Science and Human Values

by Jacob Bronowski

Book Overview

From the picket lines of industrial conflict and the occupied ground of Maori land-rights campaigns to the stormy skirmishes of women's liberation and disputed histories of the New Zealand Wars, this discussion describes how documentary filmmakers have helped forge a sense of national identity among native New Zealanders. The evocation maintains that these dedicated documentarians have also carried on preserving the work of the country's artists,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061305057
• ISBN13: 9780061305054
• Release Date: March 1988
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A great buy

It is easy today to get depressed about mankind. Bronowski demonstrates that there is hope for us yet. He also demonstrates that we, perhaps know more and are capable of more than we thought.

A profound meditation on the human condition

This is a small but profound work. The three chapters" 'The Creative Mind' 'The Habit of Truth' ' The Sense of Human Dignity' taken together constitute an argument against modern positivistic philosophy and logical analysis regarding the absolute separation of 'is' from 'ought'. As Bronowski understands it the sense of values pervades and in a sense brings together the major realms of creative life. The special values of Science itself are for Bronowski 'independence and originality, dissent and freedom and tolerance; such are the first needs of science; and these are the values, which , of itself, it demands and forms." Yet Bronowski also strongly emphasizes the evidence- based nature of Science in its search for Truth. And he speaks of the process of its development ," the view that our concepts are built up from experience, and have constantly to be tested and corrected in experience." Here is the great distinguishing feature of Science not only its quest for truth but in its power to transform the world. What Bronowski does in another sense is cut across the 'Two Cultures' divide posited by C.P. Snow. A person of both literary and scientific background himself he finds that ' the exploration of likenesses' through symbolic concepts define creativity both in literary and in scientific realms. Bronowski is in a very deep sense a humanist who defines and dignity of mankind in its search to understand and transform the world. There is much to be thought and said about this very important book.

The Habit of Truth Leads to God

This was required reading for me in a required Social Sciences survey course required for my B.Sc. in chemistry over forty years ago (I hold an earned Ph.D. in chemistry in additon to a later acquired law degree). I still regard it as one of the most influential books in my life. I understand the essays in this small book to be a critical examination of various scientific philosophies. However what I found to be most illuminating was Bronowski's study of values in a scientist's search for truth; how the values necessary to enable the search for scientific truth in the cooperative enterprise of science are human values ratified by the great religions of the world. What this meant to me as a callow (at that time) intellectual who was more of an agnostic than an atheist at that point in my life was that many of the value systems espoused and shared by the great religions were independently derivable by the values necessary to succeed in the quest for "truth." This resonanted with me personally more than any thundering proselytizer in a church pulpit and my faith began to grow. This is a small book to have such a large effect and it is worth reading for many reasons - some well elaborated by other reviewers. I think Dr. Bronowski would be pleased with its effect on me.

Science and Human Values - a call to Holism

While Bronowski's book, Science and Human Values is often lauded as a critique of logical positivism, I found it to be much more than just that. Bronowski launches a critique on a more pervasive foundation of western philosophy, that of dualism. Bronowski seeks to reduce the dualistic view that somehow science and technology are antithetical to the human spirit. The book is constructed as an extended essay consisting of three distinct, though closely related arguments: a) The Creative Mind - an argument that the human mind operates creatively whether engaged in logical constructivist activities or in more subjective expressions of thought. In short, Bronowski argues here that the Poet and the Physicist have much more in common than we allow ourselves to believe. b) The Habit of Truth - an argument that both the right (creative) and left (analytic) sides of the brain are doing the same thing, seeking truth, in the generative process. c) The Sense of Human Dignity - an argument that the objective exploration of science and technology are just as "human" as the quest for introspective or subjective understanding of the human condition. Epilogue) The volume also contains an interesting fictional dialogue titled The Abacus and the Rose, held between a public servant, a scientist and a literary figure regarding the nature of their thought processes. Bronowski emphasizes the notion that the outcomes of science and technology are mere tools and artifacts, it is the spirit and creative energy behind them form the basis for human values and ideals. For Bronowski human values are what drive scientific discovery just as they drive public policy or artistic creativity. We get into trouble when we try and separate these ventures from human values, and thus confuse means and ends. In this way Bronowski offers a compelling argument that is less a critique of positivism than a call for a more holistic vision of human development and the creative spirit. The essay is well written and easy to follow and provides some solid insight on the ever more difficult task of linking scientific and technological progress with human value systems. "Whether our work is art or science or the daily work of society, it is only the form in which we explore our experience which is different; the need to explore remains the same." (Bronowski, 1965, p. 72)

Science & Human Values as a Critique of Logical Positivism

Bronowski's "Science & Human Values" should be purchased with A.J. Ayer's "Language, Truth & Logic" --the quintessential explanation of the "verifibility criterion of meaning". Just as the Russell/Whitehead "Principia Mathematica" sought to ground mathematics upon a foundation of pure logic, the "verifibility criterion of meaning" sought to provide an empirical basis for all scientific enquiry. However, the inescapable conclusion is that ethical imperatives (sentences containing the word "ought" or its equivalent) are non-sensical. However logical, this position may be untenable from a practical standpoint. Jacob Bronowski's crtique of the "logical positivist" position in his "Science and Human Values" pointed out an underlying social injunction implied in the positivist and analyst methods. That implied imperative is: "we OUGHT to act in such a way that what IS true can be verified to be so". Ironically, Bronowski's critique may have saved logical positivism from its own inflexible consistency, placing its edifice not upon an unassailable axiom but rather upon an "ought statement" which will not admit of proof by the very method which is its logical offspring.