JACOB BRONOWSKI The Tragedy of Mankind

This is a world run by specialists: is not that what we mean by a scientific society No, it is not. A scientific society is one in which specialists can indeed do the things like making the electric light work. But it is you, it is I, who have to know how nature works, and how electricity is one of her expressions in the light and in my brain. And we are really here on a wonderful threshold of knowledge. The ascent of man is always teetering in the balance. There is always a sense of uncertainty, whether when man lifts his foot for the next step it is really going to come down ahead. And what is ahead for us At last the bringing together of all that we have learned, in physics and in biology, towards an understanding of where we have come: what man is. Knowledge is not a looseleaf notebook of facts. Above all, it is a responsibility for the integrity of what we are, above all of what we are as ethical creatures. You cannot possibly maintain that if you let other people run the world for you w