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Science & Human Values
Thought-provoking essays on science as an integral part of the culture of our age from a leader in the scientific humanism movement. "A profoundly moving, brilliantly perceptive essay by a truly civilized man."-- Scientific American
144 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1956
About the author
Jacob Bronowski
80 books229 followersJacob 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.
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August 7, 2011Un livre certes daté mais qui a l'avantage d'insister sur l'importance de la créativité et des valeurs en science. En cela, Bronowski annonce bien la philosophie post-empirisme logique qui suivra dès les années 60. Cependant, s'il est moins insistant sur la divisions des deux cultures que C.P. Snow, il oppose tout de même clairement la culture scientifique à la culture littéraire. Est-ce un simple jugement sur le rapport entres les communautés intellectuelles à son époque ou considère-t-il cette division comme intrinsèque? le dialogue "The Abacus an the Rose", qui clôt l'ouvrage, nous incite à pencher vers la seconde position, ce qui limite la pertinence de son analyse.
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