The first outline of The Ascent of Man was written in July 1969and the last foot of film was shot in December 1972. An undertaking aslarge as this, though wonderfully exhilarating, is not entered lightly. It demands an unflagging intellectual and physical vigour, a total immersion, which I had to be sure that I could sustain with pleasure; for instance, Ihad to put off researches that I had already begun; and I ought to explai-n what moved me to do so.

There has been a deep change in the temper of science in the last20 years: the focus of attention has shifted from the physical to the life sciences. As a result, science is drawn more and more to the study of in-dividuality. But the interested spectator is hardly aware yet how far-reaching the effect is in changing the image of man that science moulds. Asa mathematician trained in physics, I too would have been unaware, had not a series of lucky chances taken me into the life sciences in middle age. I owe a debt for the good fortune that carried me into two seminal fields of science in one lifetime; and though I do not know to whom the debt is due, I conceived The Ascent of Man in gratitude to repay it.

The invitation to me from the British Broadcasting Corporation was to present the development of science in a series of television programmes to match those of Lord Clark on Civilisation. Television is an admirable medium- for exposition in several ways: powerful and immediate to the eye, able to take the spectator bodily into the places and processes that are described, and conversational enough to make him conscious that what he witnesses are not events but the actions of people. The last of these merits is to my mind the most cogent, and it weighed most with me in agreeing to cast a personal biography of ideas in the form of television essays. The point is that knowledge in general and science in particular does not consist of abstract but of man-made ideas, all the way from its beginnings to its modern and idiosyncratic models. Therefore the underlying concepts that unlock nature must be shown to arise early and in the simplest cultures of man from his basic and specific faculties. And the development of science which joins them in more and more complex conjunctions must be seen to be equally human: discoveries are made by men, not merely by minds, so that they are alive and charged with individuality. If television is not used to make these thoughts concrete, it is wasted.

參考答案：

《人類的進程》一書的提綱初稿是1969年7月完成的，影片的最后一部分是在1972年12月拍攝的。像這樣大的一個項目，雖然異常精彩，令人激動，卻并不是輕易上馬的。它要求我保持旺盛的腦力和體力，專心致志地投入工作。我必須確保持之以恒，并從中得到樂趣;比方說，我不得不停下已經(jīng)開始的研究工作;我還應當說明一下，究竟是什么促使我承擔這項工作的。

二十年來，科學的發(fā)展趨勢發(fā)生了深刻的變化：關注的焦點已經(jīng)從自然科轉移到生命科學。結果，便把科學越來越吸引到個體特征的研究上來。然而感興趣的旁觀者幾乎沒有意識到此事對于改變科學塑造的人的形象產生了多么深遠的影響。我是一個研究數(shù)學的人，以前學過物理學，若不是中年有幸有幾次機會涉足生命科學，我也不會有所認識。我應當感謝我交的好運，是它使我在一生中參與了兩個啟發(fā)性的科學領域。盡管我并不知道應該向誰表示感謝，我編寫了《人類的進程》一書，以表示我的感激之情。

英國廣播公司邀請我做的是通過一套電視節(jié)目來表現(xiàn)科學的發(fā)展過程，以與克拉克勛爵制作的關于文明的電視節(jié)目相匹配。通過電視來進行解說有幾大好處：它有力、直觀，能使觀眾身臨其境或親身參與所描述的過程，它的語言親切，能使觀眾覺得他所看到的是人們的行動而不是事件。這些優(yōu)點之中，我認為最后一點最為突出，它是一股最大的動力促使我同意以電視散文的方式從個人的角度來講述各種思想的發(fā)展史。重要的是知識總體，尤其是科學知識不是由抽象的思想構成的，而是由人的思想構成的，自有知識開始直到現(xiàn)代千奇百怪的模式莫不是如此。所以介紹打開自然界之門的基本思想，必須表現(xiàn)出它們很早就已產生，而且是產生在人類最淳樸的文化之中，產生于人類基本的、具體的感官之中。同時還必須表現(xiàn)出使種種思想形成越來越復雜的結合體的科學的發(fā)展也同樣是人類的貢獻：種種發(fā)現(xiàn)都是人的產物，而不僅僅是頭腦的產物，因此它們都是有生氣的，而且具有個人的特色。如果電視未能把這些思想表現(xiàn)得很具體，那豈不是浪費!

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