Jacob Bronowski Quotes

1908–1974 Poland

Jacob Bronowski (January 18, 1908 – August 22, 1974) was a British mathematician, biologist, and science historian of Polish origin. He is remembered as the writer and presenter of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man.

Poland
Academics
Biologists
Mathematicians
Poets

Random Jacob Bronowski quote

88 quotes

The symbol and the metaphor are as necessary to science as to poetry.

Science and Human Values (1956)

Science, like art, is not a copy of nature but a re-creation of her.

Science and Human Values (1956)

Science is nothing else than the search to discover unity in the wild variety of nature — or more exactly, in the variety of our experience.

The God Particle (1993)

We are nature’s unique experiment to make the rational intelligence prove itself sounder than the reflex.

The Ascent of Man (1973)

In science and in art and in self-knowledge we explore and move constantly by turning to the world of sense to ask, Is this so?

Science and Human Values (1956)

This ability to order things into likes and unlikes is, I think, the foundation of human thought.

The Common Sense of Science (1951)

A good prediction is one which defines its area of uncertainty; a bad prediction ignores it.

The Common Sense of Science (1951)

There has never been a great book or a powerful work of art which has not been thought immoral by those with an older tradition.

The Common Sense of Science (1951)

The discoveries of science, the works of art are explorations — more, are explosions, of a hidden likeness.

Science and Human Values (1956)

Tolerance among scientists cannot be based on indifference, it must be based on respect.

Science and Human Values (1956)

The most remarkable discovery made by scientists is science itself.

Those who think that science is ethically neutral confuse the findings of science, which are, with the activity of science, which is not.

Science and Human Values (1956)

Science takes its coherence, its intellectual and imaginative strength together, from the concepts at which its laws cross, like knots in a mesh.

Science and Human Values (1956)

If any ideas have a claim to be called creative, because they have created something, then certainly it is the ideas of science.

The Common Sense of Science (1951)

Order is the selection of one set of appearances rather than another because it gives a better sense of the reality behind the appearances.

The Common Sense of Science (1951)

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

Science and Human Values (1956)

Unhappily, common sense has no recorded history.

The Common Sense of Science (1951)

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

Science and Human Values (1956)

We do not construct the world from our experiences; we are aware of the world in our experiences.

The Common Sense of Science (1951)

That is the essence of science: ask an impertinent question, and you are on the way to a pertinent answer.

The Ascent of Man (1973)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Jacob Bronowski (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.