Jacob Bronowski
Jacob Bronowski
Jacob Bronowskiwas a British mathematician, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor. Of Polish-Jewish origin, he is best remembered as the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man, and the accompanying book...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth1 September 1908
wisdom nature men
Man masters nature not by force, but by understanding
discovery statistics ability
The basis for poetry and scientific discovery is the ability to comprehend the unlike in the like and the like in the unlike.
organization vocabulary law
We receive experience from nature in a series of messages. From these messages we extract a content of information: that is, we decode the messages in some way. And from this code of information we then make a basic vocabulary of concepts and a basic grammar of laws, which jointly describe the inner organization that nature translates into the happenings and the appearances we meet.
nature science technology
Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast over nature.
science two together
I grew up to be indifferent to the distinction between literature and science, which in my teens were simply two languages for experience that I learned together.
law understanding gains
We gain our ends only with the laws of nature; we control her only by understanding her laws.
funny creativity men
Every animal leaves traces of what it was; man alone leaves traces of what he created.
notebook integrity responsibility
Knowledge is not a loose-leaf notebook of facts. Above all, it is a responsibility for the integrity of what we are, primarily of what we are as ethical creatures.
men age ascent
That series of inventions by which man from age to age has remade his environment is a different kind of evolution -- not biological, but cultural evolution . . . "The Ascent of Man.
animal men emotional
But nature - that is, biological evolution - has not fitted man to any specific environment. On the contrary, ... he has a rather crude survival kit; and yet -this is the paradox of the human condition - one that fits him to all environments. Among the multitude of animals which scamper, fly, burrow and swim around us, man is the only one who is not locked into his environment. His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness, make it possible for him not to accept the environment but to change it.
giving achievement world
One aim of physical sciences had been to give an exact picture the material world. One achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that that aim is unattainable.
teamwork flower diversity
The world is made up of people who never quite get into the first team and who just miss the prizes at the flower show.
science men imagination
It is not the business of science to inherit the earth, but to inherit the moral imagination; because without that, man and beliefs and science will perish together.
time made ready
Time is not bought ready-made at the watchmaker's.