Jacob Bronowski's Science

Jacob Bronowski identified a modern myth whose origins, he claimed, could be traced to the Industrial Revolution: the fear that man was becoming, ever more swiftly, a machine at the hands of modern science. When Bronowski entered the culture wars of the mid-twentieth century, sparked by C.P. Snow’s 1959 lecture, The Two Cultures—addressing the breakdown in communication between scientists and literary intellectuals — he wanted to expose this myth, dispel false and antiquated notions of science, and illuminate the human being’s unique position in the natural world. His series of essays, The Identity of Man, is a valiant attempt to humanize science, and simultaneously, to popularize it. Only by discerning, as Bronowski believed, the inextricable relationship between science and the arts — by recovering the integrity of science — could one begin to appreciate man’s extraordinary, albeit material, nature. Unlike Snow’s treatise, whose political agenda bears the marks of Cold War anxieties and personal antipathies, Bronowski’s essays constitute a total philosophy of modern life, whereby a sound education in humanistic science is the basis for self-affirmation and the preservation of citizenship and democracy.

O humanitas!

Who will save the humanities? Who will protect them? O humanitas, thou art not safe in these perilous times. The black clouds of economic recession loom over you, the chill winds of cynicism lash you, the once-firm ground of patronage quakes beneath your feet. Who will fight against the university presidents, slashing you with their gilt machetes in the interest of cutting costs? Who will lift you up after legions of computer science and business majors ride roughshod over you? Who will lead the charge into the land of the philistines?

O humanitas, in their eyes you are currency without value, the preserve of academics and armchair philosophers, neither of them able to generate any real lucre. For that you are politely acknowledged, but privately reviled, shunted off, and forgotten -- that is, when you aren't being dragged along to cocktail parties to make cultural capital of your venerable traditions.

Gerard Manley Hopkins quietly lamented,

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.