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Jacob Bronowski Biography

Jacob Bronowski

Jacob Bronowski (18 January 1908 – 22 August 1974) was a British mathematician, historian of science, theatre author, poet and inventor. He was also the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man, and the accompanying book.

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Jacob Bronowski Quotes

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.

Ethical, Integrity, Notebook, Primarily, Responsibility

This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave.

Believe, Ignorance, Reality, Turned, Test, Flushed

To imagine is the characteristic act, not of the poet's mind, or the painter's, or the scientist's, but of the mind of man.

Men, Imagination, Mind, Act, Imagine, Man

A man becomes creative, whether he is an artist or scientist, when he finds a new unity in the variety of nature. He does so by finding a likeness between things which were not thought alike before.

Artist, Becomes, Creative, Men, Unity

There is a social injunction implied in the positivist and analyst methods. This social axiom is that :;:;:;:;:;:; We OUGHT to act in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so.

Act, Analyst, Analysts, Social, True, Way

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.

Notebook, Nature, Science, Adaptability, Fascinated, Individuality

No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.

Corruption, Immune, Infection, Political, Politics, Power

Certainty ends inquiry.

Certainty, Ends, Inquiry, Learning

Time is not bought ready-made at the watchmaker's.

Bought, Made, Ready, Time

Nature has not fitted man to any specific environment.

Environment, Fitted, Men, Respect, Specific

The most remarkable discovery ever made by scientists was science itself.

Discovery, Remarkable, Science, Scientist

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.

Destiny, Integrity, Knowledge, Latin, Mean

It's a sort of curious phenomenon that God is somehow not quite as nice as the devil; the devil doesn't punish you for behaving well, but God punishes you for behaving badly.

Badly, Curious, Devil, Nice, Phenomenon

Beyond all our actions stands the larger shadow: How are we to choose between what we have been taught to think right and something else which manifestly succeeds?

Choose, Our Actions, Shadow, Succeeds, Thinking

Nature is more subtle, more deeply intertwined and more strangely integrated than any of our pictures of her than any of our errors. It is not merely that our pictures are not full enough; each of our pictures in the end turns out to be so basically mistaken that the marvel is that it worked at all.

Ends, Enough, Errors, Integrated, Mistaken

It is very much easier to divide your outlook on the world into two halves, to say that you know this belongs to the daily half and this belongs to the Sunday half.

Belongs, Divide, Half, Perspective, Sunday, Two

Dream or nightmare, we have to live our experience as it is, and we have to live it awake. We live in a world which is penetrated through and through by science and which is both whole and real. We cannot turn it into a game simple by taking sides.

Dream, Real, Science, Sides, Simple, Whole

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.

Animal, Condition, Contrary, Emotional, Imagination, Men

The largest single step in the ascent of man is the change from nomad to village agriculture.

Agriculture, Man, Men, Village

The painter's portrait and the physicist's explanation are both rooted in reality, but they have been changed by the painter or the physicist into something more subtly imagined than the photographic appearance of things.

Reality, Portraits, Appearance, Changed, Explanation

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