Synopses & Reviews
J. Bronowski was both a distinguished mathematician and a poet, a philosopher of science and a literary critic who wrote a well-known study of William Blake. Dr. Bronowski's very career was founded on the premise of an intimate connection between science and the humanities, disciplines which are still generally thought to be worlds apart. The Common Sense of Science, a book which remains as topical today as it was when it first appeared twenty-five years ago, articulates and develops Bronowski's provocative idea that the sciences and the arts fundamentally share the same imaginative vision.
Review
[Dr. Bronowski] has packed more thought, more idealism, and more uncommon sense then have probably ever before appeared between book covers in anywhere near so small a compass. The Common Sense of Science is at once a brief history of science from the time of Isaac Newton to the time of Albert Einstein; a guide to the relation of science (pure as well as applied) to our thinking, our ordinary lives, and ourselves; and a moving appeal for mutual understanding between science and general culture. The Humanist
Review
This sensitive, searching book is concerned with the nature of science and the relation of its central creative ideas to other human activities... [The Common Sense of Science], like a fine glass of brandy, is a rich and satisfying distillment. Scientific American
Table of Contents
- 1. Science and Sensibility
- 2. The Scientific Revolution and the Machine
- 3. Isaac Newton’s Model
- 4. The Eighteenth Century and the Idea of Order
- 5. The Nineteenth Century and the Idea of Causes
- 6. The Idea of Chance
- 7. The Common Sense of Science
- 8. Truth and Value
- 9. Science, the Destroyer or Creator