What do you think?
Rate this book
The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination
“A gem of enlightenment. . . . One rejoices in Bronowski’s dedication to the identity of acts of creativity and of imagination, whether in Blake or Yeats or Einstein or Heisenberg.”� Kirkus Reviews
“A delightful look at the inquiring mind.”� Library Journal
In this eloquent volume Jacob Bronowski, mathematician and scientist, presents a succinct introduction to the state of modern thinking about the role of science in man's intellectual and moral life. Weaving together themes from ethnology, linguistics, philosophy, and physics, he confronts the questions of who we are, what we are, and how we relate to the universe around us.
“A delightful look at the inquiring mind.”� Library Journal
In this eloquent volume Jacob Bronowski, mathematician and scientist, presents a succinct introduction to the state of modern thinking about the role of science in man's intellectual and moral life. Weaving together themes from ethnology, linguistics, philosophy, and physics, he confronts the questions of who we are, what we are, and how we relate to the universe around us.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
40 people are currently reading
630 people want to read
About the author
Jacob Bronowski
48books221followersJacob 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
June 20, 2020
Edited after a second read:
After a second read I find I am less illuminated than I felt after the first.
The original review stands as it is a fair summary of the the Professors outline, but my new takeaways are a little different.
Over all Bronowki is a tempting to show that true scientific study is rarely more than a best guess about some part of what will always be a larger problem. A good scientist is limited to modeling some part of reality. It is not possible for any one set of observations to account for everything that may have an effect on the model being tested.
It is therefore a certainty that some later experiment, perhaps but not necessarily based on on this early work will isolated some limited number of the previously unknown or confounding inputs. The result of the later study maybe to bring the model closer to a full understanding of the tested reality, or it may require an entirely new way of thinking about test outcomes were derived and analyzed.
As for God. Bronowski says little one way or the other. The human mind, like most living things survives in part by identifying patterns. Ignoring that changing leaves means get ready for cold weather is a good way to get caught in a fatal snow drift. Humans seem to do something other life forms do not. We want to know why. Absent an answer we will invent one. God being as good of an answer as any other.
The problem arises when a belief system interposes itself to say; "as of this point the answer is God and therefore there can be no more questions". If need be the religious will murder those who continue to ask. Rather like the way map makers would annotate the ends of the geographic knowledge of that time with: "Go ye no further here there be dragons".
Who ever, what ever and however many gods there be, the evidence heavily suggests that what HE/She/They want of humans is to figure out this place, and each other. Time spent on the questions of what comes next or what God/Gods do or want is entertaining, comforting maybe inspirational. But there in is an end to solution and the quest for understanding.
The problem is that we have not solved the problems of understanding each other nor have we answered even a fraction of the questions we can ask about this world.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It has been a while since I finished a book that ends with me both challenged and refreshed. Jacob Bronowski’s The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination does. It is not necessary to agree with all he says, indeed he makes a point of saying that in ten year's time much of what he says will be proven wrong. ‘Says� is the right word as these are the texts of six lectures he gave as part of the Sillman Foundation lectures in 1978. In many ways it is a return to and a refinement of another set of lectures he gave as published in . Of the two lecture sets, this one is crisper and better argued.
What does he argue? Mostly the series is about the fact that humans may be animals, but we are unique among the animals and cannot be understood if we only understand ourselves as animals. The sum of his case is this: we are reading (or listening) about humans, not some other animal reading about their unique achievements and capabilities. Further humans can write and listen and learn in ways that animals cannot.
Having made this face palm simple case he shifts to another simple concept: Image, Imagery and Imagination. Humans are strongly influenced by sight. We have achieved so much by virtue of our eye sight. Coincidentally this links to a concept that Stephan Hawking will much later describe in his , as Model Driven Theories. Our world is limited to what we can see and therefor our science is bound to what we can see. Whatever it is we miss by this limitation we have done very well. Even better considering that the image resolution of the human eye is far less refined than any of us have reason to know. What the eye cannot resolve, the brain manages. Or at least we think it does. And have done fairly well, so far as we can know. Hesitations aside more powerful instruments have lead toward the oddly contradictory understanding that we think we know our universe better than any previous age. And that in knowing more we can only be more certain at how uncertain is our knowledge of the universe.
We are in the age of scientific uncertainty as quantified by Quantum theory. As Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman is said to have said: "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." Or so Bronowski quotes him. As is usually the case these kinds of quotes there is no absolute proof that the quote is as here formulated or original to Feynman. A better formulation not given in this book is attributed to Niels Bohr: "If you can fathom quantum mechanics without getting dizzy, you don't get it" (source Wiki).
With these basic and after the fact oblivious notions � and of course Quantum, Bronowski can soar into human scientific achievements (including the most lucid explanation of Feynman's theory of sum over histories I have yet read) and grasp of our world. It is inherent that we get things wrong. It is the advantage of being human that we can get it better. Bronowski honors us and offers hope in the form of more things to see and more things to learn.
After a second read I find I am less illuminated than I felt after the first.
The original review stands as it is a fair summary of the the Professors outline, but my new takeaways are a little different.
Over all Bronowki is a tempting to show that true scientific study is rarely more than a best guess about some part of what will always be a larger problem. A good scientist is limited to modeling some part of reality. It is not possible for any one set of observations to account for everything that may have an effect on the model being tested.
It is therefore a certainty that some later experiment, perhaps but not necessarily based on on this early work will isolated some limited number of the previously unknown or confounding inputs. The result of the later study maybe to bring the model closer to a full understanding of the tested reality, or it may require an entirely new way of thinking about test outcomes were derived and analyzed.
As for God. Bronowski says little one way or the other. The human mind, like most living things survives in part by identifying patterns. Ignoring that changing leaves means get ready for cold weather is a good way to get caught in a fatal snow drift. Humans seem to do something other life forms do not. We want to know why. Absent an answer we will invent one. God being as good of an answer as any other.
The problem arises when a belief system interposes itself to say; "as of this point the answer is God and therefore there can be no more questions". If need be the religious will murder those who continue to ask. Rather like the way map makers would annotate the ends of the geographic knowledge of that time with: "Go ye no further here there be dragons".
Who ever, what ever and however many gods there be, the evidence heavily suggests that what HE/She/They want of humans is to figure out this place, and each other. Time spent on the questions of what comes next or what God/Gods do or want is entertaining, comforting maybe inspirational. But there in is an end to solution and the quest for understanding.
The problem is that we have not solved the problems of understanding each other nor have we answered even a fraction of the questions we can ask about this world.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
It has been a while since I finished a book that ends with me both challenged and refreshed. Jacob Bronowski’s The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination does. It is not necessary to agree with all he says, indeed he makes a point of saying that in ten year's time much of what he says will be proven wrong. ‘Says� is the right word as these are the texts of six lectures he gave as part of the Sillman Foundation lectures in 1978. In many ways it is a return to and a refinement of another set of lectures he gave as published in . Of the two lecture sets, this one is crisper and better argued.
What does he argue? Mostly the series is about the fact that humans may be animals, but we are unique among the animals and cannot be understood if we only understand ourselves as animals. The sum of his case is this: we are reading (or listening) about humans, not some other animal reading about their unique achievements and capabilities. Further humans can write and listen and learn in ways that animals cannot.
Having made this face palm simple case he shifts to another simple concept: Image, Imagery and Imagination. Humans are strongly influenced by sight. We have achieved so much by virtue of our eye sight. Coincidentally this links to a concept that Stephan Hawking will much later describe in his , as Model Driven Theories. Our world is limited to what we can see and therefor our science is bound to what we can see. Whatever it is we miss by this limitation we have done very well. Even better considering that the image resolution of the human eye is far less refined than any of us have reason to know. What the eye cannot resolve, the brain manages. Or at least we think it does. And have done fairly well, so far as we can know. Hesitations aside more powerful instruments have lead toward the oddly contradictory understanding that we think we know our universe better than any previous age. And that in knowing more we can only be more certain at how uncertain is our knowledge of the universe.
We are in the age of scientific uncertainty as quantified by Quantum theory. As Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman is said to have said: "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." Or so Bronowski quotes him. As is usually the case these kinds of quotes there is no absolute proof that the quote is as here formulated or original to Feynman. A better formulation not given in this book is attributed to Niels Bohr: "If you can fathom quantum mechanics without getting dizzy, you don't get it" (source Wiki).
With these basic and after the fact oblivious notions � and of course Quantum, Bronowski can soar into human scientific achievements (including the most lucid explanation of Feynman's theory of sum over histories I have yet read) and grasp of our world. It is inherent that we get things wrong. It is the advantage of being human that we can get it better. Bronowski honors us and offers hope in the form of more things to see and more things to learn.
March 20, 2012
The best summary of The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination (1978) by Jacob Bronowski is probably from the dust jacket flap:
In this [book] Jacob Bronowski � presents a succinct introduction to the state of modern thinking about the role of science in man’s intellectual and moral life. Weaving together themes from ethnology, linguistics, philosophy, and physics, he confronts the questions of who we are, what we are, and how we relate to the universe around us.
Bronowski comes across as a talented thinker and writer in the book. He provides very clear examples of the more complex topics that allow you to follow along with his train of thought. There is a meandering to the text, though, so that some topics veer off into other areas for lengthy and often too detailed discussions (this was originally a series of lectures, though, where the sidebars may have been more effective).
Bronowski tries very hard to tie aspects of human psychology to the more rigid structure of other sciences like physics, but that is where he is least convincing in his arguments. For example, there is an analogy of compressing gas in a chamber to the psychological response of saying “Butter� to the word “Bread.� Bronowski argues that the mind is like the compressed gas because “� the nature of the connections inside must be such that when there is input, there is an enormous amount of cross-reference as the result of which there is a certain output. And it is usually the same output.�
The general take-away from the book is: (1) man is a “special� kind of animal because of our imagination and language abilities, (2) man’s senses, developed over millennia by evolution, inform and limit our ability to interpret the world around us, (3) science is simply a structure form of language, with similar rules and requirements, but it allows us to have greater insight into the world.
In this [book] Jacob Bronowski � presents a succinct introduction to the state of modern thinking about the role of science in man’s intellectual and moral life. Weaving together themes from ethnology, linguistics, philosophy, and physics, he confronts the questions of who we are, what we are, and how we relate to the universe around us.
Bronowski comes across as a talented thinker and writer in the book. He provides very clear examples of the more complex topics that allow you to follow along with his train of thought. There is a meandering to the text, though, so that some topics veer off into other areas for lengthy and often too detailed discussions (this was originally a series of lectures, though, where the sidebars may have been more effective).
Bronowski tries very hard to tie aspects of human psychology to the more rigid structure of other sciences like physics, but that is where he is least convincing in his arguments. For example, there is an analogy of compressing gas in a chamber to the psychological response of saying “Butter� to the word “Bread.� Bronowski argues that the mind is like the compressed gas because “� the nature of the connections inside must be such that when there is input, there is an enormous amount of cross-reference as the result of which there is a certain output. And it is usually the same output.�
The general take-away from the book is: (1) man is a “special� kind of animal because of our imagination and language abilities, (2) man’s senses, developed over millennia by evolution, inform and limit our ability to interpret the world around us, (3) science is simply a structure form of language, with similar rules and requirements, but it allows us to have greater insight into the world.
January 5, 2020
Wise and timeless.
Interesting ramifications for the goal of "human-like AI".
Some excerpts:
Interesting ramifications for the goal of "human-like AI".
Some excerpts:
In my view the answer is as follows. I believe the world is totally connected: that is to say, that there are no events anywhere in the universe which are not tied to every other event in the universe. I regard this to some extent as a metaphysical statement, although you will see, as I develop it in the next lecture, it has a much more down-to-earth content than that. But I will repeat it: I believe that every event in the world is connected to every other event. But you cannot carry on science supposition that you are going to be able to connect every event with every other event. Even when you set a computer such a simple problem as playing a good game of chess on the hypothesis that the computer is really going to think out every consequence, it breaks down hopelessly. It is, therefore, an essential part of the methodology of science to divide the world for any experiment into what we regard as relevant and what we regard, for purpose of that experiment, as irrelevant.
Nature is not a gigantic formalizable system. In order to formalize it, we have to make some assumptions which cut out some parts. We then lose the total connectivity. And what we get is a superb metaphor, but it is not a system which can embrace the whole of nature. We are really saying that there is no system of axioms which can embrace the whole of nature, or for that matter the whole of mathematics. We therefore cannot attain the great wish that we have had ever since the days of Thomas Hobbes and Newton: we will never be able to exhibit the whole of physics one fine day as a gorgeous system with a six axioms and a few operations, and from that moment everything would fall into place. You would know when for example, flowers that grow at high altitude are often blue, whereas flowers that grow at low altitude are often red. Anything that you could ask would follow from the axiomatic system. That is obviously a hopeless task. What I have been trying to show is that whether you approach it in a strictly formal way from the mathematics or in the more informal way in which I discussed it in the last lecture, you always come to the same conclusion: no formal system embraces all the questions that can be asked.
April 10, 2009
I deeply respect Jacob Bronowski, and while I enjoyed this book, it read too much like a lecture to a beginning History of Science class or something of that nature. But it displays Bronowski's genius for conveying his interest and fascination with science to his listeners/readers. (These were public lectures first).
January 16, 2024
you know, for a textbook, this was pretty interesting.
I read this for a required honors class entitled, Intersections Between the Humanities and Sciences. the whole point of the class is for us to understand how the humanities and sciences complement each other and even need one another to thrive.
this book did a great job of covering just that in a way that was both incredibly dense, yet remarkably interesting. the book consists of seven lectures, each one building upon the last. these lectures as a whole bring attention to one thing: that man is greater than beast.
being a Christian myself, this is a conversation I have had many times. this was the first time, however, that I saw this conversation take place from a purely scientific perspective (though Bronowski touches on the subject of God and man's idea of Him, he himself is an atheist and thus perceives God to be something more akin to Knowledge itself, and its connection with nature). despite this, Bronowski holds adamantly to the fact that the human race is special, the human brain is special, and human emotion, imagination, and reasoning are wholly unique among the lifeforms.
I will take the next part of this review to summarize each chapter, as I have to do this for school anyway. though this is more for me than for anyone else, I will put it here since it might be beneficial to someone...
(spoilers ahead—can a textbook have spoilers??)...
lecture one: the mind as an instrument for understanding
In this lecture, Bronowski argues that our five senses impact how we interact with the world. These five senses are connected to the brain, and because of them, we can interpret the things around us. In the first few pages, Bronowski argues that “You cannot see that world without the intervention of the physical senses.� This relates to the title of the chapter in that it is our five senses (and therefore, our mind) which give us understanding. Our perceptions of the world are directly connected to our experiences.
Bronowski spends the majority of this lecture arguing what this means for man regarding his relation to animals. How are man and beast alike? How are they different? Bronowski says that the human mind is a large part of what makes them different—that is, the human mind’s ability to perceive the world differently than animals. Man’s abilities to understand and create are born from his five senses. The author even argues that “The abilities that we have in the way of memory and imagination, of symbolism and emblem, are all conditioned by the sense of sight.� Every abstract thing we understand is directly related to our kinesthetic senses—that is, our minds.
lecture two: the evolution and power of symbolic language
In lecture two, Bronowski continues to argue that there are distinctions between man and beast. In this case, he discusses the importance of human senses to man's interpretation of the world. He draws attention to the way that man can separate his instruction (or instinct) from the information he receives. Things like foresight, internalization, and reconstitution, differentiate man from beast. This is all concerning mankind's ability to process and structure language as a means of communication, which is so specific and complex. Brnonowski has it right when he says that "it is impossible to have a symbolic system without [language]" (p.38).
lecture three: knowledge as algorithm and as metaphor
In lecture three, Bronowski remarks that "consciousness ... is our mode of analysis of the outside world into objects and actions" (p.44). He discusses man's ability to interpret both metaphor and scientific facts, such as the phrase, "A Red Robin breast in a cage /Puts all Heaven in a Rage" (William Blake), or scientific questions about the state of the universe. He then continues his discussion of human language and how it relates to science. He finishes the chapter with a discussion of how every event that takes place in this world is connected to all other events.
lecture four: the laws of nature and the nature of laws
Bronowski spends this lecture discussing what constitutes a law and asking the question, “What is real, and how can we know it?� He argues that if there is absolute truth, man in his finite-ness, cannot access it. For because everything is connected, man cannot discover truth without deeply oversimplifying it. “There is no system which can embrace the whole of nature, or for that matter, the whole of mathematics.� (p.80) By this, he argues that every law that man discovers will probably, at some point, be disproven.
lecture five: error, progress, and the concept of time
Bronowski takes most of his time during this lecture to talk about the human brain and its relation to the body. He says that we cannot separate the brain from the human body, because they become one in the senses. Instead, we must look at the human being as a whole. Furthermore, he argues that the brain is far more complex than we could ever realize because it utilizes a language of statistics which we do not know. There are things, then, that we can never understand due to our finiteness. He thus concludes that while science is “an attempt to represent the known world as a closed system with a perfect formalism� (p.108), every scientific discovery reopens that system, making it impossible to truly achieve any sure knowledge of absolute truth. This all paves the way for his next and final lecture.
lecture six: law and individual responsibility
In his final lecture, Bronowski sets out to discuss the relationship between “scientific ethics� and legality. To do this, he first spends a great deal of the lecture asking the questions, “What is science?� and “How is it done?� He follows these questions with a final: “Can ethics and science be connected?� His answer, after all of this debating is an adamant “Yes,� and even goes so far as to say that in many cases, science can teach us ethics. He holds to this opinion for a few reasons, but his third reason (which is what he believes to be the strongest of the three arguments) is this: “You cannot know what is true unless you behave in certain ways� (p. 129).
I read this for a required honors class entitled, Intersections Between the Humanities and Sciences. the whole point of the class is for us to understand how the humanities and sciences complement each other and even need one another to thrive.
this book did a great job of covering just that in a way that was both incredibly dense, yet remarkably interesting. the book consists of seven lectures, each one building upon the last. these lectures as a whole bring attention to one thing: that man is greater than beast.
being a Christian myself, this is a conversation I have had many times. this was the first time, however, that I saw this conversation take place from a purely scientific perspective (though Bronowski touches on the subject of God and man's idea of Him, he himself is an atheist and thus perceives God to be something more akin to Knowledge itself, and its connection with nature). despite this, Bronowski holds adamantly to the fact that the human race is special, the human brain is special, and human emotion, imagination, and reasoning are wholly unique among the lifeforms.
I will take the next part of this review to summarize each chapter, as I have to do this for school anyway. though this is more for me than for anyone else, I will put it here since it might be beneficial to someone...
(spoilers ahead—can a textbook have spoilers??)...
lecture one: the mind as an instrument for understanding
In this lecture, Bronowski argues that our five senses impact how we interact with the world. These five senses are connected to the brain, and because of them, we can interpret the things around us. In the first few pages, Bronowski argues that “You cannot see that world without the intervention of the physical senses.� This relates to the title of the chapter in that it is our five senses (and therefore, our mind) which give us understanding. Our perceptions of the world are directly connected to our experiences.
Bronowski spends the majority of this lecture arguing what this means for man regarding his relation to animals. How are man and beast alike? How are they different? Bronowski says that the human mind is a large part of what makes them different—that is, the human mind’s ability to perceive the world differently than animals. Man’s abilities to understand and create are born from his five senses. The author even argues that “The abilities that we have in the way of memory and imagination, of symbolism and emblem, are all conditioned by the sense of sight.� Every abstract thing we understand is directly related to our kinesthetic senses—that is, our minds.
lecture two: the evolution and power of symbolic language
In lecture two, Bronowski continues to argue that there are distinctions between man and beast. In this case, he discusses the importance of human senses to man's interpretation of the world. He draws attention to the way that man can separate his instruction (or instinct) from the information he receives. Things like foresight, internalization, and reconstitution, differentiate man from beast. This is all concerning mankind's ability to process and structure language as a means of communication, which is so specific and complex. Brnonowski has it right when he says that "it is impossible to have a symbolic system without [language]" (p.38).
lecture three: knowledge as algorithm and as metaphor
In lecture three, Bronowski remarks that "consciousness ... is our mode of analysis of the outside world into objects and actions" (p.44). He discusses man's ability to interpret both metaphor and scientific facts, such as the phrase, "A Red Robin breast in a cage /Puts all Heaven in a Rage" (William Blake), or scientific questions about the state of the universe. He then continues his discussion of human language and how it relates to science. He finishes the chapter with a discussion of how every event that takes place in this world is connected to all other events.
lecture four: the laws of nature and the nature of laws
Bronowski spends this lecture discussing what constitutes a law and asking the question, “What is real, and how can we know it?� He argues that if there is absolute truth, man in his finite-ness, cannot access it. For because everything is connected, man cannot discover truth without deeply oversimplifying it. “There is no system which can embrace the whole of nature, or for that matter, the whole of mathematics.� (p.80) By this, he argues that every law that man discovers will probably, at some point, be disproven.
lecture five: error, progress, and the concept of time
Bronowski takes most of his time during this lecture to talk about the human brain and its relation to the body. He says that we cannot separate the brain from the human body, because they become one in the senses. Instead, we must look at the human being as a whole. Furthermore, he argues that the brain is far more complex than we could ever realize because it utilizes a language of statistics which we do not know. There are things, then, that we can never understand due to our finiteness. He thus concludes that while science is “an attempt to represent the known world as a closed system with a perfect formalism� (p.108), every scientific discovery reopens that system, making it impossible to truly achieve any sure knowledge of absolute truth. This all paves the way for his next and final lecture.
lecture six: law and individual responsibility
In his final lecture, Bronowski sets out to discuss the relationship between “scientific ethics� and legality. To do this, he first spends a great deal of the lecture asking the questions, “What is science?� and “How is it done?� He follows these questions with a final: “Can ethics and science be connected?� His answer, after all of this debating is an adamant “Yes,� and even goes so far as to say that in many cases, science can teach us ethics. He holds to this opinion for a few reasons, but his third reason (which is what he believes to be the strongest of the three arguments) is this: “You cannot know what is true unless you behave in certain ways� (p. 129).
December 10, 2018
I read this years ago. I used to see Bronowski at the La Valencia in La Jolla. He was always engaged in conversation with his friend Jonas Salk. This is a lovely work, a summation of sorts, of wisdom, and observation. I have heard nasty rumors about the author but they do to affect my love for this little book.
January 15, 2018
Just a few bullets, notes-to-self.
Emphasizes the importance of our reliance on sense of sight to human development.
"the central problem of human consciousness depends on [our] ability to imagine" (p. 18).
I was most interested in ch. 2 on symbolic language. What differentiates human language from other animals' communication? 1) we are able to separate information from emotional content, or affect, when we interpret messages. He goes from here to say that humans communicate (and receive) information, animals only instruction. Going hand in hand with this, he says (I had a hard time following this first point) is foresight. 2) prolongation of reference (in time, past and future). 3) internalization: only humans talk to themselves. 4) the one that I always emphasize, generativity. John 1:1 says "in the beginning was the Word," but Bronowski has it that in the beginning, for animals, is a sentence, which only humans can pull apart into words. He calls this reconstitution.
"only human beings are able to make, to internalize, and to exchange with one another utterances which have a purely cognitive content" (p. 43).
My little spiel about "infinite ignorance" can be referenced to Bronowski 1978, espec. pp. 69-70. "While the universe is totally connected, we cannot extricate ourselves from our own finiteness" (p. 70) is a decent line about this.
Emphasizes the importance of our reliance on sense of sight to human development.
"the central problem of human consciousness depends on [our] ability to imagine" (p. 18).
I was most interested in ch. 2 on symbolic language. What differentiates human language from other animals' communication? 1) we are able to separate information from emotional content, or affect, when we interpret messages. He goes from here to say that humans communicate (and receive) information, animals only instruction. Going hand in hand with this, he says (I had a hard time following this first point) is foresight. 2) prolongation of reference (in time, past and future). 3) internalization: only humans talk to themselves. 4) the one that I always emphasize, generativity. John 1:1 says "in the beginning was the Word," but Bronowski has it that in the beginning, for animals, is a sentence, which only humans can pull apart into words. He calls this reconstitution.
"only human beings are able to make, to internalize, and to exchange with one another utterances which have a purely cognitive content" (p. 43).
My little spiel about "infinite ignorance" can be referenced to Bronowski 1978, espec. pp. 69-70. "While the universe is totally connected, we cannot extricate ourselves from our own finiteness" (p. 70) is a decent line about this.
August 4, 2020
this is a pretty amazing book. It is one I will reread, for I only understood a percentage of it the first time through despite a fairly pedestrian pace. Bronowski presents a series of six lectures he delivered at Yale about how we can know anything. How is it that our brain can translate the myriad billions of inputs and make sense so that we can not only survive in the world but can ascertain knowledge and foster imagination so necessary to scientific pursuit.
I especially appreciated his lecture on Error, Progress, and the Concept of Time for in it he furthers and earlier profession of the unique wholeness of the human being. Separations of mind and body, the world and ourselves in some "Cartesian dualism" is false. He says, " What is wrong is that if you think of the brain as receiving the information, processing it, and then giving instruction to the muscle, you have already falsified the whole procedure." We are unique while still fundamentally the same in ways animals and other things in creation are not.
I especially appreciated his lecture on Error, Progress, and the Concept of Time for in it he furthers and earlier profession of the unique wholeness of the human being. Separations of mind and body, the world and ourselves in some "Cartesian dualism" is false. He says, " What is wrong is that if you think of the brain as receiving the information, processing it, and then giving instruction to the muscle, you have already falsified the whole procedure." We are unique while still fundamentally the same in ways animals and other things in creation are not.
April 9, 2018
good bits on the generativity and stratification of language, Olbers's Paradox, and the metaphysics of universal connectivity. I think sitting through one of Bronowski's lectures in person would have been something - great mind with healthy dose of good humor.
"Progress is the exploration of our own error." (112)
"What we really mean by free will is the visualizing of alternatives and making a choice between them. In my view, which not everyone shares, the central problem of human consciousness depends on the ability to imagine." (18)
"The act of imagination is the opening of the system so that it shows new connections...Every act of imagination is the discovery of likenesses between two things which were thought unalike. All those who truly imagine take parts of the universe which have not been connected hitherto and enlarge the total connectivity of the universe by showing them to be connected." (109-110)
"Progress is the exploration of our own error." (112)
"What we really mean by free will is the visualizing of alternatives and making a choice between them. In my view, which not everyone shares, the central problem of human consciousness depends on the ability to imagine." (18)
"The act of imagination is the opening of the system so that it shows new connections...Every act of imagination is the discovery of likenesses between two things which were thought unalike. All those who truly imagine take parts of the universe which have not been connected hitherto and enlarge the total connectivity of the universe by showing them to be connected." (109-110)
March 2, 2018
Six lectures in book form, so a talky kind of style. Good stuff, though. The biological limits of knowing, how science is as creative an act as anything in the arts, and how the truth, though unattainable, is the only goal worth striving toward.
September 22, 2021
This book was interesting enough. I read it for a class. While I don’t necessarily agree with every point the author makes, I think it was very thought provoking and a fun one to discuss in a class setting.
September 23, 2023
realisations i had when i was thirteen years old but put more eloquently and expanded on; interesting to compare his writing on the biological limits of living to a time where we may no longer be confined to biological limits
June 28, 2019
dated certainly but still relevant and inspiring.
August 7, 2019
Thought provoking stuff!
Read
September 25, 2020Food for thought
October 4, 2015
this books was really interesting due to the fact that it tackled some of the knowledge problems we as a human race a going through. some of which are as a result of the so called "axioms" we use. Jacob with intricacy talks discusses the problem of self inference and how it might affect our knowledge acquisition. In support of his statement he brings about a paradox which says that on one side of the paper it is written "the statement on the opposite side of this paper is false"and on the other side it is written that "the statement in the opposite side of this paper is true". which, by inspection, informs us of how unable we are to solve this paradox unless we say that such a paper just doesn't exist. this does more than good to solving our paradox. Similarly most of our daily life academic problems, in as much as we might think we are heading in the right direction, we might as well be going in a circle that is too big for us to realize. All in all it is an insightful and educating novel and i recommend that everyone reads it. #amazing
September 7, 2012
A series of lectures that provide a fine introduction to the ideas of this remarkable thinker and philosopher. You can find them in fully developed form in The Common Sense of Science, Science and Human Values and, of course, The Ascent of Man, but here you will find succinct arguments on why the endlessly questioning nature of science is the vital corrective to dogma and prejudice, and how the quest for knowledge should be tempered by the awareness that our own limitations will affect and often distort our discoveries. There is also some affectionate ribbing of Albert Einstein, whom Bruno accuses of acting like God is his uncle part of the time, and acting like he's God's uncle the rest.
August 14, 2023
Even though this is an older work, published in 1978, it is very insightful in linking the process of seeing, predicting and imagination with language. It was not overly technical and I didn't have too many challenges following his argument. There is a lot to reflect on in Bronowski's work here and it was a very enjoyable read. Some of the science I want to check against our current understanding, but with any source that is 35 years old you would want to do that, but well worth the investment of effort.
January 1, 2009
A series of four lectures delivered by the great Jacob Bronowski. He discusses the paradoxical nature of language and the essential role that error plays in scientific discovery. I wish he would've discussed his ideas about language as they apply to literature but as it stands this is a good introduction to a first rate mind.
Shelved as 'will-not-read'
July 9, 2014I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
Want to read
March 27, 2015mnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
Read
November 30, 2019Difficult read (dry and british). best read aloud for comprehension. glad to be finished.
July 30, 2016
Science and human values
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.