Science & Tech Quote by Jacob Bronowski

Bronowski refuses the usual flattering story we tell ourselves: that science and art are separate trophies proving human exceptionalism. He flips the premise. Our signature move isn’t the production of lab results or symphonies; it’s the mental “plasticity” that makes both possible, the capacity to reshape models of reality and then reshape ourselves in response.

The line works because it quietly levels two hierarchies at once. Science isn’t the cold, superior twin of art, and art isn’t the ineffable consolation prize. By calling them “equally” expressive, Bronowski smuggles in an ethical claim: the same mind that can generalize from evidence can also imagine alternatives, empathize, and play with form. Creativity is not a department; it’s the operating system.

The subtext is a warning against the kinds of intellectual tribalism that were hardening in the mid-20th century: C.P. Snow’s “two cultures,” technocracy dressing itself up as inevitability, and the postwar prestige of science sliding into scientism. Bronowski, a working scientist shaped by a century of industrialized violence and ideological certainty, is allergic to the idea that knowledge is only what can be measured. “Plasticity” is his antidote to dogma. It suggests that human greatness is also human vulnerability: the same malleable mind that builds explanations can be bent into propaganda.

Contextually, Bronowski’s broader project (especially in The Ascent of Man) was to humanize science without sentimentalizing it. This sentence is a manifesto for curiosity with humility: our gift isn’t being right; it’s being revisable.