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Science & Human Values
Thought-provoking essays on science as an integral part of the culture of our age from a leader in the scientific humanism movement. "A profoundly moving, brilliantly perceptive essay by a truly civilized man."-- Scientific American
144 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1956
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About the author
Jacob Bronowski
48 books221 followersJacob Bronowski was a British mathematician and biologist of Polish-Jewish origin. He is best remembered as the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man.
In 1950, Bronowski was given the Taung child's fossilized skull and asked to try, using his statistical skills, to combine a measure of the size of the skull's teeth with their shape in order to discriminate them from the teeth of apes. Work on this turned his interests towards the human biology of humanity's intellectual products.
In 1967 Bronowski delivered the six Silliman Memorial Lectures at Yale University and chose as his subject the role of imagination and symbolic language in the progress of scientific knowledge. Transcripts of the lectures were published posthumously in 1978 as The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination and remain in print.
He first became familiar to the British public through appearances on the BBC television version of The Brains Trust in the late 1950s. His ability to answer questions on many varied subjects led to an offhand reference in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus where one character states that "He knows everything." However Bronowski is best remembered for his thirteen part series The Ascent of Man (1973), a documentary about the history of human beings through scientific endeavour. This project was intended to parallel art historian Kenneth Clark's earlier "personal view" series Civilisation (1969) which had covered cultural history.
During the making of The Ascent of Man, Bronowski was interviewed by the popular British chat show host Michael Parkinson. Parkinson later recounted that Bronowski's description of a visit to Auschwitz—Bronowski had lost many family members during the Nazi era—was one of Parkinson's most memorable interviews.
Jacob Bronowski married Rita Coblentz in 1941. The couple had four children, all daughters, the eldest being the British academic Lisa Jardine and another being the filmmaker Judith Bronowski. He died in 1974 of a heart attack in East Hampton, New York a year after The Ascent of Man was completed, and was buried in the western side of London's Highgate Cemetery, near the entrance.
In 1950, Bronowski was given the Taung child's fossilized skull and asked to try, using his statistical skills, to combine a measure of the size of the skull's teeth with their shape in order to discriminate them from the teeth of apes. Work on this turned his interests towards the human biology of humanity's intellectual products.
In 1967 Bronowski delivered the six Silliman Memorial Lectures at Yale University and chose as his subject the role of imagination and symbolic language in the progress of scientific knowledge. Transcripts of the lectures were published posthumously in 1978 as The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination and remain in print.
He first became familiar to the British public through appearances on the BBC television version of The Brains Trust in the late 1950s. His ability to answer questions on many varied subjects led to an offhand reference in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus where one character states that "He knows everything." However Bronowski is best remembered for his thirteen part series The Ascent of Man (1973), a documentary about the history of human beings through scientific endeavour. This project was intended to parallel art historian Kenneth Clark's earlier "personal view" series Civilisation (1969) which had covered cultural history.
During the making of The Ascent of Man, Bronowski was interviewed by the popular British chat show host Michael Parkinson. Parkinson later recounted that Bronowski's description of a visit to Auschwitz—Bronowski had lost many family members during the Nazi era—was one of Parkinson's most memorable interviews.
Jacob Bronowski married Rita Coblentz in 1941. The couple had four children, all daughters, the eldest being the British academic Lisa Jardine and another being the filmmaker Judith Bronowski. He died in 1974 of a heart attack in East Hampton, New York a year after The Ascent of Man was completed, and was buried in the western side of London's Highgate Cemetery, near the entrance.
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March 7, 2018
… science has humanized our values. Men have asked for freedom, justice and respect precisely as the scientific spirit has spread among them.
12/11/14 A new section has been added to … but what should I say …
Jacob Bronowski
Jacob Bronowski was born in 1908 in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. His family moved to Germany during the first world war, then to England when Jacob was twelve years old. Bronowski studied mathematics at Cambridge (Jesus college), where he earned the senior wrangler title for the class of 1930.
Bronowski went on to a career as (it could be argued) a twentieth century polymath - someone who has wide knowledge of many different fields and deep knowledge or abilities in some of them – a so-called “Renaissance Man”.
Wiki cites Bronowski as a mathematician, biologist, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor. He was active in operations research during World War II, developing mathematical approaches to bombing strategy for RAF Bomber Command, and was a strong chess player who submitted chess problems to the British Chess magazine through most of his life in Britain. In the 1960s he became one the founding directors of the Salk Institute.
Bronowski is best remembered (by people around my age who do remember him) as the narrator of the 1973 television series The Ascent of Man, a BBC documentary about the rise of civilization and the development of science and the scientific method. He scripted the series and wrote a book by the same name. A year later Bronowski died in East Hampton New York.
The book
Science and Human Values consists of three essays, lectures that Bronowski gave at MIT in early 1953, while he had a Carnegie Professorship there. They were first published in 1956 in a British magazine, and at the end of ‘56 The Nation printed them in the entirety of its final issue of the year. I have a 1965 edition, with a “Preface to the Revised Edition” written by Bronowski in 1964 when he was at the Salk Institute.
In the Preface he says that only minor changes have been made to the lectures since he delivered them eleven years before. He has instead added about nine small-type pages of expository notes, which “fill out some points which have given rise to discussion, and … quote relevant new matter which has appeared since the essays were first printed. (They) amplify my text, and underline it …”.
The Creative Mind
Glad Day by William Blake reminds Bronowski of Copernicus’s “leap of imagination – to lift himself from the earth, and put himself wildly, speculatively into the sun."
In the first essay Bronowski’s goal is to explain the nature of the scientific activity. He wants to make no distinction between practical and theoretical science as he does this. Thus, he defines science as “the organization of our knowledge in such a way that it commands more of the hidden potential in nature.”
He dispels the notion that science is a mere collection of observations, a building up of a compendium of facts. Referring to Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, Dalton’s introduction of atoms into chemistry, and Rutherford’s and Bohr’s model of the atom as a planetary system, Bronowski observes that science is “the search for unity in hidden likenesses”, and that that unity thus found is a “creative act”.
An example of this “creative act” is the paper written in 1935 by Hideki Yukawa, in which he proposed a simple analogy between light waves and the forces which hold the atom together. Doing so, he calculated the mass of a “pellet” which would then be involved in this binding, and called it a “meson”. Twelve years later the particle, now called the “pi meson”, was discovered. Yukawa received the 1949 Nobel Prize in physics.
“The scientist looks for order in the appearances of nature”, says Bronowski, but this order “does not display itself of itself; if it can be said to be there at all, it is not there for the mere looking … order must be discovered and, in a deep sense, it must be created. What we see, as we see it, is mere disorder.”
In section 8 of this essay, Bronowski explores poetic examples from Coleridge, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Pope, Goethe and Yeats, all illustrating a similar theme as the observation above: that metaphor is not simply a poetic device, but “is rather a hand reaching straight into experience and arranging it with new meaning.”
The essay concludes
The Habit of Truth
The Lady with a Stoat by Leonardo da Vinci “is as much a research into man and animal, and a creation of unity, as is Darwin’s Origin of Species.”
In the second essay Bronowski explores the nature of truth, “as we seek it in science and in social life”; and traces “the influence which this search for empirical truth has had on conduct.” Although the first essay argued that the creative act is alike in science and in art, it cannot be identical; for the artist has a freedom which the scientist is not allowed: the scientist, though he does not merely record facts, must still conform to facts. “The sanction of truth is an exact boundary which encloses him.”
And what is truth? A crucial question indeed. “The sanction of experienced fact as a face of truth is a profound subject, and the mainspring which has moved our civilization since the Renaissance.”
In section 3 Bronowski talks about how we come about making the mental construct of a thing - by combining many different perceptions, over both space and time, into a “map” of something which we take to be that which unifies those perceptions. “By making such connections we find in our experiences the maps of things. There is no other evidence for (their) existence …”
In the next section we find
In section 5 Bronowski shows how Newton’s two separate concepts of mass (inertial mass, gravitational mass), which he knew to be quantitatively the same, led Einstein to ask why they should be the same, and to build the theory of General Relativity to answer the question. “Only in that theory were the two faces of mass made one, and made the unity which is the single concept, mass.”
In sections 6 and 7 Bronowski talks of and critiques two alternative schools of philosophy which are “suspicious” of the “conceptual thinking” which he has outlined. These schools, which he terms logical positivism and a “behaviorist school” (later referred to as “operationalists”), are described briefly, and in a way that nowadays might not be viewed as entirely accurate, either historically or epistemologically.
Bronowski does admit that these schools “have had reason to be wary of the appeal to concepts … it has a bad record, which still befuddles its use. Historically, concepts have commonly been set up as absolute and inborn notions, like the space and time which Kant believed to be ready-made in the mind. The view that concepts are built up from experience, and have constantly to be tested and corrected in experience, in not classical. The classical view is that concepts are not accessible to empirical tests.
There are four further sections in this essay, in which Bronowski continues to tease out “the difference between the two ways in which we order our lives” (in science on the one hand, in ethics, conduct and values on the other); whether these differing concepts belong to “different worlds”; ; and his summary that “In science and in art and in self-knowledge we explore and move constantly by turning to the world of sense to ask, Is this so? This is the habit of truth … which for four hundred years has entered every action of ours; and has made our society [and also made the value it sets on man] …
The Sense of Human Dignity
Urizen Fettered by William Blake, who wrote
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars:
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite & flatterer,
For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.
The third essay is a bit longer than either of the first two, and is I think more ambitious and more interesting than either of those.
In the interest of not spoiling what a reader will find in the essay, I’ll just relate what Bronowski sets out to do here, and the path he travels.
After summarizing what the first two lectures had covered, Bronowski now wishes “to examine the values by which we live.” In so doing he will argue that values are not inborn or absolute and that, like concepts, they can be examined empirically. Values are both individual and social; the interplay between these is the nexus of the potential conflict between man’s need to be free, and man’s need to be a social animal.
To examine these questions in the context of a real society, Bronowski chooses the society formed by scientists themselves; hence will examine the values which guide the scientific enterprise, and the actions of individual scientists. And, from the title of the series of lectures, one can foresee that he will conclude that the values of science, the values of scientists, and the values of humanity are basically one and the same.
In making this argument Bronowski examines (again) the positivist and analyst methods, beginning by pointing out the social injunction implied by these philosophies: “We OUGHT to act in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so.” And off he goes on a quest that will wend its way through Marx, Lysenko, the Hippocratic Oath, the prime importance of an independent outlook in science, the need for toleration of dissent (based on respect, not simply on indifference), science as a democracy, as a human progress; the need for scientists, as fallible human beings, to be willing, “and as a society must be organized”, to correct their errors; the ethical observations of the mathematician and philosopher W.K. Clifford; the lessons to be learned from the fact that today’s theories often flatly contradict those of 200, or even of 50, years ago; the writings of the religious Albert Schweitzer on rationalism (“All real progress in the world is in the last analysis produced by rationalism”); and in his conclusion again bringing the values of science back into comparison with those of art and society.
… but what should I say about …
Summary & Availability
My edition does not have an index, unfortunately.
Even so, I definitely recommend the book to anyone with an interest in science, or in what we might call the “philosophy” or “ethics” or “aesthetics” of science; or in the relation of science to the arts, to society, and to the whole of human experience. Bronowski writes well, and these essays, especially the third one, provide a lot of food for thought. He sometimes goes off the track a little bit, but this short book, less than a hundred pages long, will give you an appreciation for the scientific enterprise, or at the least enlighten you as to what that enterprise is.
Science and Human Values is in print (whether ”still” or “once again” I know not). At any rate, it appears to be lacking the Dialogue that my edition has (no great loss). This is itself a testament to the enduring interest of the views which Bronowski expresses in the book.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Arguably essays by Hitchens
Random review: Last Comes the Egg Bruce Duffy's second novel
Next review: Starcraft II
Previous library review: Diary of a Wimpy Kid
sort of a subject break here!
Next library review: What If? by the author of XKCD
12/11/14 A new section has been added to … but what should I say …
Jacob Bronowski
Jacob Bronowski was born in 1908 in Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. His family moved to Germany during the first world war, then to England when Jacob was twelve years old. Bronowski studied mathematics at Cambridge (Jesus college), where he earned the senior wrangler title for the class of 1930.
Bronowski went on to a career as (it could be argued) a twentieth century polymath - someone who has wide knowledge of many different fields and deep knowledge or abilities in some of them – a so-called “Renaissance Man”.
Wiki cites Bronowski as a mathematician, biologist, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor. He was active in operations research during World War II, developing mathematical approaches to bombing strategy for RAF Bomber Command, and was a strong chess player who submitted chess problems to the British Chess magazine through most of his life in Britain. In the 1960s he became one the founding directors of the Salk Institute.
Bronowski is best remembered (by people around my age who do remember him) as the narrator of the 1973 television series The Ascent of Man, a BBC documentary about the rise of civilization and the development of science and the scientific method. He scripted the series and wrote a book by the same name. A year later Bronowski died in East Hampton New York.
The book
Science and Human Values consists of three essays, lectures that Bronowski gave at MIT in early 1953, while he had a Carnegie Professorship there. They were first published in 1956 in a British magazine, and at the end of ‘56 The Nation printed them in the entirety of its final issue of the year. I have a 1965 edition, with a “Preface to the Revised Edition” written by Bronowski in 1964 when he was at the Salk Institute.
In the Preface he says that only minor changes have been made to the lectures since he delivered them eleven years before. He has instead added about nine small-type pages of expository notes, which “fill out some points which have given rise to discussion, and … quote relevant new matter which has appeared since the essays were first printed. (They) amplify my text, and underline it …”.
The Creative Mind
Glad Day by William Blake reminds Bronowski of Copernicus’s “leap of imagination – to lift himself from the earth, and put himself wildly, speculatively into the sun."
In the first essay Bronowski’s goal is to explain the nature of the scientific activity. He wants to make no distinction between practical and theoretical science as he does this. Thus, he defines science as “the organization of our knowledge in such a way that it commands more of the hidden potential in nature.”
He dispels the notion that science is a mere collection of observations, a building up of a compendium of facts. Referring to Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, Dalton’s introduction of atoms into chemistry, and Rutherford’s and Bohr’s model of the atom as a planetary system, Bronowski observes that science is “the search for unity in hidden likenesses”, and that that unity thus found is a “creative act”.
An example of this “creative act” is the paper written in 1935 by Hideki Yukawa, in which he proposed a simple analogy between light waves and the forces which hold the atom together. Doing so, he calculated the mass of a “pellet” which would then be involved in this binding, and called it a “meson”. Twelve years later the particle, now called the “pi meson”, was discovered. Yukawa received the 1949 Nobel Prize in physics.
“The scientist looks for order in the appearances of nature”, says Bronowski, but this order “does not display itself of itself; if it can be said to be there at all, it is not there for the mere looking … order must be discovered and, in a deep sense, it must be created. What we see, as we see it, is mere disorder.”
In section 8 of this essay, Bronowski explores poetic examples from Coleridge, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Pope, Goethe and Yeats, all illustrating a similar theme as the observation above: that metaphor is not simply a poetic device, but “is rather a hand reaching straight into experience and arranging it with new meaning.”
The essay concludes
The discoveries of science, the works of art are explorations – more, are explosions, of a hidden likeness. The discoverer or the artist presents in them two aspects of nature and fuses then into one. This is the act of creation …
How slipshod by comparison is the notion that either art or science sets out to copy nature … if science were a copy of fact, then every theory would be either right or wrong, and would be so for ever …
… There are no appearances to be photographed, no experiences to be copied, in which we do not take part. Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her … in the instant when the mind seizes this for itself, in art or in science, the heart misses a beat.
The Habit of Truth
The Lady with a Stoat by Leonardo da Vinci “is as much a research into man and animal, and a creation of unity, as is Darwin’s Origin of Species.”
In the second essay Bronowski explores the nature of truth, “as we seek it in science and in social life”; and traces “the influence which this search for empirical truth has had on conduct.” Although the first essay argued that the creative act is alike in science and in art, it cannot be identical; for the artist has a freedom which the scientist is not allowed: the scientist, though he does not merely record facts, must still conform to facts. “The sanction of truth is an exact boundary which encloses him.”
And what is truth? A crucial question indeed. “The sanction of experienced fact as a face of truth is a profound subject, and the mainspring which has moved our civilization since the Renaissance.”
In section 3 Bronowski talks about how we come about making the mental construct of a thing - by combining many different perceptions, over both space and time, into a “map” of something which we take to be that which unifies those perceptions. “By making such connections we find in our experiences the maps of things. There is no other evidence for (their) existence …”
In the next section we find
The discovery of things is made in three steps. At the first step there are only the separate data of the senses …Here Bronowski uses Macbeth’s “Is this a dagger” soliloquy to illustrate how these things come together in the empirical method. ;}
At the second step we put (those) together. We see that it makes sense to treat them as one thing. And the thing is the coherence of its parts in our experience.
… the third step … is to have a symbol or a name … the name or symbol remains present, and the mind works with it, when the thing is absent …
The words true and false have their place at the latter steps, when the data of the senses have been put together to make a thing which is held in the mind. Only then is it meaningful to ask whether what we think about the thing is true. That is, we can now deduce how the thing should behave, and see whether it does so.
In section 5 Bronowski shows how Newton’s two separate concepts of mass (inertial mass, gravitational mass), which he knew to be quantitatively the same, led Einstein to ask why they should be the same, and to build the theory of General Relativity to answer the question. “Only in that theory were the two faces of mass made one, and made the unity which is the single concept, mass.”
In sections 6 and 7 Bronowski talks of and critiques two alternative schools of philosophy which are “suspicious” of the “conceptual thinking” which he has outlined. These schools, which he terms logical positivism and a “behaviorist school” (later referred to as “operationalists”), are described briefly, and in a way that nowadays might not be viewed as entirely accurate, either historically or epistemologically.
Bronowski does admit that these schools “have had reason to be wary of the appeal to concepts … it has a bad record, which still befuddles its use. Historically, concepts have commonly been set up as absolute and inborn notions, like the space and time which Kant believed to be ready-made in the mind. The view that concepts are built up from experience, and have constantly to be tested and corrected in experience, in not classical. The classical view is that concepts are not accessible to empirical tests.
There are four further sections in this essay, in which Bronowski continues to tease out “the difference between the two ways in which we order our lives” (in science on the one hand, in ethics, conduct and values on the other); whether these differing concepts belong to “different worlds”; ; and his summary that “In science and in art and in self-knowledge we explore and move constantly by turning to the world of sense to ask, Is this so? This is the habit of truth … which for four hundred years has entered every action of ours; and has made our society [and also made the value it sets on man] …
The Sense of Human Dignity
Urizen Fettered by William Blake, who wrote
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars:
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite & flatterer,
For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.
The third essay is a bit longer than either of the first two, and is I think more ambitious and more interesting than either of those.
In the interest of not spoiling what a reader will find in the essay, I’ll just relate what Bronowski sets out to do here, and the path he travels.
After summarizing what the first two lectures had covered, Bronowski now wishes “to examine the values by which we live.” In so doing he will argue that values are not inborn or absolute and that, like concepts, they can be examined empirically. Values are both individual and social; the interplay between these is the nexus of the potential conflict between man’s need to be free, and man’s need to be a social animal.
To examine these questions in the context of a real society, Bronowski chooses the society formed by scientists themselves; hence will examine the values which guide the scientific enterprise, and the actions of individual scientists. And, from the title of the series of lectures, one can foresee that he will conclude that the values of science, the values of scientists, and the values of humanity are basically one and the same.
In making this argument Bronowski examines (again) the positivist and analyst methods, beginning by pointing out the social injunction implied by these philosophies: “We OUGHT to act in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so.” And off he goes on a quest that will wend its way through Marx, Lysenko, the Hippocratic Oath, the prime importance of an independent outlook in science, the need for toleration of dissent (based on respect, not simply on indifference), science as a democracy, as a human progress; the need for scientists, as fallible human beings, to be willing, “and as a society must be organized”, to correct their errors; the ethical observations of the mathematician and philosopher W.K. Clifford; the lessons to be learned from the fact that today’s theories often flatly contradict those of 200, or even of 50, years ago; the writings of the religious Albert Schweitzer on rationalism (“All real progress in the world is in the last analysis produced by rationalism”); and in his conclusion again bringing the values of science back into comparison with those of art and society.
… but what should I say about …
Summary & Availability
My edition does not have an index, unfortunately.
Even so, I definitely recommend the book to anyone with an interest in science, or in what we might call the “philosophy” or “ethics” or “aesthetics” of science; or in the relation of science to the arts, to society, and to the whole of human experience. Bronowski writes well, and these essays, especially the third one, provide a lot of food for thought. He sometimes goes off the track a little bit, but this short book, less than a hundred pages long, will give you an appreciation for the scientific enterprise, or at the least enlighten you as to what that enterprise is.
Science and Human Values is in print (whether ”still” or “once again” I know not). At any rate, it appears to be lacking the Dialogue that my edition has (no great loss). This is itself a testament to the enduring interest of the views which Bronowski expresses in the book.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Arguably essays by Hitchens
Random review: Last Comes the Egg Bruce Duffy's second novel
Next review: Starcraft II
Previous library review: Diary of a Wimpy Kid
sort of a subject break here!
Next library review: What If? by the author of XKCD
October 26, 2013
Science is commonly considered neutral, an endeavor concerned only with facts. Bronowski argues that science is based on observations, not facts; and observations are not neutral but creative—an active relation between subject and object, a search for unity in hidden likeness. Thus science makes a claim on values, on what ought to be, not only what is. Science is the value that we ought to act so that what is true can be verified to be true; the ends of a goal must be judged by the means, which cements the bonds of trust in society. Even more, this value is not unique to the scientist, but is shared by the artist. Elegant work.
July 15, 2021
Huge fan of Jacob Bronowski, what a man. Favourite quality about him was his ability to explain complex topics with such clarity and in beautiful detail (almost poetic). Was such an academically gifted and interesting individual, easily one of the most well written authors.
Science and human values is a fascinating back and forth between the importance of science and art/literature in shaping our evolutionary path. Small book with a big impact. His opening description about Nagasaki 🙌🏼.
Science and human values is a fascinating back and forth between the importance of science and art/literature in shaping our evolutionary path. Small book with a big impact. His opening description about Nagasaki 🙌🏼.
December 29, 2023
Quite the detailed reviews on here.
I got this book mainly because of the similarity in names with my Dad's Mom.
She was Lithuanian and research tells me Burniauskas, but she sometimes went by Burnoski just so people wouldnt ask so many questions.
I am going to donate this one.
I now remember where i heard the Nagasaki nuke went off over most Christian city in Japan, and 40,000 died immediately. It was in this book. I find that very strange, even terrifying.
I think the recent Oppenheimer movie was a whitewash too, downplaying how red he was.
I got this book mainly because of the similarity in names with my Dad's Mom.
She was Lithuanian and research tells me Burniauskas, but she sometimes went by Burnoski just so people wouldnt ask so many questions.
I am going to donate this one.
I now remember where i heard the Nagasaki nuke went off over most Christian city in Japan, and 40,000 died immediately. It was in this book. I find that very strange, even terrifying.
I think the recent Oppenheimer movie was a whitewash too, downplaying how red he was.
February 12, 2023
Good, at times brilliant and important book
August 15, 2022
Эта книга собранна на основе трёх эссе:
1. The creative mind - о связи между наукой и искусством в своей основе. Основой является поиск похожести в единстве (unity in a variety).
2. The habit of truth - о глубинном желание поиска общей истины и невозможности её достижения.
3. The sense of human dignity - о бастионе моральных норм на основе научного сообщества.
1. The creative mind - о связи между наукой и искусством в своей основе. Основой является поиск похожести в единстве (unity in a variety).
2. The habit of truth - о глубинном желание поиска общей истины и невозможности её достижения.
3. The sense of human dignity - о бастионе моральных норм на основе научного сообщества.
September 16, 2019
Despite some lip service to bad philosophies like empiricism and inductivism, this is an admirable defense of Karl Popper's "open society" and of critical rationalism.
March 7, 2022
This collection of short essays and one dialogue/play was first published in 1956. The book is a charming bit of very readable post-war philosophy of science, a part of the then-emerging "two cultures" discussion that is most often associated with C. P. Snow. In the Preface, Bronowski notes that when he returned from "the physical shock of Nagasaki" he tried to persuade colleagues in government and the UN to preserve Nagasaki exactly as is, and to have all future conferences "on disarmament, and on other issues which weigh the fates of nations, to be held in that ashy, clinical sea of rubble. I still think as I did then, that only in this forbidding context could statesmen make realistic judgments of the problems which they handle on our behalf. Alas, my official colleagues thought nothing of my scheme; on the contrary, they pointed out to me that delegates would be uncomfortable in Nagasaki." Well. Yes.
To properly enjoy this book, one should just read past the author's unthinking biases and prejudices (the usual sexism, racism, classism of the era) and enjoy what Bronowski has to offer. He's an engaging writer, a scientist with a thorough liberal education. The playlet at the end is a dialogue between a scientist, a literary critic, and a figure we might term a generic administrator, hilariously named Sir Edward St. Ablish. Anyone who has ever worked in academe in either science or the humanities, who has been either a professor or an administrator, will find much to amuse them here. Everyone gets satirized but since this is a scientist writing a defense of the scientist's vision "as imaginative, as much a creation, as the painter's vision," the scientist comes off the best in the end. Reading this took me back to the best of what I loved about learning and doing science. It reinforced for me that my way of being in science was good, even though many of the people I trained and worked with seemed completely unaware that scientists were creative beings. It also reminded me that the 1950s, much as they were a great time for talking about creative vision in science, were not a good time to be a woman in science (many, many, many references to "men of science.") In summary: glad I read the book, glad I got to do science in the late not mid 20th C, glad I'm not in science now.
Notes: Probably would have finished this book a lot sooner if I hadn't been interrupted by (a) reading another book for bookclub, (b) taking a short trip, and (c) spending every waking hour the past 10 days checking to see whether Zelensky is still alive and has Putin decided to nuke the world yet. One wonders if even having to meet in the ashes of Nagasaki would be enough to give pause to Putin's madness. Slava Ukraini!
To properly enjoy this book, one should just read past the author's unthinking biases and prejudices (the usual sexism, racism, classism of the era) and enjoy what Bronowski has to offer. He's an engaging writer, a scientist with a thorough liberal education. The playlet at the end is a dialogue between a scientist, a literary critic, and a figure we might term a generic administrator, hilariously named Sir Edward St. Ablish. Anyone who has ever worked in academe in either science or the humanities, who has been either a professor or an administrator, will find much to amuse them here. Everyone gets satirized but since this is a scientist writing a defense of the scientist's vision "as imaginative, as much a creation, as the painter's vision," the scientist comes off the best in the end. Reading this took me back to the best of what I loved about learning and doing science. It reinforced for me that my way of being in science was good, even though many of the people I trained and worked with seemed completely unaware that scientists were creative beings. It also reminded me that the 1950s, much as they were a great time for talking about creative vision in science, were not a good time to be a woman in science (many, many, many references to "men of science.") In summary: glad I read the book, glad I got to do science in the late not mid 20th C, glad I'm not in science now.
Notes: Probably would have finished this book a lot sooner if I hadn't been interrupted by (a) reading another book for bookclub, (b) taking a short trip, and (c) spending every waking hour the past 10 days checking to see whether Zelensky is still alive and has Putin decided to nuke the world yet. One wonders if even having to meet in the ashes of Nagasaki would be enough to give pause to Putin's madness. Slava Ukraini!
December 21, 2022
Interesting read. I liked it, it was new it was different, I enjoyed his writing and the argument is interesting though some sentiments are a bit problematic. HOWEVER.There are a lot of statements of truth in this book that, in a spirit Im sure the author would encourage, I dare to contradict, respectfully. One such statement of truth is the conception that the scientific community is ruled by a robust set of human values, contradiction and freedom of speech and respect, that has allowed this community to persist while empires have perished. I think he gives the scientific community a much too positive portrayal which fails to consider power and politics in knowledge formation. Essentially he lacks a Foucauldian perspective of any sort and a consideration for the subjectivity of which objective knowledge is valued. He does recognize that knowledge creation is a subjective experience and I do appreciate that, but he falls short of awarding this subjectivity to knowledge as an institution governed by power politics. I also think his analysis smoothes over issues of elitism in intellectual thought. Knowledge output within the scientific community is portrayed here as something that happens on a level playing field which fails to consider how structures might limit the agency individuals can exert in the act of knowledge production and distribution. I also didn't really walk away with any impression that his link between arts and sciences was profound. All I gauged was that they are different forms of experiencing and making meanings of things, or different modes within which we find likeness between things that are seemingly different and in this way make a discovery. While that might appear true for writing as an art, since he frequently invokes on poetry as an example, this isn't always the case for other forms of art like music or painting, which can be interpreted instead as forms of expression unbound by any need to make the dissimilar similar in order to be considered original or valuable as a discovery. In all honesty, the prose was great and his tone carried a lot of authority but I would personally question a lot of the contentions put forward with such confidence, they seemed to me to read as broad strokes in an attempt to paint an image I can't quite understand. But maybe that's just my misinterpretation.
April 11, 2016
The book consists of essays previously presented in some form, with a final essay written to wrap the others. As such, it is really just a short pamphlet. But it is packed solid with insights. For me it is the best book I have read on the topic of putting science into today's humanity. Better than Gould's attempts. Better than Popper for it's simplicity.
The book can be read by anyone. It has none of the technicality that would put off the science averse. It has very little (almost none) of the nebulous tangled logic that often fills essays/books of philosophy.
p. 37 "...the path of knowledge...goes by way of the making and correcting of concepts." Emphasis in my mind on the "correcting" mindset and process
"And beyond the field of science, in society, in personality, above all in ethics, how many people will allow the sanction of experienced fact?" Indeed. Take one look at how politics is done these days and your answer is clear: experienced fact has no truck in Trump.
Like anyone who has pondered our human existence, Bronowski asks, "Is it true that the concepts of science and those of ethics and values belong to different worlds?"
The essence of his thesis is: "Is the world of 'what is' [italics] subject to test, and is the world of 'what ought to be' [italics] subject to no test?" No!
Concepts that claim to be "inspired" or "self-evident" and therefore unchangeable should not exist.
A brilliant book, that can and should be read by everyone. It will return the "doubters" back to prominence where they belong in our society.
The book can be read by anyone. It has none of the technicality that would put off the science averse. It has very little (almost none) of the nebulous tangled logic that often fills essays/books of philosophy.
p. 37 "...the path of knowledge...goes by way of the making and correcting of concepts." Emphasis in my mind on the "correcting" mindset and process
"And beyond the field of science, in society, in personality, above all in ethics, how many people will allow the sanction of experienced fact?" Indeed. Take one look at how politics is done these days and your answer is clear: experienced fact has no truck in Trump.
Like anyone who has pondered our human existence, Bronowski asks, "Is it true that the concepts of science and those of ethics and values belong to different worlds?"
The essence of his thesis is: "Is the world of 'what is' [italics] subject to test, and is the world of 'what ought to be' [italics] subject to no test?" No!
Concepts that claim to be "inspired" or "self-evident" and therefore unchangeable should not exist.
A brilliant book, that can and should be read by everyone. It will return the "doubters" back to prominence where they belong in our society.
Read
January 30, 2021The promising topic indicated by the title was not satisfactorily given form by the three essays comprising the book. I was immediately disappointed when the anecdote given in the first pages of the author's visit to Nagasaki was given no follow-up or even any explanation as to why the anecdote was mentioned at all.
However, there were a few observations that were agreeable. First, Copernicus proposed that outside the scriptures, another work of God which humans could consult and appeal to is Nature itself; when this happened, the Scientific Revolution had begun. Second, no scientist works in true isolation because any fact he uncovers requires the knowledge and expertise of many more people before him, and because the fact would be subject to verification and critical feedback afterwards. Third, the values demanded of and formed by science are the liberties of modern liberal societies including free inquiry, free thought, free speech, and tolerance; consequently, a society of scientists must be a democracy, and a world informed by science, it would follow, would also make democratic principles a social norm.
If you are looking for tightly composed philosophical essays addressing the topic claimed by the title, you would not enjoy this volume. Nevertheless, there were original thoughts expressed here. I liked his idea that each new advance, in art or in science, comes about when a likeness or analogy between phenomena is discovered. I was not convinced that this idea is sufficient to explain in entirety the moments of insight, discovery, and expression, but I myself have not come across this idea in exposition before. A very light read.
However, there were a few observations that were agreeable. First, Copernicus proposed that outside the scriptures, another work of God which humans could consult and appeal to is Nature itself; when this happened, the Scientific Revolution had begun. Second, no scientist works in true isolation because any fact he uncovers requires the knowledge and expertise of many more people before him, and because the fact would be subject to verification and critical feedback afterwards. Third, the values demanded of and formed by science are the liberties of modern liberal societies including free inquiry, free thought, free speech, and tolerance; consequently, a society of scientists must be a democracy, and a world informed by science, it would follow, would also make democratic principles a social norm.
If you are looking for tightly composed philosophical essays addressing the topic claimed by the title, you would not enjoy this volume. Nevertheless, there were original thoughts expressed here. I liked his idea that each new advance, in art or in science, comes about when a likeness or analogy between phenomena is discovered. I was not convinced that this idea is sufficient to explain in entirety the moments of insight, discovery, and expression, but I myself have not come across this idea in exposition before. A very light read.
August 19, 2022
This is a book that should be read by all in high school and where the reader should be reminded of the contents on occasion. There is no one better than Bronowski at explaining that while science is fallible, it is self-correcting and inherently self-improving. In the modern world when powerful figures engage in the denial of science and sometimes even basic facts, this book is a reminder of how the basic scientific rules that govern nature must be respected. No matter how powerful or forceful a personality, the inherent laws of nature remain unchanged. Even though they may not be known to a high level of precision.
When I read this book for review, it was the third time for me. It was first recommended to me by my chemistry Professor, and he loaned me one of his copies. It can be considered a handbook on how science and its practitioners can coexist on good terms with other fields of human endeavor.
When I read this book for review, it was the third time for me. It was first recommended to me by my chemistry Professor, and he loaned me one of his copies. It can be considered a handbook on how science and its practitioners can coexist on good terms with other fields of human endeavor.
May 24, 2024
Could see that humans are social and emotional creatures. Our values cannot be empirically measured (Middle way of Science (logic and for most past unbiased) and Arts) - We can discover nature by way of poem or a theorem
March 6, 2025
This book has a lot to say, and it is said in a way I did not particularly enjoy. I see the value in it, but I wasn’t hit as hard by the topic as I thought it would be. Would not recommend this to someone outside of academic circles
December 27, 2018
Some outdated views. But the core message is nice.
April 9, 2019
Lectures so-so, but the dialogue at the end is a nice way to think about science vs. art.
January 14, 2020
فساد الشاعر ولادة الناقد
رعونة العالم و الاديب تجعل برونوفسكي يقف بينها ممحصا و ناقدا ...بين آفاق العلم و حادثة النووي التي اختصر مشاعر الإنسانية فيها بقول الشاعر : هل انت حبيبي!؟
رعونة العالم و الاديب تجعل برونوفسكي يقف بينها ممحصا و ناقدا ...بين آفاق العلم و حادثة النووي التي اختصر مشاعر الإنسانية فيها بقول الشاعر : هل انت حبيبي!؟
April 18, 2020
A little to dry of a read for me
February 26, 2023
Profound, counterintuitive truths. Will re-read and likely re-rate as 5 stars when I am (hopefully) smart enough to fully grasp it.
November 17, 2012
Amazing series of lectures by Jacob Bronowski, despite the date I found this a wonderful timeless theme-- or at least, it has the ongoing spirit and celebration of the scientific revolution starting in the renaissance, which has driven more than just technological innovation but also artistic innovation and even shaped our contemporary sense of social justice, equality, and freedom.
Bronowski explores both science and the arts as deriving from the poetic element, "the uninhibited activity of exploring the medium for its own sake, and discovering as if in play what can be done".
Such a wonderful sentiment I find true whether painting, writing, or even in the seemingly strict confines of computer programming and computational mathematics. In all there is a playful exploration where we work with the media for its own sake. Even in thinking itself, contemplation or meditation -- in all there is a playfulness and continuous discovery that continues to shape our perceptions and values.
Bronowski places science firmly in this creative artistic view, noting correctly how human values are shaped in the experiments and creative insights of scientific thought; and in this process new concepts are born, such as new world views and new values, concepts that continually seek coherence with the world as it experienced.
I found especially apt the discussion of dissent, freedom, and respect being balanced in the scientific enterprise; and how pre-scientific disciplines such as law and nation-state politics ultimately suffer without this careful balance.
Bronowski explores both science and the arts as deriving from the poetic element, "the uninhibited activity of exploring the medium for its own sake, and discovering as if in play what can be done".
Such a wonderful sentiment I find true whether painting, writing, or even in the seemingly strict confines of computer programming and computational mathematics. In all there is a playful exploration where we work with the media for its own sake. Even in thinking itself, contemplation or meditation -- in all there is a playfulness and continuous discovery that continues to shape our perceptions and values.
Bronowski places science firmly in this creative artistic view, noting correctly how human values are shaped in the experiments and creative insights of scientific thought; and in this process new concepts are born, such as new world views and new values, concepts that continually seek coherence with the world as it experienced.
I found especially apt the discussion of dissent, freedom, and respect being balanced in the scientific enterprise; and how pre-scientific disciplines such as law and nation-state politics ultimately suffer without this careful balance.
Read
August 7, 2011Un livre certes daté mais qui a l'avantage d'insister sur l'importance de la créativité et des valeurs en science. En cela, Bronowski annonce bien la philosophie post-empirisme logique qui suivra dès les années 60. Cependant, s'il est moins insistant sur la divisions des deux cultures que C.P. Snow, il oppose tout de même clairement la culture scientifique à la culture littéraire. Est-ce un simple jugement sur le rapport entres les communautés intellectuelles à son époque ou considère-t-il cette division comme intrinsèque? le dialogue "The Abacus an the Rose", qui clôt l'ouvrage, nous incite à pencher vers la seconde position, ce qui limite la pertinence de son analyse.
December 9, 2008
Bronowski tackles the concept of what science has become while maintaining a greater perspective of what it has come to exist culturally. Bronoskwi's attitude toward art & it's role in science was refreshing; not only that but it touches on something deeper. "All science is the search for unity in hidden likeness." It was definitely worth the read.
Want to read
February 17, 2011As recommended in: February 16, 2011, Institute for Excellence in Education's Medical and Biomedical Education Grand Rounds, "Science and the world's future", Bruce Alberts, Biochemistry and Biophysics, UCSF
July 29, 2011
In this collection of essays, Bronowski discusses the act of creativity, the pursuit of truth and the interface of scientific journeying with the life of virtue. I really enjoyed these thoughtful pieces - that the acts of science are not merely the method, but an expression of the human experience as a whole. Definitely something I'd recommend to others.
January 20, 2011
Had some very good points, bringing together how scientists, like those in the humanities, are indeed creative people and how they search for truth. I enjoyed it, but I think it was over the heads of the average college freshman, which was the demographic of the class for which I was reading it.
July 27, 2011
I just finished Breaking The Spell and moving to Bronowski from Dennett has been very refreshing stylistically. Bronoski flows elegantly whereas Dennett is a lot more halting I assume because of the nature of the book's argument.
July 29, 2016
the book argues if scientists' values were adopted by the entire society, there would be no Nagasaki disaster. The scientists apparently followed orders in this case, and there is no reason why the society, even entirely soaked in scientific values, would not. Rather shaky argument, in my view.
June 7, 2015
This slim volume sat on my bookshelves for over a decade until I picked it up and read it today. What an oversight! I can feel the book changing the way I think about things and I have no doubt that it will end up on that short list of books that changed my life.
March 30, 2016
I. Really. Love. This. Book. Not. Much. Reading. But. This. Is. Science. I. Can. Only. Image. Whats. It. Reads. Cant. Wait. To. Get. It.
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