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
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Every animal leaves traces of what it was; man alone leaves traces of what he created.
courage science asking-questions
Ask an impertinent question and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.
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Power is the by-product of understanding.
latin integrity mean
We are a scientific civilization. That means a civilization in which knowledge and its integrity are crucial. Science is only a Latin word for knowledge ... Knowledge is our destiny.
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Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error, and is personal.
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Sex was invented as a biological instrument by (say) the green algae. But as an instrument in the ascent of man which is basic to his cultural evolution, it was invented by man himself.
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The idea that the universe is running down comes from a simple observation about machines. Every machine consumes more energy than it renders.
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[John] Dalton was a man of regular habits. For fifty-seven years he walked out of Manchester every day; he measured the rainfall, the temperature-a singularly monotonous enterprise in this climate. Of all that mass of data, nothing whatever came. But of the one searching, almost childlike question about the weights that enter the construction of these simple molecules-out of that came modern atomic theory. That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to the pertinent answer.
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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.
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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.
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The great poem and the deep theorem are new to every reader, and yet are his own experiences, because he himself recreates them.
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In the moment of appreciation we live again the moment when the creator saw and held the hidden likeness.
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Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible.
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Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.