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
spring lying home
The force that makes the winter grow Its feathered hexagons of snow , and drives the bee to match at home Their calculated honeycomb, Is abacus and rose combined. An icy sweetness fills my mind , A sense that under thing and wing Lies, taut yet living , coiled, the spring .
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.
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.
learning inquiry ends
Certainty ends inquiry.
original-thought humans originals
One original thought is worth the sum total of human knowledge, because it advances the sum total of human knowledge by that one original thought.
unity
All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses.
notebook nature science
Da Vinci was as great a mechanic and inventor as were Newton and his friends. Yet a glance at his notebooks shows us that what fascinated him about nature was its variety, its infinite adaptability, the fitness and the individuality of all its parts. By contrast what made astronomy a pleasure to Newton was its unity, its singleness, its model of a nature in which the diversified parts were mere disguises for the same blank atoms.
echoes choices males
The preoccupation with the choice of a mate both by male and female I regard as a continuing echo of the major selective force by which we have evolved.
mistake thinking creative
It is a mistake to think of creative activity as something unusual
notebook facts leafs
Knowledge is not a loose leaf notebook of facts.
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.
kings powerful hero
The most powerful drive in the ascent of man is his pleasure in his own skill. He loves to do what he does well and, having done it well, he loves to do it better. You see it in his science. You see it in the magnificence with which he carves and builds, the loving care, the gaiety, the effrontery. The monuments are supposed to commemorate kings and religions, heroes, dogmas, but in the end the man they commemorate is the builder.
ascent tribute knows
Science is a tribute to what we can know, although we are fallible.