Jacob Bronowski

In existographies, Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974) (CR:4) was Polish-born English mathematician and philosopher noted, in hmolscience, for []

Overview
In 1953, Bronowski gave three lectures at MIT themed on “science and human values”, published in book form in 1958 as Science and Human Values, the gist of which being the epiphany he felt when in 1945 he visited ground zero of Nagasaki, where 40,000 Japanese had been vaporized by the atomic bomb, and therein saw the “power of science for good and evil” as he characterized things. [3]

In 1969, Bronowski, in his “New Concepts in the Evolution of Complexity: Stratified Stability and Unbounded Plans”, the gist of which, according to Ralph Burhoe (1970), being that “chance fluctuations”, supposedly based on Prigogine, allow life to arise from the physics of non-life, in the context of the second law, or something to this affect; an attempt at a vitalism reconciliation, so to say. [4]

In 1970, Bronowski attended the AAAS Symposium on Science and Human Values, the title of which being named in reference to his 1956 Science and Human Values.

In 1973, Bronwski, in his The Ascent of Man documentary television series and accompanying book, asserted his views that biology and physics are run by different laws; the gist of which is as follows: [1]

“The living world is different because it is seen to be a world in movement. The creation is not static but changes in time in a way that physical processes do not. The physical world ten million years ago was the same as it is today, and its laws were the same. But the living world is not the same. Unlike physics, every generalization about biology is a slice of time; and it is evolution which is the real creator of originality and novelty in the universe.”

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Other
Bronowski, according to Paris Arnopoulos, supposedly, referred to man as a "social atom", but this logic seems contrary to his views; and secondary citations of this are difficult to confirm. [2]

Quotes | On

The following are quotes on Bronowski:

“For several decades, the search for adequate foundations on which a moral system could be constructed was directed toward the physical sciences. The assumption underlying these efforts was that the laws of physics represent the ‘foundations of nature’, and if—and what a huge if—human ethics should conform to natural requirements, then a set of weighty commandments could evolve from this study. Some of the better-known consequences of these considerations are the fine study of Bronowski [Science and Human Values, 1953] on the moral foundations of the whole structure of science and the famous attempt of Niels Bohr [Atomic Physics and Human Knowledge, 1958] to show that the principle of complementarity of atomic physics suffices for a new approach to human understanding and may serve as a basis for international complementary relations between contradictory cultures.”
— Aharon Katchalsky (1970), “Thermodynamics of Flow and Biological Organization” (pg. 100)

References
1. (a) Bronowski, Jacob. (1973). The Ascent of Man (pg. 309). British Broadcasting Corporation.
(b) Foley, Michael. (1990). Laws, Men and Machines: Modern American Government and the Appeal of Newtonian Mechanics (pg. 87). Routledge, 2014.
2. Arnopoulos, Paris. (2005). Sociophysics: Cosmos and Chaos in Nature and Culture (origin, pg. xxviii; thermodynamics, 17+ pgs; fermions or humans, pg. xIviii; thermics, pgs. 26-31). Nova Publishers.
3. Bronowski, Jacob. (1953). Science and Human Values. MIT lectures. Publisher, 1958.
4. (a) Bronowski, Jacob. (1969). “New Concepts in the Evolution of Complexity: Stratified Stability and Unbounded Plans” (Ѻ), AAAS meeting, Boston, Dec 27; Zygon 5:33, 1970.
(b) Burhoe, Ralph W. (1971). “Introduction to the Symposium on Science and Human Values” (abs)(Ѻ), Zygon, 6(2):82-98, Jun.

External links
● Jacob Bronowski – Wikipedia.