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MILTON: "In his hand
he took the golden compasses prepared
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In God's eternal stone to circmscribe
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This niverse and all created things
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One foot he centered and the other trned
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Rond throgh the vast profndity obscre
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And said Ths far extend ths far thy bonds
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This be thy just circumference, O World!"
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(Thunderclap)
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The earth has existed
for more than 4,000 million years.
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Through all this time it has been
shaped and changed by two kinds of action.
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The hidden forces within the earth
have buckled the strata
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and lifted and shifted the land masses.
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And on the surface,
the erosion of snow and rain and storm,
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of stream and ocean,
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of sun and wind,
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have carved out a natural architecture.
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~ MESSIAEN:
Et Expecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum
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Man has also become an architect
of his environment,
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but he does not command forces
as powerful as those of nature.
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His method has been selective and probing,
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an intellectual approach
in which action depends on understanding.
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I've come to trace its history
and the cultures of the New World,
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which are younger than Europe and Asia.
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This is the Canyon de Chelly in Arizona.
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This breathless, secret valley has been
inhabited by one Indian tribe after another,
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almost without a break,
for 2,000 years since the birth of Christ,
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longer than any other place in North America.
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Sir Thomas Browne has a springing sentence -
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"The huntsmen are up in America and
they're already past their first sleep in Persia."
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At the birth of Christ, the huntsmen were settling
to agriculture here in the Canyon de Chelly
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and starting along the same steps
in the ascent of man
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that had first been taken in the Middle East.
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Why did civilisation begin so much later
in the New World than in the Old?
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Evidently because man was a latecomer
to the New World.
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He came before boats were invented,
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which implies that he came dry shod
over the Bering Straits
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when they formed a broad land bridge
during the last ice age.
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That means that man came from Asia
to America not later than 10,000 years ago
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and not earlier than about 30,000 years ago.
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And he didn 't come all at once.
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There is subtle, but persuasive,
biological evidence...
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...that I can only interpret to mean
that he came in two small successive migrations.
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The evidence is that there is no blood group B
anywhere in America
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as there is in most other parts of the world.
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In Central and South America,
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all the original Indian population
is blood group O.
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In North America, it is the blood groups O and A.
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I can see no sensible way of interpreting that...
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...but to believe that a first migration
of a small related kinship group,
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all of blood group O,
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came into America,
multiplied and spread right down to the south.
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And then a second migration,
again of small groups,
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this time containing both A and O,
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followed them only so far as North America.
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The American Indians, then,
certainly contained some of this later migration
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and are, comparatively speaking, latecomers.
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Agriculture in the Canyon de Chelly
reflects this lateness.
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Although maize had long been cultivated
in Central and South America,
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here it comes in only about the time of Christ.
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People are very simple.
They have no houses, they live in caves.
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Pottery is introduced.
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Pit houses are dug in the caves themselves
and covered with clay or adobe.
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And at that stage the canyon is really fixed
until about the year 1000,
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when the great Pueblo civilisation
comes in with stonemasonry.
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That seems a very simple distinction -
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the mud house, the stonemasonry.
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But, in fact, it represents a fundamental
intellectual difference, not just a technical one.
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And I believe it to be one of the most
important steps that man has taken...
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...wherever and whenever he did so.
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The distinction between
the moulding action of the hand
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and the splitting or analytic action of the hand.
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You see...
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...it seems the most natural thing in the world
to take some clay
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and mould it into a ball, a little clay figure,
a cup, a pit house.
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At first, we feel that the shape of nature's
been given us by this.
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But, of course, it's not.
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This is the man -made shape.
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What the pot does is to reflect the cupped hand.
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What the pit house does
is to reflect the shaping action of man.
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And nothing has been discovered
about nature herself...
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...when man imposes these warm, rounded,
feminine, artistic shapes on her.
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The only thing that you reflect
is the shape of your own hand.
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There is a great intellectual step forward...
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...when man splits a piece of wood,
or a piece of stone...
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...and lays bare in that
the print that nature had put before he split it.
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From an early time,
man made tools by working the stone.
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Sometimes the stone had a natural grain.
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Sometimes the tool-maker created the lines
of cleavage by learning how to strike the stone.
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It may be that the idea comes in the first place
from splitting wood
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because wood is a material with a visible
structure which opens easily along the grain,
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but which is hard to shear across the grain.
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The notion of discovering
an underlying order in matter
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is man 's basic concept for exploring nature.
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The architecture of things
reveals a structure below the surface,
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a hidden grain which, when it's laid bare,
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makes it possible
to take natural formations apart
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and assemble them in new arrangements.
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For me, this is the step in the ascent of man
with which theoretical science begins
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and it's as native to the way man conceives
his own communities as well as nature.
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We human beings are joined in families,
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the families are joined in kinship groups,
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the kinship groups in clans, the clans in tribes,
the tribes in nations.
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And that sense of hierarchy, of a pyramid,
in which layer is imposed on layer,
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runs through all the ways that we look at nature.
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The fundamental particles make nuclei,
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the nuclei join in atoms,
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the atoms join in molecules,
the molecules join in bases,
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the bases join in amino acids.
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We find again in nature something
which seems profoundly to correspond
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to the way in which
our own social relations join us.
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The Canyon de Chelly
is a kind of microcosm of the cultures.
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But its high point was reached when
the Pueblo people built these great structures
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just after 1000 AD.
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They represent not only an understanding of
nature in the stonework, but of human relations,
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because the Pueblo people formed here
and elsewhere a kind of miniature city.
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Stones make a wall, walls make a house,
houses make streets and streets make a city.
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A city is stones and a city is people.
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But it's not a heap of stones
and it's not just a jostle of people.
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In the step from the village to the city,
a new community organisation is built,
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based on the division of labour
and on chains of command.
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The way to recapture that is to walk into
the streets of a city that none of us has seen
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in a culture that has vanished.
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This is Machu Picchu in the high Andes,
8,000ft up, in South America.
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It was built by the Incas
at the height of their empire,
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round about 1500 AD, or a little earlier,
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when the planning of a city
was their greatest achievement.
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When the Spaniards
conquered and plundered Peru in 1532,
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they somehow overlooked Machu Picchu
and its sister cities.
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After that, it was forgotten for 400 years
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until, one winter's day in 1911,
Hiram Bingham of Yale stumbled on it.
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By then it had been abandoned for centuries
and was picked bare as a bone.
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But in that skeleton of a city lies
the structure of every city civilisation,
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in every age, everywhere in the world.
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A city must live on a base, a hinterland,
of a rich agricultural surplus.
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And the visible base for the Inca civilisation
was the cultivation of terraces.
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Of course, now the bare terraces
grow nothing but grass.
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But once the potato was cultivated here -
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it's the native product of Peru.
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Maize, which was long native
and had come from the north.
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And since this was a ceremonial city
of some kind,
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when the Inca came to visit, no doubt there were
grown for him tropical luxuries of this climate,
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like the coca, which is an intoxicating herb that
only the Inca aristocracy was allowed to chew.
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At the heart of the terrace culture
is the system of irrigation.
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This is what the pre-lnca empire
and the Inca empire made.
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It runs through these terraces through canals
and aqueducts, through the great ravines,
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down into the desert towards the Pacific,
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and makes it flower.
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Exactly as in the Fertile Crescent,
it's the control of the water,
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and so here in Peru, the Inca civilisation
was built on the control of irrigation.
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A large system of irrigation,
extending over an empire,
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requires a strong central authority.
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It was so in Mesopotamia, it was so in Egypt,
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it was so in the empire of the Incas.
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And that means that this city,
and all the cities here,
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rested on an invisible base of communication -
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the roads,
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the bridges in a wild country like this,
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the messages.
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They came here, they went out of here.
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They are the three links
by which every city is held to every other,
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and which, we suddenly realise,
are different in this city.
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Roads, bridges, messages.
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Yet on the roads there were no wheels.
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Under the bridges there were no arches.
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The messages were not in writing.
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The culture of the Incas had not made
these inventions by the year 1500 AD.
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That's because civilisation in America
started several thousand years late
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and was conquered before it had time
to make all the inventions of the Old World.
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It was a remarkably tight social structure.
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Everyone had a place,
everyone was provided for...
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...and everyone - peasant, craftsman, soldier -
worked for one man, the supreme Inca.
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The artisans who lovingly carved this stone
to represent the symbol of the link
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between the sun and its god and king, the Inca,
worked for the Inca.
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So, of course,
it was an extraordinarily brittle empire.
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In less than a hundred years,
from 1438 onwards,
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the Incas had conquered
3,000 miles of coastline.
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Almost everything
between the Andes and the Pacific.
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And yet, and yet...
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In 1532, a Spanish adventurer, almost illiterate,
Francisco Pizarro,
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rode into Peru with no more than
62 terrible horses and 106 foot soldiers.
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And overnight he conquered the great empire.
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How? By cutting the top of the pyramid.
By capturing the Inca.
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And from that moment, the empire sagged...
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...and the cities, the beautiful cities, laid bare
for the gold plunderer and the vultures.
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But, of course,
a city is more than a central authority.
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A city is people, a city is alive.
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What is a city?
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It is a community which lives on a base
of agriculture so much richer than the village
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that it can afford to sustain
every kind of craftsman
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and make him a specialist for a lifetime.
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The specialists are gone.
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Their work has been destroyed.
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The men who made this city -
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the goldsmith, the coppersmith,
the weaver, the potter -
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their work has been robbed.
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The woven fabric has decayed,
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the bronze has perished,
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the gold has been stolen.
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All that remains is the work of the mason.
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The beautiful craftsmanship
of the men who made this city.
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Not the Incas, but the craftsmen.
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But, of course, if you work for an Inca,
if you work for one man...
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...his tastes rule you and you make no invention.
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These men... still worked to the end of the empire
with the beam.
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They never invented the arch.
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Here is a measure of the time lag
between the New World and the Old.
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Because this is exactly the point which
the Greeks had reached 2,000 years earlier
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and at which they also stopped.
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This is Paestum in southern Italy.
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A Greek colony,
whose temples are older than the Parthenon,
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they date from about 500 BC.
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Paestum is contemporary
with the beginning of Greek mathematics.
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Pythagoras taught in exile
in another Greek colony not far from here.
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Like the mathematics of Peru 2,000 years later,
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the Greek temples were bounded
by the straight edge and the set square.
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The Greeks did not invent the arch either
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and therefore their temples
are crowded avenues of pillars.
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They seem open when we see them as ruins,
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but in fact they are monuments without spaces.
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That's because they had to be spanned
by single beams
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and the span that can be sustained by a flat
beam is limited by the strength of the beam.
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On a computer, we can see the stresses in
the beam as we move the columns further apart.
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The longer the beam, the greater the
compression that its weight produces in the top
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and the greater the tension it produces
in the bottom.
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And stone is weak in tension.
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It will fail at the bottom.
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Unless the columns are kept close together.
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The Greeks could be ingenious
in making the structure light.
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For example, by using two tiers of columns.
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But in the end,
the physical limitations of the material
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could not be overcome without a new invention.
232
00:23:25,640 --> 00:23:28,632
Since the Greeks were fascinated by geometry,
233
00:23:28,720 --> 00:23:34,238
it's puzzling that they did not make
the beautiful invention of the arch.
234
00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:36,311
(Drumming)
235
00:23:45,640 --> 00:23:49,110
But the fact is that the arch
is an engineering invention.
236
00:23:50,720 --> 00:23:54,315
This is the aqueduct at Segovia in Spain,
237
00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:57,437
which the Romans built about 100 AD.
238
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:06,033
The structure seems to us splendid,
out of proportion to its function of carrying water.
239
00:24:07,080 --> 00:24:10,709
But that's because we get water by turning a tap
240
00:24:10,800 --> 00:24:15,555
and we lightly forget the universal problems
of city civilisation.
241
00:24:16,480 --> 00:24:21,110
Every advanced culture
that concentrates its skilled men in cities,
242
00:24:21,200 --> 00:24:25,512
depends on the kind of invention
and organisation
243
00:24:25,600 --> 00:24:28,592
that the Roman aqueduct at Segovia expresses.
244
00:24:29,640 --> 00:24:33,428
The Romans did not invent the arch
in the first place in stone.
245
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:36,874
The arch is simply a method of spanning space,
246
00:24:36,960 --> 00:24:39,952
which doesn 't load the centre
more than the rest.
247
00:24:43,040 --> 00:24:46,669
The stress flows outward
fairly equally throughout.
248
00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:51,559
But for this reason
the arch can be made of parts,
249
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:56,552
of separate blocks of stone,
which the load compresses.
250
00:24:58,600 --> 00:25:03,628
In this sense, the arch is the triumph
of the intellectual method
251
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:07,508
which takes nature apart
and puts the pieces together
252
00:25:07,600 --> 00:25:10,751
in new and more powerful combinations.
253
00:25:12,200 --> 00:25:15,431
The Romans always made the arch
as a semicircle.
254
00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:20,674
They had a mathematical form that worked well
and they were not inclined to experiment.
255
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:24,792
The circle remained the basis of the arch, too,
256
00:25:24,880 --> 00:25:28,236
when it went into mass production
in Arab countries.
257
00:25:31,560 --> 00:25:39,035
This is the great mosque at Cordoba in Spain,
built in 785 AD after the Arab conquest.
258
00:25:39,880 --> 00:25:43,589
It's a more spacious structure
than the Greek temple at Paestum
259
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:47,514
and yet it's visibly run into similar difficulties.
260
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:53,953
It's filled with masonry which can 't be got rid of
without a new invention.
261
00:25:55,000 --> 00:26:01,235
The invention is a new form of the arch
based not on the circle, but on the oval.
262
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:04,395
That doesn 't seem a great change
263
00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:09,793
and yet its effect on the articulation of buildings
is spectacular.
264
00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:11,836
~ BENJAMIN BRITTEN: A War Requiem
265
00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:15,634
Of course, a pointed arch is higher
and therefore opens more space and light.
266
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:20,996
But, much more radically,
the thrust of the Gothic arch
267
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:26,757
makes it possible to hold the space
in a new way - as here at Reims.
268
00:27:27,640 --> 00:27:33,112
The load is taken off the walls,
which can therefore be pierced with glass
269
00:27:33,200 --> 00:27:38,911
And the total effect is to hang the building
like a cage from the arched roof.
270
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:52,279
The inside of the building is open
because the skeleton is outside.
271
00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:02,032
Of all the monuments to human effrontery...
272
00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:10,236
...there is none to match
these towers of tracery and glass
273
00:28:10,320 --> 00:28:14,313
that burst into the light of northern Europe
about the year 1200.
274
00:28:15,160 --> 00:28:22,032
They were built by the common consent of
townspeople and for them by common masons.
275
00:28:22,760 --> 00:28:28,073
They bear almost no relation to the everyday
useful architecture of the time
276
00:28:28,160 --> 00:28:33,314
and in them improvisation becomes invention
at every moment.
277
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:42,072
They turned the semicircular Roman arch
into the high, pointed Gothic arch...
278
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:48,797
...in such a way that the stress flows
through the arch to the outside of the building.
279
00:28:49,600 --> 00:28:55,914
And then, in the 12th century, the sudden
revolutionary turning of that into the half arch.
280
00:28:56,000 --> 00:28:57,956
The flying buttress.
281
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:02,197
The stress runs in the buttress
as it runs in my arm
282
00:29:02,280 --> 00:29:05,272
and there is no masonry where there's no stress.
283
00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:10,517
No basic principle in architecture
was added to that really
284
00:29:10,600 --> 00:29:14,639
until the invention of
steel and concrete buildings.
285
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:22,752
The masons carried in their heads
a stock not so much of patterns as of ideas,
286
00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:26,475
that grew by experience
as they went from one site to the next.
287
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:29,999
They also carried with them a kit of light tools.
288
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:35,197
They marked out with compasses
the ovals for the pointed vaults
289
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:37,316
and the circles for the rose windows.
290
00:29:38,600 --> 00:29:41,512
They defined their intersections with callipers
291
00:29:41,600 --> 00:29:45,309
to line them up
and fit them into repeatable patterns.
292
00:29:51,080 --> 00:29:54,959
Vertical and horizontal
were related by the T-square,
293
00:29:55,040 --> 00:29:57,429
as they had been in Greek mathematics.
294
00:30:00,400 --> 00:30:03,790
That is, the vertical was fixed
with the plumb line...
295
00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:14,596
...and the horizontal was fixed
not with a spirit level,
296
00:30:14,680 --> 00:30:18,229
but with a plumb line joined to a right angle.
297
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:23,556
The wandering builders
were an intellectual aristocracy
298
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:28,430
and they called themselves freemasons
as early as the 14th century.
299
00:30:30,720 --> 00:30:35,191
One has the sense that the men
who conceived these buildings
300
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:43,039
were intoxicated by their new-found command
of the force in the stone.
301
00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:51,675
How else could they have proposed
to build vaults of 125 and 150ft
302
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:55,594
at a time when they could not calculate
any of the stresses?
303
00:30:56,600 --> 00:31:03,790
Well, the vault of 150ft at Beauvais,
less than 100 miles from here, collapsed.
304
00:31:03,880 --> 00:31:05,836
~ VERDl: Requiem - Dies Irae, Part 1
305
00:32:02,560 --> 00:32:09,511
When the roof of Beauvais collapsed in 1284,
some years after it was finished,
306
00:32:09,600 --> 00:32:12,353
it sobered the high Gothic adventure.
307
00:32:13,160 --> 00:32:15,833
No structure as tall as this was attempted again.
308
00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:20,270
Yet the empirical design may have been sound.
309
00:32:21,200 --> 00:32:26,354
Probably the ground at Beauvais was simply
not solid enough and shifted under the building.
310
00:32:29,520 --> 00:32:34,719
But the vault of 125ft here at Reims held.
311
00:32:35,840 --> 00:32:38,957
And from 1250 onwards,
312
00:32:39,040 --> 00:32:46,390
Reims became a centre for the arts of Europe.
313
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:52,950
You see, here I am, roaming around
all these beautiful architectural sites
314
00:32:53,040 --> 00:32:56,476
sitting now on the roof of the cathedral at Reims.
315
00:32:56,560 --> 00:32:59,836
Why? What does it have to do with science?
316
00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:06,233
Particularly, what does it have to do with science
317
00:33:06,320 --> 00:33:10,598
the way we used to understand it
at the beginning of this century
318
00:33:10,680 --> 00:33:12,636
when science was all numbers?
319
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:17,919
The co-efficient of expansion of this,
the frequency of that.
320
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:26,191
The fact of the matter is
that our conception of science now,
321
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:28,475
towards the end of the 20th century,
322
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:30,516
has changed radically.
323
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:37,749
We see science
as a description and explanation
324
00:33:37,840 --> 00:33:41,435
of the underlying structures in nature.
325
00:33:41,520 --> 00:33:47,231
And words like structure, pattern, plan,
arrangement, architecture
326
00:33:47,320 --> 00:33:52,792
constantly occur in every description
that we try to make.
327
00:33:54,800 --> 00:33:59,237
I have, of course, lived with this all my life
and it gives me a special pleasure.
328
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:03,393
The kind of mathematics that I have done
since childhood is geometrical.
329
00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:11,273
But now that is the everyday language
of scientific explanation.
330
00:34:12,800 --> 00:34:16,429
We talk about the way crystals are put together,
331
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:18,909
the way atoms are made of their parts.
332
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:24,870
Above all, we talk about the way
that living molecules are made of their parts.
333
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:34,315
The spiral structure of DNA has become the
most vivid imagery for science in the last years.
334
00:34:35,240 --> 00:34:38,755
And that imagery lives here.
It lives in these arches.
335
00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:44,356
What did the people do
who made this building and others like it?
336
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:48,638
They took a dead heap of stones
which is not a cathedral
337
00:34:48,720 --> 00:34:56,274
and they turned it into a cathedral
by exploiting the natural forces of gravity,
338
00:34:56,360 --> 00:35:02,595
the way the stone had lain, the brilliant invention
of flying buttress and arch and so on.
339
00:35:03,440 --> 00:35:12,473
And they created a structure out of
the analysis of nature into this superb synthesis.
340
00:35:13,400 --> 00:35:17,712
The kind of man who is interested
in the architecture of nature today...
341
00:35:18,760 --> 00:35:24,710
...is the kind of man who made this architecture
nearly 800 years ago.
342
00:35:27,600 --> 00:35:34,995
There is one gift above all others
that makes man unique among the animals
343
00:35:35,080 --> 00:35:37,958
and it's the gift displayed everywhere here.
344
00:35:39,360 --> 00:35:46,869
His immense pleasure
in exercising and pushing forward his own skill.
345
00:35:46,960 --> 00:35:48,916
~ MACHAUT: Notre Dame Mass
346
00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:21,553
A popular cliche in philosophy says
that science is pure analysis or reductionism,
347
00:36:21,640 --> 00:36:23,870
like taking the rainbow to pieces,
348
00:36:24,720 --> 00:36:27,951
and art is pure synthesis -
putting the rainbow together.
349
00:36:29,160 --> 00:36:31,116
This is not so.
350
00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:34,875
All imagination begins by analysing nature.
351
00:36:35,800 --> 00:36:37,756
Michelangelo said that:
352
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:42,758
"When that which is divine in s
does try to shape a face
353
00:36:42,840 --> 00:36:45,229
both brain and hand nite to give
354
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:47,754
from a mere model frail and slight
355
00:36:47,840 --> 00:36:50,912
life to the stone by art's free energy"
356
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:55,310
BRONOWSKl:
The material asserts itself through the hand
357
00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:59,473
and thereby prefigures the shape of the work
for the brain.
358
00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:05,553
The sculptor, as much as the mason,
feels for the form within nature.
359
00:37:11,240 --> 00:37:13,913
"The best of artists
hath no thoght to show
360
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:17,754
what
361
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:17,754
what the rough stone in its superflous shell
doth not terrrible.
362
00:37:17,840 --> 00:37:23,517
To break the marble spell
is all the hand that serves the brain can do"
363
00:37:30,720 --> 00:37:34,190
BRONOWSKl: By the time Michelangelo
carved the head of Brutus,
364
00:37:34,280 --> 00:37:36,589
other men quarried the marble for him.
365
00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:41,950
But Michelangelo had begun as a quarryman
in Carrara
366
00:37:42,040 --> 00:37:47,068
and he still felt that the hammer in their hands,
and in his,
367
00:37:47,160 --> 00:37:50,994
was groping in the stone
for a shape that was already there.
368
00:37:52,840 --> 00:37:54,796
~ ROBERTO GERHARD: Collages
369
00:38:17,520 --> 00:38:21,991
The quarrymen work in Carrara now
for the modern sculptors who come here -
370
00:38:22,760 --> 00:38:26,833
Marino Marini, Lipschitz and Henry Moore.
371
00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:31,958
Their descriptions of their work
are not as poetic as Michelangelo's,
372
00:38:32,040 --> 00:38:34,600
but they carry the same feeling.
373
00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:41,238
HENRY MOORE: To begin with, as a young
sculptor, I couldn 't afford expensive stone...
374
00:38:42,280 --> 00:38:46,239
...and I got my stone
by going round the stone yards
375
00:38:46,320 --> 00:38:48,993
and finding what they would call
a random block.
376
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:54,629
Then I had to think in the same way
that Michelangelo might have done.
377
00:38:55,960 --> 00:39:00,795
So that one had to wait until an idea came
that fitted the shape of the stone
378
00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:04,316
and that was seeing the idea in that block.
379
00:39:04,400 --> 00:39:06,356
~ ELIZABETH LUTYENS: Quincunx
380
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:13,634
BRONOWSKl:
Of course, it can 't be literally true
381
00:39:13,720 --> 00:39:19,989
that what the sculptor imagines and carves out
is already there, hidden in the block.
382
00:39:20,920 --> 00:39:25,835
And yet the metaphor tells the truth
about the relation of discovery
383
00:39:25,920 --> 00:39:27,876
that exists between man and nature.
384
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:33,719
In one sense,
everything that we discover is already there.
385
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:40,037
A sculptured figure and the law of nature
are both concealed in the raw material.
386
00:39:40,880 --> 00:39:45,032
And in another sense,
what a man discovers is discovered by him.
387
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:49,992
It would not take exactly the same form
in the hands of someone else.
388
00:39:50,080 --> 00:39:55,757
Neither the sculptured figure nor the law
of nature would come out in identical copies
389
00:39:55,840 --> 00:40:00,231
when produced by two different minds
in two different ages.
390
00:40:02,120 --> 00:40:06,910
Discovery is a double relation
of analysis and synthesis together.
391
00:40:07,720 --> 00:40:11,030
As an analysis it probes for what is there.
392
00:40:15,160 --> 00:40:19,756
But then, as a synthesis,
it puts the parts together in a form
393
00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:27,872
in which the creative mind transcends the bare
limits, the bare skeleton that nature provides.
394
00:40:38,680 --> 00:40:42,275
Sculpture is a sensuous art.
395
00:40:42,360 --> 00:40:47,480
The Eskimos make small sculptures that
are not even meant to be seen, only handled.
396
00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:54,753
So it must seem strange that I choose as my
model for science sculpture and architecture.
397
00:40:55,560 --> 00:40:57,516
And yet it's right.
398
00:40:57,600 --> 00:41:06,156
We have to understand that the world can only
be grasped by action, not by contemplation.
399
00:41:06,240 --> 00:41:09,038
The hand is more important than the eye.
400
00:41:09,120 --> 00:41:16,959
We are not one of those contemplative
civilisations of the Far East or the Middle Ages
401
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:21,477
that believed that the world
has only to be seen and thought about
402
00:41:21,560 --> 00:41:23,516
and who practised no science.
403
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:29,639
We are active,
and indeed we know in the evolution of man,
404
00:41:30,760 --> 00:41:36,118
that it is the hand that drives
the subsequent evolution of the brain.
405
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:41,670
We find tools made by man
before he became man.
406
00:41:43,240 --> 00:41:48,394
Benjamin Franklin called man
the "tool-making animal".
407
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:50,311
And that's right.
408
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:55,076
And the most exciting thing about that
is that even in prehistory,
409
00:41:55,160 --> 00:42:01,713
man already made tools that have an edge finer
than they need have.
410
00:42:02,520 --> 00:42:05,512
Henry Moore calls this sculpture
"The Knife Edge".
411
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:11,956
The hand is the cutting edge of the mind.
412
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:17,271
Civilisation is not a collection
of finished artefacts.
413
00:42:18,360 --> 00:42:22,956
It is the elaboration of processes.
414
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:31,077
In the end, the march of man
is the refinement of the hand in action.
415
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:33,796
~ BEETHOVEN: Ninth Symphony
416
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:10,228
The arch, the buttress, the dome -
417
00:44:10,320 --> 00:44:12,675
which is a sort of arch in rotation -
418
00:44:12,760 --> 00:44:16,639
are not the last steps
in bending the grain in nature to our own use.
419
00:44:18,240 --> 00:44:21,038
But what lies beyond must have a finer grain.
420
00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:24,798
We have to look for the limits
in the material itself.
421
00:44:26,120 --> 00:44:31,672
It's as if architecture shifts its focus
at the same time as physics does,
422
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:34,396
to the microscopic level of matter.
423
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:42,558
In effect, the modern problem is no longer
to design a structure from the materials,
424
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:46,474
but to design the materials for a structure.
425
00:44:50,960 --> 00:44:57,115
The most powerful drive in the ascent of man
is his pleasure in his own skill.
426
00:44:58,280 --> 00:45:04,515
He loves to do what he does well and,
having done it well, he loves to do it better.
427
00:45:05,720 --> 00:45:07,676
You see it in his science.
428
00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:12,311
You see it in the magnificence
with which he carves and builds.
429
00:45:13,040 --> 00:45:18,433
The loving care, the gaiety, the effrontery.
430
00:45:19,720 --> 00:45:26,398
The monuments are supposed to commemorate
kings and religions, heroes, dogmas,
431
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:29,916
but in the end,
the man they commemorate is the builder.
432
00:45:32,720 --> 00:45:40,513
I could not end this essay
without taking you to my favourite monument.
433
00:45:41,560 --> 00:45:46,839
Built by a man who had no more
scientific equipment than the Gothic mason.
434
00:45:48,000 --> 00:45:52,994
These are the Watts Towers in Los Angeles,
435
00:45:53,080 --> 00:45:57,392
built by an Italian called Simon Rodia.
436
00:45:58,480 --> 00:46:03,713
He came from Italy to the United States
at the age of 12
437
00:46:03,800 --> 00:46:08,920
and then at the age of 42, having worked
as a tile setter and general repairman,
438
00:46:09,000 --> 00:46:15,075
he suddenly decided, in his back garden,
to build these tremendous structures...
439
00:46:17,000 --> 00:46:23,951
...out of chicken wire, bits of railway tie,
steel rods, cement, seashells,
440
00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:26,873
bits of broken tile and glass, of course -
441
00:46:26,960 --> 00:46:31,431
anything that he could find or that
the neighbourhood children could bring him.
442
00:46:31,520 --> 00:46:33,476
~ GERSHWIN: American Piano Music
443
00:46:40,240 --> 00:46:42,834
It took him 33 years to build them.
444
00:46:43,880 --> 00:46:49,796
He never had anyone to help him because
he said, "I never knew what to do next myself."
445
00:46:59,800 --> 00:47:01,756
He finished them in 1954.
446
00:47:01,840 --> 00:47:03,796
He was 75 by then.
447
00:47:05,680 --> 00:47:12,074
He gave the house, the garden and the towers
to a neighbour and simply walked out.
448
00:47:20,280 --> 00:47:24,910
"I had in mind to do something big,"
Simon Rodia had said, "and I did.
449
00:47:25,000 --> 00:47:29,596
You have to be good, good or bad, bad
to be remembered."
450
00:47:30,440 --> 00:47:33,910
He'd learnt his engineering skill
as he went along, by doing it,
451
00:47:34,760 --> 00:47:37,069
and by taking pleasure in the doing.
452
00:47:37,160 --> 00:47:41,950
Of course, the city building department
decided that the towers were unsafe
453
00:47:42,040 --> 00:47:45,715
and in 1959, they ran a test on them.
454
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:48,268
This is the tower that they tried to pull down.
455
00:47:49,720 --> 00:47:51,950
I'm happy to say that they failed.
456
00:47:53,960 --> 00:47:57,794
The tool that extends the human hand
is also an instrument of vision.
457
00:47:58,720 --> 00:48:01,518
It reveals the structure of things
458
00:48:01,600 --> 00:48:07,277
and makes it possible to put them together
in new, imaginative combinations.
459
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:14,031
But, of course,
the visible is not the only structure in the world.
460
00:48:14,880 --> 00:48:20,273
There is a fine structure below it
and the next step in the ascent of man
461
00:48:20,360 --> 00:48:27,072
is to discover a tool
to open up the invisible structure of matter.