Jacob Bronowski: Messianic Pragmatist :George Steiner
Jacob Bronowski was a stellar mathematician. He applied his gift to technology. Smokeless fuel was, in significant part, his achievement. In his later years, he turned to evolutionary biology and ecology. At the same time, he was steeped in poetry. His considerations on Leonardo, his study of Blake - William Blake and the Age of Revolution - retain their authority. It was this passionate range which made of his ‘Ascent of Man’ a media-event as yet unsurpassed.
Above all, Bronowski strove to make science and technology answerable to social progress, to ‘human values’. He anticipated the deepening gap between the ‘two cultures’ and knew that the sciences must be restored to a place in political common sense. He was that rarest of advocates, a messianic pragmatist. It is that which gives his books their bracing actuality.
- Related Authors:
- Jacob Bronowski; George Steiner
