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June 17 movie: The Ascent of Man. CD4 includes 3 episodes: "The Ladder of Creation" looks at Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, who came up with the concept of evolution by natural selection. "World within World" examines the creation of the periodic table and quantum physics. "Knowledge or Certainty" is the episode everyone talks about, and with good reason. In it Bronowski discusses the incomplete nature of all human knowledge, and the disastrous, sometimes monstrous consequences of belief in absolute certainty. The part that always gets mentioned is the end, when he visits the concentration camp where members of his own family died. But the entire episode is so powerful. Bronowski's poetic narration, which he wrote, is inspiring. Here's a quote, from a scene early on where he examines a human face with a whole range of instruments and describes the flaws in each method:

"We are here face to face with the crucial paradox of knowledge. Year by year we devise more precise instruments with which to observe nature with more fineness. And when we look at the observations they are as uncertain as ever. We seem to be running after a goal which lurches away from us to infinity every time we come within sight of it."