Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Selected by Piero E. Ariotti in collaboration with Rita Bronowski

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (p. vii)
• Acknowledgments (p. ix)
• The Nature of Art (p. 1)
• The Imaginative Mind in Art (p. 6)
• The Imaginative Mind in Science (p. 20)
• The Shape of Things (p. 33)
• Architecture as a Science and Architecture as an Art (p. 45)
• Art as a Mode of Knowledge (The A. W. Mellon Lectures in Fine Arts for 1969)
• 1 The Power of Artifacts (p. 59)
• 2 The Speaking Eye, The Visionary Ear (p. 75)
• 3 Music, Metaphor, and Meaning (p. 93)
• 4 The Act of Recognition (p. 114)
• 5 Imagination as Plan and as Experiment (p. 133)
• 6 The Play of Values in the Work of Art (p. 153)
• Index (p. 179)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

The posthumous Bronowski industry continues to thrive and we can be grateful. These particular essays concern the creative forces which shape both art and science--a favorite Bronowski theme paralleled in his life. Bronowski the mathematician was also a Blake authority. While at Cambridge he and classmate William Empson edited a literary magazine called Experiment, and throughout his life Bronowski wrote poetry and plays which, if not brilliant, contribute to his polymath reputation. The main point of the writings here is that in creative works, whether in the arts or in science, the creator is conveying knowledge through imagery. (For Bronowski, imagination is essentially ""image-making"" and a specifically human faculty.) Our response to art must be a re-creation which liberates us; we recognize something hitherto unperceived, something which changes and enriches us or points a new direction. Our experience of the work is also bound up with values. Creative work enables us to cross the divide separating man from man, showing us our humanness and at the same time providing a key to the universe within us. None of these ideas is new or unique. Bronowski's aesthetics has something of Pound's ""Make it new"" and something of the dynamics of existentialism. It is a wedding of style and content in which ""Beauty is the byproduct of interest and pleasure in the choice of action."" What makes Bronowski's formulations exciting are the wide range of example and information, the wit, and the clarity. This is a man who says life ""has no unique and final solution"" and one who clearly followed his own dictum that ""you must always feel that you are exploring the values by which you live and forming them with every step you take."" Bronowski did just that--with style. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Born in Poland, Jacob Bronowski moved to England at the age of 12. He received a scholarship to study mathematics at Cambridge University, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1933. At Cambridge, Bronowski edited a literary magazine and wrote verse. He served as lecturer at University College in Hull before joining the government service in 1942.

During World War II Bronowski participated in military research. He pioneered developments in operations research, which enhanced the effectiveness of Allied bombing raids. After viewing the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, Bronowski refused to continue military research and became involved with the ethical and technological issues related to science. When he wrote a report on the devastating effects of the atomic bomb, the experience became critical to his career as an author. The report was eventually incorporated in his book Science and Human Values (1965).

After World War II Bronowski joined the Ministry of Works, assuming several government posts concerned with research in power resources. In 1964 he came to the United States and served as senior fellow (1964-70) and then director (1970-74) of the Council for Biology in Human Affairs at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. He taught and lectured at several American universities, including MIT, Columbia University, and Yale. Until his death, Bronowski remained a resident fellow at the Salk Institute.

Bronowski's writing career can be divided into two periods. Prior to World War II, he wrote mathematical papers, poetry, and literary criticism. After the war, Bronowski wrote mainly about scientific values, science as a humanistic enterprise, language, and creativity. In 1973 Bronowski's acclaimed 13-part BBC television series titled The Ascent of Man chronicled attempts to understand and control nature from antiquity to the present. The series called for a democracy of intellect in which "knowledge sits in the homes and heads of people with no ambition to control others, and not up in the isolated seats of power."

Neither naive nor utopian, Bronowski remained a consistent optimist and defender of science. In A Sense of the Future (1977), Bronowski states that, as science becomes increasingly preoccupied with relations and arrangement, it too becomes engaged in the search for structure that typifies modern art. He believed that self-knowledge brings together the experience of the arts and the explanations of science.

(Bowker Author Biography)