The Ascent of Man (1973)

The only TV series I can think of
More challenging than reading Wittgenstein--
And yet, delightful, too, and so humane
As to make petty and irrelevant
All the analogies and language games
That cripple our two cutting hands, and bind them:

It is a privilege to behold this work,
The legacy of one man's moral life
And intellect, that reaches from the man
Back to his origins, and forward then
To his most likely destination: failure.

Still, it's a hopeful program, and a plea
Not to exhaust or squander man's great gifts:
Imagination and analysis.
Every third sentence is a revelation,
Every shy gesture something like a shrug;
His quiet storytelling and sly mood,
His jerky, glib-digressive style of speech
The improvised delivery, the patience:
Everything asks for sympathy, and gives
Not sympathy but total comprehension,
Person for person, mind for mind: exchange.

This series is a dialogue on process:
Because he works without a script, our host
Risk his authority on our behalf;
Because we often must defer the closure
Begged by our instincts but denied by trust,
We follow and perpetuate the task;
And because its inferences and narrative
Move step by step along the path's ascent,
The project, never certain to succeed,
Offers its ruin as an energy.

Bronowski was a scientist, a critic,
Fond, in his seriousness, of William Blake,
An expert chessman and geometer,
But most, a kind humanitarian.
In The Ascent of Man, he chronicles
Advantages of living on two legs,
The radical invention of our crops,
Theories of architecture and design,
Structure of crystals, metallurgy, math,
The scientific method and its wastes,
The rise of industry, our evolution,
Genes and atomic theory, fractured art,
Physics, and relativity, and us:
Our long, late childhood as a noble species
And, in our lives, as individual minds.

Best episode on sex I've ever seen.
How to collapse a history of thought
Into some thirteen hours of conversation?
I don't know how. Bronowski did. It's this.

Easiest grade I've ever given: A.