The Shared Experience

The evolution of human thought and culture.

Dr. Lewis Thomas discusses the biological basis for culture,
Noam Chomsky speculates on the origin of language,
and Alexander Marshack explores the mind of Ice Age Man.

William Irwin Thompson examines the evolution of human thought
and culture, while John Kenneth Galbraith speculates on the media
and our contemporary information environment.

"This stunning film firmly establishes the intellectual basis of libraries."
Booklist

"In a capsule form, Lawrence has done for the study
of information systems and libraries
what Bronowski did for the Ascent of Man."
Helen Cyr, EPFL

Stephen Hunter's article on The Shared Experience broadcast
Baltimore Sun 9/17/1984

Awards

Sinking Creek Film Competition

Cine Golden Eagle

Long Island International Film Festival

San Francisco International film Festival

American Film Festival

Maryland Filmmaker of the Year

PBS Broadcast WNET, New York

Written, Produced and Directed by Michael R. Lawrence

PRESS & ARTICLES

Dr. Lewis Thomas

"We store up information the way cells store energy. We hanker to accumulate all the information in the universe and pass it around among ourselves as though it was an essential foodstuff, ant fashion.

"The real surprises will always be the mutants. We have already had a few of them sweeping across the field of human thought, like comets. Bach was one, and what emerged in the current were primordia in music.

"The Art of Fugue, for the evolving organism of human thought, was like feathered wings, opposing thumbs, new layers of frontal cortex."

Alexander Marshack

"The Ice Age hunter was doing something that nobody suspected. He was notating the passage of time, the phases of the moon, on a piece of bone that he carried wherever he went."

William Irwin Thompson

"The animals on the cave ceiling are like a primordial zodiac: the birth of our whole way of creating symbols as a way of miniaturizing the universe. It was the dawn of mathematics, the dawn of astrology, the dawn of astronomy."

John Kenneth Galbraith

"Editorial writers, columnists, and teachers come to books, digest them, grasp the central ideas, and pass them on to a much larger audience. This is really the persuasive power of the library, which keeps the book active and available."

Dr. Lewis Thomas

"For me, listening to Bach is essential. I'm not at all sure what it is that makes it terribly important to spend a lot of time listening to Bach, but I know it is important."

Noam Chomsky

"Language doesn't seem unusual as a biological system. In fact, it seems exactly like the kind of system that we discover wherever we look in the biological world."

Michael Lawrence Films

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