Sublime

This, in a nutshell, is the ascent of humanity that Jacob Bronowski was referring to in his classic The Ascent of Man, after which the present volume is ironically named.

what interests me is the history of man’s mind as an unfolding of his different talents.

In the final chapter of The Ascent of Man, Jacob Bronowski wrote, ‘We are nature’s unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex.’ Bronowski implied that the success or failure of this experiment depended on the basic human ability to interpose a delay between stimulus and response.

the environment exacts a price for the survival of the fittest;

And that means that this city and all the cities here rested on an invisible base of communication

Each culture tries to fix its visionary moment, when it was transformed by a new conception either of nature or of man.

Jewish history is a living testimony to the power of ideas,