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Science and Human Values

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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)

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.

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.

Written in the aftermath of the Second World War, and inspired by the scenes of destruction at Nagasaki, Bronowski attempts to reconcile science, culture, values and the human condition in this well written and profound little book. Comprised of three lectures and a fictional interaction between an artist, a scientist and an establishment plitician (The Abacus and the Rose), the book outlines theintegral role that science has to play in creativity, develoment and cultural integration if we are to make thebest use of the knowledge coming from it in the new era of atomic power.

In a profound comparison betwen Rutherford and Rembrandt, Bronowski shows the parallels between the artist and the scientist - each attempting to creatively describe and convey the world as they see it through different, but related, media and methods.

Not an easy read, but a profound one, Bronowski provides an eloquent overview for science as an integral part of the human culture, values and condition on par with the arts and a framework to integrate and reconcile the apparent differences in the two positions.

I became interested in this title by attending a talk that included the likes of Harvard's Steven Pinker, who mentioned it in his address to the audience. Now that I have read it, I am amazed I had never heard of this book. This should be required reading in science classrooms at the high school level (if not even earlier) the world over. Bronowski makes a stirring case for science, as he wrote this in the 1950s when human society was faced with the crossroads, whether to continue down the path of progress aided by science, or to maintain the old society as driven by the mechanics of religion. He comes down firmly on the side of science, and in few cases (perhaps only from Christopher Hitchens of late) has such an impassioned plea for that discipline been put to paper or oratory. Pages of this book are quotable, and given the very anti-science rhetoric being tossed around political circles in the United States lately, are poignant admonishments to defend science against the forces of ignorance that seek to unseat it and place subjectivity and superstition in its stead. The book is a good and short read, and is separated into three parts, the third of which closes Bronowski's advocacy with an impassioned crescendo. The entire text is worthwhile though, and the author references history and philosophy often as he gives his perspective in relation to science.

This book should be on the shelf of every scientist and ardent skeptic. It's the kind of statement that needs to be heard much more often today, particularly when evolution is being attacked as conspiracy in the classroom, and children are falling treacherously behind in math and the sciences nationwide, stricken with disinterest in the type of hard work science requires.

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.

Before reading, I assumed J. Bronowski's Science and Human Values would be a work dealing with the opposition or harmony of scientific-technological progress and our social values. Instead, it examines science as a specific case of human activity and the definition of human values in general and specifically with regard to science.

Bronokowski begins by dispelling the "schoolboy" notion that science is a collection of "facts". It is instead a creative activity like art and philosophy in which concepts rule. Concepts are open to interpretation and development, and this is what happens in science.

The second essay in the book puts forward the position that all human values are like scientific values and subject to change and development. This is not only a theoretical possibility but an historical reality, as evidenced by the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and other political developments.

In the third essay, a theory of social values based on science is developed. "Value" is defined as a concept that both joins men in a society and lets them retain some individuality. In the scientific community values such as truthfulness and scholarship are what allow the scientific community to exist. Bronowski seems to say, then, that if we want a society that integrates science it must be a society that upholds scientific values, and science must support certain values in society in order to thrive.

That science should be the basis of society is not so much stated outright as assumed or implied. This is a work of pragmatism. Too bad Bronowski didn't realize that he assumes science is a collegial society. In fact, the scientific community today is predominated by concerns such as tenure, profit and grant security. It is extremely hierarchical, with the drawing together aspects of values much more prevalent than the individuating ones.

The last part of the book is a dialogue (a la Plato) on the same theme.

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.