Jacob Bronowski Quotes - Page 2

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• There are three creative ideas which, each in its turn, have been central to science. They are the idea of order, the idea of causes, and the idea of chance.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Order, Ideas, Creative

  Jacob Bronowski (2011). “The Common Sense of Science”, p.8, Faber & Faber

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• 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.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Men, Age, Different

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• To me the most interesting thing about man is that he is an animal who practices art and science and in every known society practices both together.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Art, Science, Animal

  Jacob Bronowski (2008). “The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination”, p.15, Yale University Press

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• 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.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Nice, Devil, Curious

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• Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in the last years. But if that is cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Cutting, Science, Men

  1953 'The Sense of Human Dignity', lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 19 Mar.

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• The Principle of Tolerance, fixed once for all the realization that all knowledge is limited. It is an irony of history that at the very time when this was being worked out, there should rise, under Hitler in Germany and other tyrants elsewhere, a counter-conception: a principle of monstrous certainty. When the future looks back on the 1930's, it will think of them as a crucial confrontation of culture as I have been expounding it - the ascent of man against the throwback to the despots' belief that they have absolute certainty.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Faith, Men, Thinking

  "The Ascent of Man" (Episode 11: "Knowledge or Certainty"), 1973.

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• Many theories of the ancient world seem terribly childish today, a hodge-podge of fables and false comparisons.But our theories will seem childish five-hundred years from now.Every theory is based on some analogy, and sooner or later the theory fails because the analogy turns out to be false. A theory in its day helps to solve the problems of the day.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Years, Analogies, World

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• The world today is made, it is powered by science; and for any man to abdicate an interest in science is to walk with open eyes towards slavery.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Eye, Men, Religion

  Jacob Bronowski (1965). “Science and Human Values”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Liberty, Conformity, Lifetime

  "Science and Human Values". Book by Jacob Bronowski, 1956.

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• Knowledge is not a loose leaf notebook of facts.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Notebook, Facts, Leafs

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

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• The most remarkable discovery made by scientists is science itself. The discovery must be compared in importance with the invention of cave-painting and of writing. Like these earlier human creations, science is an attempt to control our surroundings by entering into them and understanding them from inside. And like them, science has surely made a critical step in human development which cannot be reversed. We cannot conceive a future society without science.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Writing, Science, Discovery

  "The Creative Process". Scientific American 199:59, September 1958.

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• 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.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Artist, Men, Creative

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• It is often said that the progression from simple to complex runs counter to the normal statistics of chance that are formalized in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Strictly speaking, we could avoid this criticism simply by insisting that the Second Law does not apply to living systems in the environment in which we find them. For the Second Law applies only when there is no overall flow of energy into or out of a system, whereas all living systems are sustained by a net inflow of energy.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Running, Simple, Law

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• Every animal leaves traces of what it was; man alone leaves traces of what he created.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Funny, Creativity, Animal

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

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• You will die but the carbon will not; its career does not end with you. It will return to the soil, and there a plant may take it up again in time, sending it once more on a cycle of plant and animal life.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Animal, Grandchildren, Careers

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com. October 1968.

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• The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Understanding, World, Ascent

  Ascent of Man (1973) ch. 3

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• 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.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Men, Imagination, Mind

  "The Reach of Imagination". Essay by Jacob Bronowski, 1967.

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• To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Mean, Intelligent, Knowing

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• Progress is the exploration of our own error. Evolution is a consolidation of what have always begun as errors. And errors are of two kinds: errors that turn out to be true and errors that turn out to be false (which are most of them). But they both have the same character of being an imaginative speculation. I say all this because I want very much to talk about the human side of discovery and progress, and it seems to me terribly important to say this in an age in which most non-scientists are feeling a kind of loss of nerve.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Character, Loss, Two

  Jacob Bronowski (2008). “The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination”, p.84, Yale University Press

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• The most remarkable discovery ever made by scientists is science itself. The discovery must be compared in importance with the invention of cave-painting and of writing.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Science, Discovery, Scientist

  "The Creative Process". Scientific American 199:59, September 1958.

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• The act of imagination is the opening of the system so that it shows new connections. Every act of act of imagination is the discovery of likenesses between two things which were thought unlike. An example is Newton’s thinking of the likeness between the thrown apple and moon sailing majestically in the sky. Hence, the ‘discovery’ of the laws of gravity.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Moon, Thinking, Discovery

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• 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.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Original Thought, Humans, Originals

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• All science is the search for unity in hidden likenesses.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Unity

  Jacob Bronowski (2011). “Science and Human Values”, p.13, Faber & Faber

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• I set out to show that there exists single creative activity,which is displayed alike in the arts and in the sciences.It is wrong to think of science as a mechanical record of facts, and it is wrong to think of the arts as remote and private fancies. What makes each human, what makes them universal, is the stamp of the creative mind.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Art, Science, Thinking

  Jacob Bronowski (2011). “Science and Human Values”, p.23, Faber & Faber

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• The central opposition between magic and science is the opposition between power and knowledge.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Power, Magic, Opposition

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