"We are all afraid for our confidence, for the future, for the world. That is the nature of the human imagination. Yet every man, every civilization, has gone forward because of its engagement with what it has set itself to do"
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Fear is the baseline setting of an intelligent species: the mind runs simulations, and most of them end badly. Bronowski, a scientist who made his public name translating research into moral stakes, starts by admitting that “confidence” is as vulnerable as the world itself. The phrasing is quietly bracing: we’re not simply afraid of external threats; we’re afraid for the inner tool we need to meet them. Anxiety, here, isn’t a personal failing. It’s a feature of imagination, the same cognitive engine that invents both catastrophe and cure.
Then he pivots to the real argument, and it’s aimed at a mid-20th-century audience living with the bomb, bureaucratic mass death still in memory, and “progress” newly suspect. “Yet” doesn’t dismiss fear; it reframes it as the condition under which history moves. The line “every man, every civilization” deliberately stretches from individual psychology to collective destiny, implying continuity between a person choosing purpose and a society choosing a project. That’s Bronowski’s humanism: science not as cold method, but as a disciplined engagement with uncertainty.
The key word is “engagement.” He’s not promising optimism, and he’s certainly not selling inevitability. He’s describing a posture: to go forward is to commit to work despite incomplete knowledge, to accept risk without surrendering to it. The subtext is an ethical rebuke to paralysis and fatalism. In an era when imagination could annihilate cities, Bronowski insists it can also anchor responsibility - if it’s tethered to what we “set” ourselves to do. Purpose becomes the antidote to dread, not by erasing it, but by outworking it.
Then he pivots to the real argument, and it’s aimed at a mid-20th-century audience living with the bomb, bureaucratic mass death still in memory, and “progress” newly suspect. “Yet” doesn’t dismiss fear; it reframes it as the condition under which history moves. The line “every man, every civilization” deliberately stretches from individual psychology to collective destiny, implying continuity between a person choosing purpose and a society choosing a project. That’s Bronowski’s humanism: science not as cold method, but as a disciplined engagement with uncertainty.
The key word is “engagement.” He’s not promising optimism, and he’s certainly not selling inevitability. He’s describing a posture: to go forward is to commit to work despite incomplete knowledge, to accept risk without surrendering to it. The subtext is an ethical rebuke to paralysis and fatalism. In an era when imagination could annihilate cities, Bronowski insists it can also anchor responsibility - if it’s tethered to what we “set” ourselves to do. Purpose becomes the antidote to dread, not by erasing it, but by outworking it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Perseverance |
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