Day at Night: Jacob Bronowski

James Day public television pioneer and chairman of the CUNY TV Advisory Board passed away in April 2008 his legacy includes the series day at night which aired for 130 episodes beginning in 1973 the program features interviews with many of the great thinkers and achievers of the 20th century these 30-year old programs have been restored the interviews remain fresh and relevant today exploring issues that are still important to society showing them again as CUNY TVs tribute to Jim and his contributions to public television dr. Jacob Bronowski may well be the nearest thing we have to Renaissance man he's a mathematician a poet historian playwright and a philosopher of science as well as an authority on the poetry of William Blake with one foot in the world of science and another in the world of the Arts he's been an outspoken critic of the idea of two cultures he sees science and the arts as two aspects interrelated indivisible of human culture and denies that science is mechanical and neutral a none concerned with human values urbanovsky is polish born Cambridge educated and since 1964 a senior fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological studies in California he's the author of 11 books the most recent of which is the ascent of man a history of science developed from his highly acclaimed 13-part television series for the BBC shown no less than three times in Britain and to be seen in this country for the first time this fall on public television dr. burn or sky as a mathematician how do you respond to those who say to you I suppose at dinner parties I never had a head for numbers I'm more interested in people I usually ask them a question about their mathematics teacher and invariably I suppose as a mathematician I should say cautiously almost it turns out that they disliked that teacher very much and I'm sure that teacher disliked them in short I'm confident that in most cases they were badly taught mathematics is not all that frightening then but some people are better at it than others and I can't run the mile in four minutes but there are lot of people who can it's not frightening it's not forbidding most people can do it quite well but most people are badly taught you've said that for you mathematics is pure a form of poetry that's in distinction from pros a great deal of science is pros in the sense that it describes the world but a great deal of mathematics and pure science in general is poetry in that it goes into depths which are at Babbo for their beauty not for their usefulness mathematics has beauty and not usefulness one thinks of mathematics only as a utilitarian kind of thing well I did 30 odd years mathematics and I don't suppose I proved a single useful film or with one exception I only proved let me change that with one exception none of the theorems that I proved could be said to be of any use except the tape over 30 to read by those who enjoyed that form of intellectual beauty there's a kind of language then and in this case a language of poetry let me create any permit random shall I compare thee to a summers day thou art more lovely and more temperate begins one of the latest sonnets of Shakespeare that's a statement that has no possible application it's moved hundreds of thousands no doubt millions of people it's expressed with an exacta to it which has all the hallmarks of mathematics that is thou art more lovely and more at Constance what comes next temperate why temperate the wonderful description alone for most of mathematics is like that you said that mathematics to you has always been visual I've always thought of mathematics of course there's adding up a column of figures to overdramatize of the point but I hadn't thought of mathematics as being visual I see you have been even worse taught the muster by dinner neighbors and did I have the beginning of mathematics certainly of mathematical proof in Greece in 6:50 century BC is entirely concerned with geometrical figures and their relations to numbers the oldest theorem that we know and the film that you certainly know the theorem of Pythagoras about the right-angled triangle is marvelous because it is able to relate the right angle which is a geometrical idea to the numbers which make up the triangle now it's that relation in the world which makes mathematics such a powerful tool because most of the time we don't want to know about numbers but about configurations that's particularly true today particularly now almost all scientific concepts are concepts of configuration let me give you a terribly in simple instance if you take an ordinary pencil and write with it it writes because the pencil lead rubs off on the page because the atoms on it are arranged in parallel layers and slide over one another those are carbon atoms there are exactly the same atoms as make up a diamond why by contrast is a diamond the hardest natural substance in the world because in the diamond the same carbon atoms are locked inner rings and interlocked in such a way that they become immovable that's what mathematics has to say about nature and that's why it is geometrical particularly in modern science is this the relationship then that science has to the arts because I know that you feel at that relationship does in fact exist you've just described a bit of science that comes very close to being art if not if it is not art but if you're talking about mathematics then it's all closely related to the arts indeed in England you can take mathematics as a university course either as an art subject or as a science subject in most universities for that reason yes indeed as soon as you're dealing with natural configurations the main interest of which is their interrelation the way they lock and knead together then you are in the field of the Arts you are looking for exactly the same thing that the arts are except that you are looking for it in impersonal nature instead of in personal relations the you said that both science and art are a search for the unity and hidden likenesses you've Illustrated this with with poetry but it's clear that you that in science it is not simply a recording of fact that imagination clearly from what you're saying plays a very large part in science as well as in the creation of poetry and then creation of graphic arts or whatever they will mark about unity and variety by the way I took from courage a parrot who took it from Pythagoras a mathematician where does fact and where does imagination begin well in a sense fact is what the world faces us with and it's chaotic we are surrounded in nature by a multitude of phenomena in which if order exists it certainly does not display itself it is when human beings enter into that that they ask themselves where is the trail through this chaos and the trail is called science if we are talking about inanimate nature but if we are talking about animate nature about living things and their personal relations then the trail is called literature drama or cinema but in each case what I the scientists view the reader get out of the film or the book is series of landmarks which say follow these steps and you will see that there is a hidden unity what I've called a trail in the variety of nature now finding that requires imagination that's not displayed for you in the open book of nature or in the hidden book of human words what is the core why does it require imagination wouldn't scientific analysis to use a cliche wouldn't that disclose the hidden trail in for example inanimate objects but you're employing a different part of the mind the imagination making guesses punches I wonder if I could use the analogy of personal relations that is animal nature before going on to inanimate nature most people understand their motives and those are people close to them pretty well but as soon as they begin to ask themselves what were the motives of Brutus in taking part in the murder of Julius Caesar what are the motives of Cleopatra in both encouraging Mark Antony and betraying him they come into an area of gap guesswork in which their growth they all bring some understanding to that but the reason why they prefer to read Rueda Caesar in Shakespeare or Antony and Cleopatra is that they become aware of the fact that not only is the language more beautiful but the analysis of motives that Shakespeare brings to it is immensely more powerful and rich you have a realization that you're not reading some reach me down psychoanalyst off Madison Avenue you're reading some plea to whom the motives of the heart are home such a person is a great imaginative artist he feels himself into the situation of others now translate that analogy to the men who first understood what makes a pencil right and the diamond heart rook people that I happen to know brand was Lourdes and William Greg the other was a Desmond Bernard one of them is still alive the other two are dead they were all wonderful people but their imaginative insight into the possibilities of nature the experiments which they then arranged to see which of their guesses was right and which was wrong that's what made them great scientists you were born at a time when science was really coming into its own in the early part of this century Einstein I guess had published his his theory of relativity what in nineteen five knew just before you were born as a matter of fact were you influenced by this in your early years to take up mathematics since I alternate live science or were you at all affected by what was happening I was influenced by the life of people I can shine in two ways both of them interesting in different ways first of all you're right in saying that my family and I were influenced by the great reputation that he and other scientists had by the time of the first world war to consider that a career in science was of a proper vocation for a poor ghetto boy to follow in that sense I became a scientist or I suppose much as you heard a man knew and became a violinist his father thought that there was a good living in it and moreover he had immense talent that's never supposed that you start with being able to make a living at it but then in my middle life another great event in which I understand was involved took place you see I was at Cambridge from 1927 to 1933 and that was a time of enormous advance in the new science for quantum physics that was very exciting for all of us but just towards the end of that period Hitler came to power in Germany and those of us like myself who in fact had not stayed behind in Germany I left Germany as a boy of 12 those of us who had only known as a distance that this threat was rising over Germany we were of course absolutely prostrate I at that time was editing an undergraduate magazine a literary magazine was at learning a literary magazine quite right and I felt that I and my fellow scientists had let Europe down I felt that for Germans to be able to say that I understand was some kind of monster on the one hand because he was Jewish and socialist and on the other hand because he wrote a kind of physics which was unacceptable to old-fashioned pan-german I thought that was a betrayal of the human spirit but I thought that that betrayal had been perpetrated not by people like Hitler who Romaniacs monomania and not even by the Germans who elected them it had been perpetrated by us who had failed to persuade the German nation that great human kindly men whose intellectual power was matched by their emotional depth were in science and Einstein was one of them everyone who knew I understand you that he was a marvelous personality for him to be portrayed as a kind of circumcised rat was ghastly so in 1933 for the first time I began to write about science for popular audiences that's over 40 years ago and in a way it's what brings me talking to you now because I've never given up though I would never even have thought of going into it had the terrible example of Hitler and understand not brought me up short I wanted to carry you a bit further back dr. Panofsky to the time when you first came to England you had been born in Russia or Poland what is now Poland but was then Russia is that right it was Russia and I was born his and then to Germany as you said at the time of World War one that's at the end of what the end of World War II at that time having spoken two languages at the age of 12 you came to your family moved to England fled Germany of course when you came to England and learned English for the first time that's right we didn't flee Germany we left Germany in 1920 because we were connected with people in England my parents had in fact been married in my maternal grandfather's house in London in 1907 and it was natural to Kody and after we had been caught in Germany for the war years and it is true that when I arrived in the spring of 1920 in London I could only speak two words of English I could say good afternoon which my parents taught me on the boat come here but you said it was fortunate that you took up the study of science and English at the same time very fortunate because it made science a language to me both estranged and yet as necessary as English in a phase that I have used before I learnt the war word for water and the formula for h2o Oh all of us at the same time now that seemed very normal and something else came out of that is the English is a wonderful language of all the European languages that I can stumblingly read or even that I can speak fluently it is the most precise the most well turned the least labored the one in which it's possible to make a simple statement with a simplicity so final that it goes straight through the brain to the heart well the science became the same language from the I never thought it's a taught difficult to say things in science if you could say the word in English and by country when I ran the party and young men began explaining to me what they were doing at great length I would say now stop for trip and dad said if you can't explain it in English then it's sure to be wrong when it's written in science you've said that when you came to London as a young boy of 12 you described yourself as a small Jew ex-russian ex-german and that this had its effect upon you in making you self dependent and independent of the help of others has it's been an effective effect upon you and in your work in science and literature I think I am rather insensitive to the opinions of other people in personal relations that's a handicap to me but in the relations to what I write what I publish what I do in science no it's been a great help to me because I'm always sure that the only person who knows whether it's right or wrong is me and if I don't think it's very good I'd better not publish it and if I do think it's good then to hell with what anybody else says are you a harsh judge upon your own work I think I am a fairly harsh judge that is I published slowly and I still have many works lying in files with which I'm not quite satisfied I think they're too long and particularly I think they're too long is yeah I think nearly everything that people write is too long all my books as you know with the exception of last book are very short so I think that yes I have been a fairly harsh judge I've been a very successful judge because you see I cannot think of any book of mine that was a great success in the year that was published but without exception all my books I have sowed better and in far more widely read ten years after they were published then in the which they were published and something of the same kind destroyed my scientifically they are remarkable because they are written in a language that non scientists can easily understand did you set about to do this at the point where you made the decision to write and talk about science to a larger audience that you spoke of earlier at the point where Hitler came to power no curious enough I didn't curious enough I had discovered my talent for exposition earlier and I come back to thinking that that talent arises from the fact that I learnt the language of science and the language of English together but it was because I had discovered that talent for exposition that after Hitler came to power I decided to put it to practical use yes what what interested you first in William Blake when did that interest begin and how well it's a bit curious and slightly lengthy story do you really want mr. turtle not perhaps you can tell us a short version of it I had read Blake of course as I read other English poets when I was an undergraduate I had not found his verse very exciting it had seemed to me vague somewhat mystical so when I wrote my first book which was called the poet's defense I did not include him my first book was very widely read and received by literary critics and discussed by them and I was naturally flattered by this attention who would not however I discovered at the end of being flattened with that talent for half self criticism to which you had drawn my attention that I hadn't changed anybody's mind that those who held a thesis similar to mine before they read the book still held it and those who held an opposite thesis still held it well after a year first Lord she reviews by all the literary evidences of England that was a disappointing result so I decided that my next book on poetry would be much more analytic and I decided therefore to go to a poet and to a period of history about which I had no prejudices of any kind by a chain of argument which I will spare you I was decided on the end of the 18th century which is the Industrial Revolution and the romantic revival combined and on brilliant black as its representative what led you to change your original opinion of William Blake greeting him and reading him closely seeing him in the setting of his time discovering that what people had said were references to the Bible and a vague mystical concept and to fantasies by Robert Fludd and other mysterious authors were nothing of the kind that most of the time Blake read the daily newspaper was deeply involved in the life of his times looked at the cartoons of kilauea and was embroiled in the politics of the years from 1776 - well at any rate - 1800 or so now there's politics I was very powerful because the first was the American Revolution and the second was the English revolution that's it iced revolution and the third was the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars and that's why read his my book but has been published in this country it's been called not as abyss court in England William Blake a man without a mask but William Blake and the age of revolutions do you find that what he said for his time is appropriate for our time it's exactly for that reason that I found him so fascinating and that people now do since I wrote my book 30 years ago he has of course become a favorite poet but not because I worried about it because everybody recognizes that he speaks from his age to ours that like every great bird what he says is eternal because it's timely in his time and wakes an echo in ours thank you very much you you

Channel: CUNY TV

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Keywords: dayatnight, cuny tv, james day, Jacob Bronowski, Day At Night

Id: PvUe94My8Wo

Length: 28min 21sec (1701 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 28 2011