"A gem of enlightenment. . . . One rejoices in Bronowski's dedication to the identity of acts of creativity and of imagination, whether in Blake or Yeats or Einstein or Heisenberg."--Kirkus Reviews
"According to Bronowski, our account of the world is dictated by our biology: how we perceive, imagine, symbolize, etc. He proposes to explain how we receive and translate our experience of the world so that we achieve knowledge. He examines the mechanisms of our perception; the origin and nature of natural language; formal systems and scientific discourse; and how science, as a...

Science has called into question many traditional assumptions about human nature. In the age of the human genome project, this truism is even more obvious than it was in 1965, when scientist and historian of ideas Jacob Bronowski first delivered the lectures upon which this book is based. Has science revealed that we are essentially just complex machines? Or is human identity more than the sum of its parts?
With his gift for conveying the excitement of ideas, Bronowski discusses the impact of science on our sense of self and the need to re-evaluate ethics in light of the scientific...

Thought-provoking essays on science as an integral part of the culture of our age from a leader in the scientific humanism movement. "A profoundly moving, brilliantly perceptive essay by a truly civilized man."--Scientific American