It raises the obvious question: where are today's polymaths?

They are hiding within universities around the world I imagine. Fashions for them, like everything else, come and go. In the Ascent of Man, Bronowski writes of von Neumann and Game Theory. Funnily enough, in the same chapter he says 'And I am infinitely saddened to find myself in the west by a sense of terrible loss of nerve, a retreat from knowledge into - what? Into Zen Buddhism; into falsely informed questions about, Are we not really just animals at bottom; into extra-sensory perception and mystery.'

I think these comments could apply to today's world just as well as in Bronowski's time, now 50 years ago.

Dod