Fleeing Poland after the Russian occupation during World War I, Bronowski’s
family moved to Germany and finally England, where Bronowski studied mathematics
at Cambridge University. After a firsthand view of the effects of the bombing at
Nagasaki, Bronowski concentrated his substantial knowledge of literature,
mathematics, and science on ethical issues in science. Bronowski is best known
for putting his exceptional ability to communicate issues in science and
philosophy to work in the BBC series The Ascent of Man.
Sites about Jacob Bronowski:
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This extensive biography traces Bronowski’s personal experiences and professional
achievements in both mathematics and literature, and includes well-placed
quotations from his writing.
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This particularly well-designed and well-organized site provides a biography of
Bronowski as well as cross-referenced links to “recollections” of Bronowski by
other scientists, philosophers, and writers.
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[To reach this excerpt, enter the site and scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Click the link “Excerpts from Published Works”]
The Jacob Bronowski page on Wikipedia (the free encyclopedia) includes a short
biography and some of Bronowski’s more famous quotes.
Read the poem at http://www.drbronowski.com/, included in Bronowski’s book
Spain 1939: Four Poems (1939). [To reach this poem, enter the site and click “The Poet’s Defense.” Then click the link for Spain 1939: Four Poems, which appears on the left margin of the page.] What is Bronowski saying about war and about science in this poem?
Read the excerpt from Bronowski’s book Science and Human Values (1956)
at http://www.drbronowski.com/. What
does Bronowski have to say about the popular notion of neutral science? How does
this mesh with your own conception of science? Consider some of the hot topics
in science today, and write about what human values are driving scientific
exploration.
Read through the Bronowski biography edited by Stephen Moss at
http://www.drbronowski.com/. How do
you think Bronowski worked to continually blur the line between science and
literature? What was his aim, and what influenced his desire to see science as
imaginative and creative?
Bronowski criticized those who would draw a hard line between science and
literature. Bronowski himself published poetry and a book on William Blake
called A Man without a Mask (1943). What other
connections can you make between scientific writing and literary prose? How does
one influence the other in some of the other works in
The Norton Reader—for example, in the writings by Aldo Leopold or John
Muir?