Jacob Bronowski

Jacob Bronowski (January 18 1908, Lodz, Poland - August 22 1974, East Hampton, New York, USA) was the presenter of the BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man which inspired Carl Sagan's Cosmos series.

Bronowski was originally a poet; he became a physicist. After the Hiroshima bombing he became a biologist to better understand the nature of violence.

Table of contents

1 Books by Jacob Bronowski
2 Quotes
3 External links

Books by Jacob Bronowski

The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination
The Poet's Defence
William Blake and the Age of Revolution ISBN 07100727750710072783 (pbk.)
The Ascent of Man ISBN 0613124634
The Face of Violence
The Common Sense of Science
Science and Human Values
Insight
The Identity of Man
Nature and Knowledge: The Philosophy of Contemporary Science
William Blake, 1757-1827; a man without a mask

Quotes

"I grew up to be indifferent to the distinction between literature and science, which in my teens were simply two languages for experience that I learned together."

"Dissent is the mark of freedom"

"Sooner or later every one of us breathes an atom that has been breathed before by anyone you can think of who has lived before us-Michelangelo or George Washington or Moses."

"Sooner or later every one of us breathes an atom that has been breathed before by anyone you can think of who has lived before us—Michelangelo or George Washington or Moses."

"It is said that science will dehumanise people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. 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. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods."