The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination [antikvár]

FOREWORD A physiologist friend of mine once recounted how, as a refugee from Germany studying in a British country school during World War II, he was cruelly teased for his book-ishness and Jewishness by the schoolmates, until a sudden change took place. One evening the students were taken to a neighboring town for a public lecture on science in the modern world, and from then on the students treated their refugee colleague with a new respect. The lecturer who in one hour had made both culture and Jewishness respectable and even glamorous to his youthful audience was Jacob Bronowski. I choose this anecdote because it illustrates one aspect of Bronowski's protean personality, his role as educator, a role that throughout his life he performed not so much in the classroom as in a variety of other situations: in his stimulating conversation, fed by an immense store of knowledge; in his scholarly lectures in which he always strove, as he put it, to reveal "the hidden likeness in diversity"; and finally in his approach to the mass audience in the monumental achievement of "The Ascent of Man."