Michael Parkinson interviews Dr Jacob Bronowski 1974

evening I'm often asked which is my favorite interview and it's a question I feel unable to answer because in truth I haven't got a favorite interview there have been occasions however that were particularly special and memorable for me for different reasons one such occurred just over two years ago when I interviewed a very remarkable man dr. Jacob minovsky at the time his epic series the ascent of man was being shown and he fascinated me because he was one of the few genuine intellectuals who had the sublime gift of communicating across the broadest possible level well because of the three-day week and the restriction on broadcasting hours at the time we were only able to show a shortened version on BBC two sadly some 18 months ago dr. Byrne offski died and tonight we're going to show you for the first time the interview in its entirety now there are many reasons for doing so one is it what he had to say as as much relevance now as then another that I believe it to be a testament of a rare human being and also because although I haven't got a favourite interview I shall forever remember this meeting do you find doctrine offski that people are frightened of talking to you in the sense that they're bit over awed by your reputation in your presence I have one very great advantage I don't regarded person is an advantage but in being approachable you see I'm much smaller than people think so that people stop in the street and they look at me and they say quite involuntarily oh you're much smaller than I thought you were that's a great icebreaker I see so that gives them somehow the advantage they think yes when in fact that you first become aware of this extraordinary mental capacity that you have it's one of those wife-beating questions I have to confess to an extraordinary mental capacity of which were they I'm not very much aware I had the great good fortune of being born of father clever and rather modest parents so what mental gifts I have I inherited from my parents but I also inherited from their something which was given me by their culture not by what I was born with namely a simple feeling in the family that all human beings were pretty smart you know we were obviously much cleverer than monkeys and cats and some people were very much cleverer than monkeys and cats and some people somewhat clever um I was never aware at home that what I could do was extraordinary and to this day I never approach a piece of work whether it's writing thinking whether it's science or this evening in any other spirit then that sounds interesting let's do it yeah and if I don't do it very well I'd say afterwards you know you just didn't work hard enough yes an eminent authority your wife no so I think so it's described use as having a mind that could see round corners I wish you right and if so what does that mean I think she's right in saying that I have a strongly visual mind that is to say that I think of every problem as having a shape I visualize every problem and I suppose you could say around corners in the sense that all human abilities are thinking ahead to things which are not already present to the vision we think in images the word imagination means that yes I'm a good imaginative thinker in the very simple sense of working with images hmm I should give you a practical example of that I was in Japan in 1945 and the very first thing that struck me when I arrived in Japan was that the people were all very small you know the Japanese in 1945 having been starved through years of war was so small that when the men came to took our luggage off the plane I thought they were schoolboys well that made a great impression on me but it's not an impression of little men running around and big men by Japanese stands I was quite a big man aa big hit nobody stop you in the street over there no no no there but I had once had the vision of there being a sort of mountain of Japanese size and a mountain of European size and that European people were grouped around this average peak and Japanese around this and that these two mountains didn't overlap much what if you think of a problem in that way it's easier to solve that's extraordinary I mean I think most people's minds would figure that out at all I mean even now you've nearly explained it I find it very difficult to understand Frank try later on I would sort of sit here there are other things to think about let's talk about your early life because in fact you spent samia's didn't you in your childhood in Germany during the First World War when you look back at that do you regard it as being a traumatic experience well of course it was a traumatic expense but isn't striking me so at the time you see I was in Germany as a child the war broke out in 1914 when I was six it came to an end in 1918 when I was 10 I was a very patriotic as a German but in fact I was a Russian by nationality so I was an enemy alien my parents renomii aliens we were not very well treated by the Germans but I think it just made me at home in the world I've always lived in countries that I haven't been born in you know I was born in large and the last time I was in large was in 1913 that's 60 years ago yes so give you a capacity in in effect to make a home wherever you were without feeling out of place and can you recall your first you then came to England of course can you recall your first impressions of England oh I remember them very well I came up in the train from Harwich to London and as we came into London the train ran through all those backs of endless rows of houses and they all had chimneys with chimney pots and cows on there was a thing I'd never seen and chimney pots and chimney cows and smoke belching out of them dominated my visual image of London and of England for many years after that really the other thing too is the language because you obviously didn't speak English when you arrived here and now of course you speak English without a trace of accent whatsoever but did you are in fact at the time do you have difficulty learning the language I had difficulty in learning to speak English as you sir charming you say without a trace of exid I think it's quite true but anyways in speaking it as well as I do because I'm not a very good mimic but I had no difficulty in learning English as a literal language and you see it's a very beautiful language when I had been in England for about a month a boy at school took me to the Whitechapel library and they are very elderly librarian said to me what if you're going to learn English you should start by reading a simple book and he leant me midshipman easy and I remember that I was struck in midshipman easy by the use of the phrase hoist with his own petard which I later discovered had not been invented by Marriot adored by Shakespeare but of course I didn't know any better at the time what I thought that was lovely and English has always struck me as a language which is full of these marvelous historic metaphors here they concise very precise it's a language that I fell in love with at the age of I suppose I came here when I was 12 so I suppose I was 14 when I first began to memorize English poems and I was made to memorize by my four master the whole of Gray's elegy and I stood in front of the class and I read great energy from beginning to end you know canst order nor animated bust back to its mention called the fleeting breath and all those wonderful lines and he listened to me the class all over their desk and ate their lunch and then at the end he said very clearly one day I shall hope to hear you say it in English unkind but crushing I would have thought well you see learning to understand that people are not really as unkind as they express themselves is probably what I learned in Germany in what I learned small pointing it didn't be a world of good yes at that time when you were then you're in your early teens did you know then that you wanted to be a scientist no not particularly you see one of the great merits of learning English at that time is that I learnt English mathematics chemistry all at the same time well what does that mean it means that when you are struggling with the word for water which is a very difficult word to pronounce you just listen to an American and you'll see how difficult it is for the house and at the same time you're learning that is written as h2o in the class upstairs you suddenly realize that all science or mathematics each of them is a language for expressing the relations in nature in a different way and that was a marvelous experience I never thought of myself particularly as a scientists or literary figure I edited the score magazine in a very short time but I loved them all because of this sense that one was unpicking the world finding the strands that run through it because language was the key to that and each way of looking at the world had a language of its own you've just really actually answered something that that slightly bothers me I think a lot of people who can't see I think you'll explain it there the link between the scientists who write poetry they see to them essentially a conflict one of artistic values the other of whatever mathematical values and yet you say that in fact they're all over peace so one shouldn't be surprised that you have like yourself a scientist who writes poetry for most people could do practically anything if they put their mind to it but I can't think many poets of achieving eminence in your field woman Humphrey Davy you know was uncertain whether he was going to be a scientist or poet and it was really only because Coleridge persuaded him that he'd color it was a much better poet so every day we decided to settle for they decide well they shall decide to cook mind at work you see hey I've must warn you that I'm simplifying that story little but I have a crack c-jun fact still write poetry yes I still write I still write one / me year at Christmastime I locked myself away and I think of one statement to make about what happened to me into my mind during the year which I sent two people to Christmastime really can you remember the last one you did the last one I did is about Watergate and I think that that is too quickly and explosive but I will tell you if I can remember it a very characteristic perm that I wrote it must have been about 1965 or 66 when I had just settled in California I had discovered that California was a country that everybody went to as if it were an Eldorado they went full of ambition and they all fought that the promised land was there and naturally they all wanted the promised land without working for it you know that that's what stops most people from doing anything that may think that they're going to they're going to win it in the pause and you can win everything the pause except the desire to win well California struck me that way very much I was they upset about people wanting to have success so easily and I wrote a poem which goes like this this is the coast the lemmings reached they did not drown but simply beached here after Agony's and less they found the go-go star success the goddess in the wilderness who shook her breast and bless the West she beckoned from the burning glass Madhu's over the face of brass and with her sunset fingertip wrote as if in magnesium strip a rain check on the Hall of Fame make a cross and put your name that's super well is if you said and that's what you do in effect is you deliver the sort of private message to your friends every room you don't publish or anything like that anymore do I think that interest me do you ever longed for the bohemian life of the the artist in one imagines that your life is so ordered and unplanned ah I live in a community of artists now who are so bohemian that you can't find them under their sweaters you know um 20 years ago when Einstein used to pad round in those funny old sweaters and slippers and no socks everybody thought how mild is how I Dre just you had to be a great bed to dress like that well now they father to wear the clothes that did that posterity take with their breasts it Oh Wayne check on the Hall of Fame yeah um but to answer your question seriously I have had many bohemian friends for instance for a short time towards the end of his life I knew Dylan Thomas quite well really I liked him very much as a person and he was always very charming people are not in awe of me in the street but friends who come from perche of the arts and so on have just that touch of war which makes them behave somewhat better with me than they do with others and Dylan Thomas having behaved exceptionally well with me but I thought that I just couldn't stand his life I just thought that the notion that you would wake up very late in the morning and say to yourself have the kids gone to school whose driving my wife to the supermarket who has the car and so on but too deeply ingrained in my outlook for my ever being able to dismiss those now I was very sorry about those because I also realized that you can't write poetry like Dylan Thomas's without a wonderful response ability where you say to hell with the second car in the supermarket this is life this is how I think and all this while a tidy poetry that I write and have just told you comes from a different temperament I just don't have the temperament to be a bohemian do I regret it well of course I regret never having written poems as beautiful as Dylan Thomas yes but then what about they I suppose irresponsibility when computed of the poet by Thomas because although as you say he lived in this style and created this magnificent poetry he also killed himself didn't Eve I doing it well that was his look doesn't have a responsibility those around him will birth him too I think they accepted him for what he was he would he was a very splendid person of course I was very sorry when he killed himself for what seemed to me ridiculous reasons but you know people have a piece you can't think that you can go around in a kleptomaniac way like a shoplifter in the almighty supermarket picking out something that you like here you know I have a little brain there and so on you know feel forgive my saying so I'm reminded of McCarthy and the committee for an American activities when I was in America back in 1953 who kept on having great scientists in front of them and would say to them we understand about your being a great scientist but why are you such a radical in politics couldn't you be a nice conservative like me and mr. Nixon and one couldn't explain to them that being a scientist and being a poet being an original person meant of a questioning of a rebellious a very uncomfortable way of life and that's what makes progress in the human race you said if there hadn't been some monkeys who had been very awkward children there would be no human race it was the children who disobeyed their monkey parents who are our ancestors how by forming a more adventurous stray I see then living by those habitual ways that there was spectable monkey parents lived you know somewhere between five and two million years ago and 20 million years ago there was nice Sunday morning church-going chimpanzee went down the road and some little kid broke away I'm simplified but in essence it's true and they by physique and by temperament did different things actually they faced a great crisis at that time the land was drying up the African forest near the equator was thinning out and they were faced with a way of life which had to be changed if they were to survive and they changed by coming down we used to think by actually coming down to the ground they didn't do quite that but they had to learn to hop as it were from one surviving grove of trees to the other that's how they came to stand upright that's how they came to begin to use their hands rather than their mouth and so on they didn't acquire these habits but the ones among them who were clever with that were the ones who survived and there are answers yes can I ask you now about you the the fame that you acquired on on television and radio television film particularly as I say and if so 50s and so you're one of the first two big television personalities did it ever have the effect on your fellow scientists that because of your fame and your public appeal that they didn't take you seriously as a scientist oh I'm sure it did you know this is not the kind of thing that people say to your face I mean when they ask you to dinner they didn't sort of say oh good evening dr. Panofsky of course we wouldn't confess to having watched your program but we saw your explanation about human evolution the other day and you know it's not sound it's not sound they don't actually say that but naturally that's that's what you have to suffer well if I had to do it again I'd do it just the same way you enjoyed it no not because I enjoyed it I enjoy everything I I don't have to hide from you the fact that I would be enjoying this conversation even if you're pretty girl I'm not sure that I would but I have been fortunate interest heavy immense enjoyment of life and happily I enjoy what according to electoral pursuits marginally more than mere physical pursuits I should like you to be a pretty intelligent girl to come back to what we were saying would I do it again because I enjoyed it no I would do it again because I came to it from a deep sense that science was reaching a stage where those scientists who had a special talent for speaking simply and explicitly also had a great duty laid on them to do so and I am as proud of colleagues of mine who did that and who have died jay dubin are the great jbs Hall day as I am of anything that I have done I would have done no doubt more academic scientific work if I had given more time to it and less time to gossiping with you but whether I would have done anything half as important in the spread of a liberal attitude towards the scientists towards the sciences and above all towards intellectual ideas no I don't think I would have done I don't think I could have done better with my talents and than what I have done Casali you know I was going to ask you that on on that program particularly you became known as the man who had an answer for absolutely everything you know the instant sort of fact or not necessary of fact an idea something were you ever flawed was that there anything that defeated you on the program well there were some questions asked on program on which fortunately I was not pleasant to which I didn't know they are so I mean there's a classical question about how a fly lands upside down on the ceiling dudes I didn't know the answer then and thank God I don't know it now because I do not think that you need to have your mind stuffed with a lot of irrelevant facts but on the program I don't think that I was ever asked anything to which I didn't know in a rough way why it went that particular way why you know how nature does that particular trick because you know I mean the only pleasure of being a scientist is that nature produces all these wonderful complications from such marvelous simple devices about which the most marvelous thing is that the human brain is actually capable of understanding yes yes can I go back now a little bit in your in your life to the point where you were in England the point in fact we went to America actually that's not going back is it um what reasons in fact made you go to the States in the first place I suddenly discovered that I was 55 you know you sort of wake up to that one fine day because until then you feel youthful in splendid and life seems to be going on forever and you put things off I had been working at what I regarded as a very important project for the co Board which was now to stage where engineers should take it over and I realized that I probably had 10 good active years left during which I would be able to think not as fast as I used to think but still with sufficient attention because what goes as you grow is simply your attention span how long can you keep at it so I just made up my mind that as soon as somebody made me a decent offer I would accept it by a decent offer I meant that I didn't want a lecture I wanted to be away from anybody who asked me to go on television shows I didn't I just wanted to do the research that I was now devoted to and since that had to do with what makes human being special it was the subject which I knew was going to be important in the future and that I could do something to found because you know I am in process of helping to found what is really a new academic discipline yes how readily did America take to our initially react you but of course they asked me because I had a good reputation in America because I had written a book called science and human values which students were made to read in their first year at college ever since it was published in 1953 that was 20 years ago it's just the 20th anniversary in of that and that book had made a great impression on the American public much more so than here it was given as a set of invited lectures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and in it I had simply said for the first time that you can't be a scientist without also a deep sense of not only the accuracy of what you do but the honesty the values the human involvement and that's why it was called science and human values I invented the phrase human values for that Pro for that series of lectures and I have often regretted it since then because we ought to invent phrases that people will identify with you not phrases they're just steal what are the essential difference is that you've observed the return offs between Britons and and Americans I mean are they that very much different do you think there are many differences one of them is that America is not homogeneous Britain is a country with well except traditions of behavior when a farmer like me comes to this country he is encouraged to speak the language like a native at the earliest possible moment he is even encouraged to change his name as soon as possible which I didn't do because like musicians scientists on the road do better if they have outlandish name benign America none of this is true I mean as you will know from the example of dr. Kissinger it's a positive advantage to speak English with a foreign accent in America and I don't mean an American accent it's always astonishing to me the first time I went to a very secret American atomic energy establishment I had so many Russian accents that I sent to the head of the establishment at the end you know I wonder if I go to an skiff everybody will speak Russian with an American accent the other great difference that strikes you or really stems from that I say stems from that because what I've just said is that America is not very homogeneous therefore everybody brings their own traditions to it they behave like the Quaker stock from which they came or most of my colleagues like the Polish stock from which they came you know people stopped me in the street in America who actually know me they speak to me in Polish a language which I don't speak anymore and that makes all questions of moral values and so on very difficult in America because people don't share common tradition now that leads to the second point which is it's a tremendously do-it-yourself Society I told little story I arrived in America in 1953 to give the very lectures to which I've referred called science and human values at MIT and it was a very difficult time the McCarthy Committee was Russ City the McClaren act had just been passed it was fade if he would get a visa I as a university teacher had to go to the American Embassy and take a test to show that I was free from venereal disease my wife was the wife of the university teacher did not have to take such a tale I always thought that that was said something very remarkable about the Americans but I've been thinking for 20 years what it said it and I still don't know now I arrived on a very cold morning at about 5:00 in the morning on the key side in New York on a French book called the liberty and my luggage was unloaded and I had brought with me copies of my book on Blake which had nearly been published and a very small man you know a great coach and a cap and covered with badges and so on began to go through my luggage and held in his hand the piece of paper on which I had declared poppers in there but when I come from that sort of simple honest European stock where I'd actually written down what I hadn't said 12 copies of book on William Blake he said to me you know by rights bud I ought to read every one of those I said be my guest and sat down on one of my suitcases well he blanched this pretty old wad and he looked here and there there's a bit towards the end about Karl Marx which I suddenly remembered and I thought to myself god I shouldn't have asked him that but they had not but naturally then he looked at it he looks at me and I said you write this bud so I said well the proudly yes he said this ain't never going to be no bestseller that's just true and I bet you that bad thought he said the most natural thing in the world you know I beat the trick criticism is obviously a natural gift of customers efficient but it tells you all I mean sometimes girls say it in funnier way sometimes means in further ways but by and large there is this curious feeling that everybody is the judge of everything and that makes life very different from this camp yes go now talk about about the the extraordinary documentary series you did on be the sequel that they sent a man and anybody of course so that you filmed over a heck of a long period of anybody who's ever been filming knows that there are moments both tragic and humorous when you're making a documentary that what if that was the funniest moment you had to think over all the time that you'll feel me I suppose the funniest moment from the producers point of view was the night he locked me in my bedroom on Easter Island and I who had drank far too much I couldn't get out but I will pass over the disasters about the helm the moment that he always tracked in my mother up to ask about that later the moment that his most track in my mind is a moment when I arrived in Jerusalem now I had been to the Middle East before but at that time Jerusalem was a divided city and we were going to do some filming in Jerusalem and I went up to a taxi driver on a very rainy afternoon and I said will you drive me to Calvary and he said I can't take you all the way cowboy is a one-way street if you have to walk part of the way and in retrospect that seemed to me so it sort of I mean he didn't he was trying to avoid the customs name but it seemed to me just to summarize what happens to you all the time on the series that your mind is bound up with what you're doing you're about to walk the road of Christ we were about to do a sequence which you will have seen in the in number 13 of Christ coming down the Mount of Olives and looking over before the enter into Jerusalem and I wanted to see it all on the spot but to him Calvary was a one-way street yes that's progress at it I suppose varied among mystery what about one assumes that said looking at the series on reading your book as well that the one most horrific moments for you personally must have been going back to Auschwitz did you have to steal yourself before you did that well I wasn't very keen to go I wasn't very keen to go because many of my relatives from Poland had died in Auschwitz however the point of the series was it wasn't an entertainment it was about life the way it is the way it has been and we just made up our minds to make it as true as so as we try to do everything in the series that is I said Agra for one day and during the morning we'll walk around and in the afternoon we'll do the one piece by the part that we know we won't do I had never seen ashes you know I had practically seen none of those places in the programmes for reasons that I'll be happy to tell you about afterwards but ash wits I hadn't been to at home we arrived at this station which had been looked over by the producer in advance so he knew what we should see I went through these terrible wooden and iron gates that say Arbeit macht frei the top work makes free so these unhappy people who went there to their deaths did the gas ovens I was particularly keen to see Bank of 12 and 11 where people were beaten and shot for breach of regulations because I sort of felt that you must see it all but it turned out that the things that were far more moving or ones that I couldn't have imagined at all the Germans are terribly methodical so there would be whole areas which contained nothing but old spectacles all been very carefully connected I went the slightest use but the Germans weren't going to throw them away there were areas which were entirely full of human hair there was a terrible area which was entirely full of wooden legs and crutches and artificial limbs and the most pathetic area of all an area which was just full of little tin chamber pots the children who'd come to the camp had brought with them and the Germans predicted or by this time I was in a pretty low frame of mind and the most awful thing was that there were pictures in the corridors of prisoners which were just the ordinary picture you know front face number on the bottom but many of them were pictures of quite young people children and to see these pictures of people taking as if they were criminals with the tears streaming down their face was just unbearable well then we drove over to the pond and we had arranged that we were I was just going to say a piece to close that program at the pond which would arise out of what I'd see in the morning so I sort of walked up and down for five minutes making up my mind what I was going to say and then we did it one take and we go home we had made up our minds that it was a piece which you couldn't possibly do twice I mean you just had to say well what came into your mind and the thing that came into my mind absolutely out of the blue was the phrase from Oliver Cromwell that I quote I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken did that do you find that personally more harrowing than your visit and more moving on you as a scientist and a human being then visiting as you did Hiroshima and Nagasaki yes you see of course Nagasaki in which I arrived late by night was awful but we all knew we could do something about that I'm in the world every one of us was going to follow his conscience in doing something to try and prevent a repetition of Nagasaki my friend were Tim penny chose his way I chose my way but each of us was clear that there was something human beings could do to prevent that kind of war that kind of use of winds our responsibility was brought home to us and as a matter of fact my responsibility was largely exercised in giving the lectures on science and human values and having people read them and in fact thereby purging the hope from scientific responsibility but a schvitz was it was just hopeless you know if a civilized country could allow that sort of best unity to become part of its relation to other human beings I just felt that I just felt the future had fallen that the how were you ever going to make people understand that a human being so individual you have to to touch them you have to to know that every one of those children every one of those chaps with the wooden leg and so on where people and however much they might be your enemies you couldn't take on yourself that responsibility I find it difficult to find the right words for that you must see program 11 and see them but I want to explain one thing to you see the most awful thing about Auschwitz was that you realized that the people who had been killed in the gas arms they were just dead they were the fortunate ones but the people who shoved another lot of people at the gas of next day they were like characters out of dentists in front living an endless hell because they had lost all sense of human feeling and we're going to repeat two more the unutterable best reality that they had practiced today yes yes I see that the horror on opposite effect it had on you I can't see myself that it's any more horrible than the man who allows they a mantra dropped on a defensive civilian population and killed 60,000 people I mean I think that one is his great crime as another and it leads me on to this thing too about the death or the responsibility of the scientists what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the the work of men Michiel like yourself and it comes into this area isn't it a moral responsibility our scientists really interested in human beings or is it just ideas that they're bothered about - mind if I take that in two parts you said something at the outset which i think is very wise and very own mantra just know I know that it's more sensational in the newspaper to say that so-and-so has committed a mass murder and slit the thirds of ten people for them children rather than just say slit the throat of one person but in fact in my opinion there is no difference between unutterable crimes and the man who killed a single child in Auschwitz and the man who killed 80,000 people at Hiroshima I think those crimes absolutely on a part we must learn that crime is something to do with your relation with a human being when you sit and press that button there should be a person at the end of it and the person should look like your sweetheart and you should say to yourself it's her it's somebody for whom I have arrested so I make no distinction between the gravity of these crimes they're enormous now you ask the question what about the scientists after all what about the chaps who actually invented the guess that they were using it asteroids itself one is faced at many moments in one's life between loyalties which are not compatible one is faced with a question of larger one's country as against larded one's religion think of all the Roman Catholics who were tortured to death in the reign of Queen Elizabeth the first who were constantly his brother spies are faced by questions of loyalty to some faith or the like and during the war many scientists were faced with a very simple and brutal question which is do I feel about the civilization in which I work strongly enough to do anything to resist the Nazi threat to make a bomb first and we all felt yes about that all of us and I had no doubt that all of us would do that again we felt quite certain that to allow what was then going on in Central Europe what we had seen films of in Poland and Russia to become normal over the world was something which we must resist by all technical means which we possessed that we would be traitors to the intelligence we had been provided for to turn around and say to mr. Winston Churchill I know you want the bomb but your war monger I am a peaceful man I would rather go to jail I think an individual can say that but I don't think that you can blame an individual who says no I can't say the questions arise about what happens at the mode when other people make up their minds to drop the bomb because I don't have to tell you that no scientist was asked about dropping the bomb and those who knew it was going to be dropped szilárd Vigna the people who signed the d norma random they were very much against it they said the dropping the bomb at that stage in the war was a mistake but you see they wouldn't have felt that if is it that if it had been a crucial question about dropping his on Berlin the stage of the wash we had been threatened by that terrible dilemma I mean that's what morality is about that's what being a human being is about you are faced with questions of value to which there are no numerical answers never think that you can write down an equation which at the end of which you say in a satisfactory tone of voice that's fine I have now proved larger to my country is more important than loyalty to the scientific position that's always got to be a person well let me put something else to then it's on the same thing which is a quote from the French Nobel Prize winner professor Jacques mano and he said supposing someone discovered a foolproof method of finding out whether different races had genetic differences in intelligence now if it was applied and the differences were found he so the results would inevitably be grossly misused and then he cast the question should the scientists bury his secret or publishing an obscure journal hoping that this would delay the news leaking out now that's a dilemma isn't it in a situation what I mean what would you do in a situation like that fair good question Oh Jacques mano is a colleague of mine Salk Institute I should explain to you so I'm not saying you know it's a great question because we spent an together it is a good question I know what I would do I would publish and I must now explain to you why I think this you see I think we've all got to understand that all this talk about black people have a lower IQ than white people or Jews have a higher IQ than non-jews is all a load of rubbish because the average IQ of a sample of the population is absolutely of no interest in your work in my work in everybody's work was listening to us at this moment they never deal with the average IQ of a million people they deal with persons now think of my picture of the tour European men and the little Japanese me nobody argues about the fact that Japanese are genetically smaller than the whites because fortunately it's there it's fixed and and nobody thinks that it's terribly important and then us understand the same about the IQ there are these two mountains of IQ say the blacks here and the whites there we don't know how far apart the means are but they probably are some distance but after all there's not the slightest doubt that black people have other physical advantages over white people of which they ought to equally to be proud but the point is that there are millions of black people who are clever than other millions of white people these mountains that I'm picturing that contain one population another may have their peaks in slightly different places but they overlap in the main so that the world is just as full of clever black people and clever yellow people and clever white people as it is of clever white people and when mr. Jensen in his academic way or mr. Shockley in his more downright way says we ought to educate them differently or we ought to do this that India I think that's just wrong I think we oughta recognize that everybody has a different gift you asked me a very nice question the beginning when was I aware of my mental gifts I didn't think there were anything special because I mean you know when I was a boy school I wanted to run the mile in four and a half minutes well you know I stood no more chance of an amount of four and a half minutes then anybody's it's three and a half minutes I wasn't built that way didn't go out saying you mustn't publish this result everybody will think I'm a poor chap I can't run the mile four and a half minutes and I haven't gone around saying that everybody who run the man in less than four minutes that ought to be put up against the wall and shot why people are different and thank God they are what has made the human race the wonderful thing it is the fact that variety is its spice it's being we are more varied in our accomplishments we are more able to distribute tasks between us because you can do one thing better than I and I can do another thing and instead of I cutting our heads open with battle axes in order to demonstrate this the contest which I should inevitably lose I'm most anxious to say to you in a peaceful way like I would be anxious to say the president said that look Chum let's just get on with the business of living and contributing our different gifts and IQ is just like any other like musical ability or chess or any of what is the main problem not as you would look then today look around it was the main problem in the world faced in the world today I think that the main problem is of our making in the 50 odd years since I came to this country we have widened the intellectual interests and aspirations of people or a thousandfold we have invented television programs like this we've invented the paperback well alright I know that some of the pictures obviously I'm not very were reading about the content but you know if you can't sell Plato without a naked girl on the cover good luck so far as I'm concerned Plato and I would be a1 mine by any objection is that I shall have to be dead a long time before I rival Plato because I'm still in copyright and he's out of trouble we have invented an ability for people in all countries but in Western countries in particular to share not just wealth but the intellectual wealth you know 50 years ago what organization in the world would have put up that money to put out my programs on the ascent of man what organization would have put all that money into printing that beautiful book and how I would never have spent my time breaking my heart to make sure the book was you know as gorgeous as it could be because I'm as anxious to get these things into people's hands as they are to have them well that's gone very fast in the last 50 years and we haven't nearly caught up with it we still have far too few people to bring these gifts to others we still don't know how to satisfy the leisure aspirations of most people above all we don't know how to provide enough drugs which are fundamentally interesting in themselves and other too many of us as well will you say is that another problem you see I don't believe in problems which always other people's problems I have four children their old daughter so they add to the net reproduction rate father a lot and I just would think it impertinent to say to any person in the world black white yellow it's okay for me to have four kids but you must so I don't think that too many of I think that these things have to adjust themselves as people find what they prefer to children and it is doing so so I don't think that your many of us know I think that what we haven't solved is the the problem to which I come back of giving people very satisfying John's the things that the hippies tried to do would fail and the things that which you know the few privileged all of us like you and me are so good I just think that I had the most wonderful life in the world because like every scientist I share with craft statutes the only really satisfying job I'm actually paid to do what I like doing I doubt if many prostitutes would agree with that to me there are some subjects on which I cede specialization to you you get after that is this in I'm sorry that was kinda knock about now can we do it finally over the last few mr. got just looked toward the the world of the future because in reading through all about you you've speculated very interestingly in certain areas for instance you and I'd like to also explain how this would happen there's one article I read by you where you said it's conceivable that in the future we would be able to select the sex of a child a couple will be able to say how exactly would would would that happen daughter well it's clear that the sex of a fertilized ovum is determined very early because the sperm that has entered the ovum carries either a Y chromosome or an X chromosome to couple with the X chromosome in the egg and if it carries a Y chromosome then the fertilized egg will make a male right now the two things may be possible it may be possible to determine which it is quite early by chemical test and then if you wish to abort quite early on probably within the second month a child of the wrong sex you can see the more problem that if I were to be presented with the prophecy that my fifth baby was to be a daughter what would I do but it may also be possible to do something quite different it may be possible to take sperm and to sort it in such a way that although you can't be certain that you've now got one bag carrying X chromosome one Becca in white color that the percentage of excess is much higher in one and the percentage of Y's is much higher than the other so if you use that for artificial insemination then you would get a much higher chance of one or the other sex now this of course is into the future and of course it begs the the final question to you really is about I mean what is your idea of utopia you look ahead what's the ideal for you I have no idea that is different from the one that I put forward before when I made that jerk about those of us who do jobs that we liked I am convinced that human beings take pleasure in work not in idleness I am convinced that when people are accused of idleness it just means that they are being accused of hating the humdrum job that doesn't tax them they've been put into so I am convinced that the ideal world for every human being is one in which he or she does a job that they are good at life doing that gives them satisfaction that's my utopia I start I started off actually by asking the question about people frightened of talking to you could you could have a cheat you and ask you a question now should we take notice of anything that you say yes you don't mean this doing the thing that people think that that it's true that they were amount of opinion on everything annalistic sort of Oracle how it's difficult question I know but how accurate or what in fact what's your your function as that kind of person as the Oracle should we really believe you or should we just sort of skeptical should be just think about what you said that's a very good question that's the second one I've asked in an hour no it's a particularly good question because it pays me out for that nasty remark I made but I'm I'm really it's really question I'm happy to have and it's for this reason you see I'm not an Oracle and although people liked me on the brains trust I often ask myself why and I'm naturally impressed at the attention with which people have listened to me today I'm terribly impressed with the attention with which you have listened we're not losing your place among the questions valid Sunnah is a great piece of homage to me why it's because I have been fortunate enough by birth and education and particularly by being thrust into many strange environments to have had to shape a view of life which is very tightly knit if you ask me a question about birth control or question about intelligence of black people or question about utopia there are not three clever men answering there is one man who is speaking from a deep sense of inner conviction of what life is about that's what I think life is about my life has been happy because although I have suffered many conflicts of loyalty which I spoke to earlier I've never had any uncertainty about the meaning of the word good the meaning of the word true the meaning of the word beautiful and the meaning of words like original knew what ought we to be doing I've always had a tremendous pride in being a human being and being born in the 20th century I'm terribly sad that do you know 30 years from now I shall be dead because not because anybody will miss me but because I will miss them because so many more marvelous things will be now now should you listen to me yes yes you should not because you have to believe any single thing that I say but because you have to be pleased that there are people who have led happy and complete lives who feel that they can speak out of a full heart and a four mind all in the same breath I take it as a privilege rather than a pleasure doctrine Oscar thank you very much indeed you

Channel: StutteringBum

Views: 211,014

Rating: 4.8610678 out of 5

Keywords: Jacob Bronowski (Author), Michael Parkinson (Author)

Id: DFgnGUL78MU

Length: 65min 12sec (3912 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 30 2013