My Humanist Hero: Jacob Bronowski

I have just submitted the following article for the BHA Humanist Heritage project which is being launched for Humanist Week which runs from 21st-28th June.

The Humanist, polymath and all round Renaissance man, Jacob Bronowski was born in Poland in 1908 to Jewish parents who moved to Germany during the first World War and then on to England in 1920. Bronowski won a scholarship to study Mathematics at Cambridge but was also involved with editing a literary periodical called “Experiment”. This was an early sign that he would be one of the extraordinary few thinkers to straddle the divide between the “two cultures” famously discussed by C.P. Snow in his 1959 lecture and paving the way to the “third culture”, a tradition continued by our current crop of Humanist grandees including Richard Dawkins and A.C. Grayling and by the British Humanist Association which is ending Humanist Week (21st – 28th June) with a conference on Humanism and the Arts, following last year’s conference on Humanism and Science. Bronowski’s interests ranged widely, from biology to poetry and from chess to Humanism, his commitment to which is evidenced in the following excerpt written in October 1968, the month of my birth:

The notion that a man shall judge for himself what he is told, sifting the evidence and weighing the conclusions, is of course implicit in the outlook of science. But it begins before that as a positive and active constituent of humanism. For evidently the notion implies not only that man is free to judge, but that he is able to judge. This is an assertion of confidence which goes back to a contemporary of Socrates, and claims (as Plato quotes him) that “man is the measure of all things”. In humanism, man is all things: he is both the expression and the master of the creation.[1]

Jacob Bronowski is best remembered for “The Ascent of Man”, a thirteen part TV series produced by the BBC in 1973, in which he explored the history of science and technology. It is said that it was this seminal TV series which inspired the late great American astronomer Carl Sagan to make his own documentary series, "Cosmos", which also inspired a generation of Humanists. Notwithstanding David Hume, Bronowski championed the idea that the ethical “ought” could be derived from the scientific exploration of what “is”[2]. A particularly poignant and moving part of the series was filmed at the Auschwitz concentration camp (search YouTube) and begins with the following:

"It's said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That's false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.”[3]

Bronowski taught mathematics at the University College Hull from 1934 to 1942. This might not be the best known fact about his life, but it is a salient one for me as Hull is my hometown. Surely Bronowski deserves recognition in any account of our local Humanist heritage. The economist Eric Roll who worked with Bronowski in Hull said of him:

"He was ... a warm and vibrant human being. Every encounter with him was a powerful tonic which left one feeling intellectually and emotionally stimulated and enhanced. He did not, however, suffer fools gladly and could be bitingly sardonic about human folly or about the glaring discrepancies so often to be found between public acclaim and true worth. But to his friends he was kind and affectionate, a companion whose gaiety and wit counterbalanced his serious approach to life."[4]

Given the stature and influence of Jacob Bronowski on the public understanding of science, it is perhaps surprising that his association with the city of Hull has not been honoured. Bronowski died in New York in 1974, a year after the completion of “The Ascent of Man”. Given this great Humanist’s legacy, I think that Jacob Bronowski deserves a commemorative plaque at the very least.

References:
[1] Science as a Humanistic Discipline, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, XXIV, no8, October 1968 (http://www.jstor.org/pss/1578078)
[2] Positivists and analysts alike believe that the words is and ought belong to different worlds, so that sentences which are constructed with is usually have verifiable meaning, but sentences constructed with ought never have.....The question of how man ought to behave is a social question, which always involves several people; and if he accepts no evidence and no judgment except his own, he has no tools with which to frame an answer.
"The Sense of Human Dignity”, part 3 (p. 56)
(Wikiquote: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jacob_Bronowski)
[3] The Ascent of Man, BBC, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mIfatdNqBA
[4] http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Bronowski.html

Humanism, Politics and The Blank Pamphlet

This has been a bad election for Humanists. Two prominent members of the 110 strong All Party Parliamentary Humanist Group (secretary of the group Paul Holmes and Evan Harris pictured above) lost their seats. Dr Evan Harris, a medical doctor, is particularly well known as an advocate of science and secularism. Unfortunately he lost his Oxford seat by a few hundred votes. I can only hope that he can find some way to continue being a strong advocate for Humanism in some other way. Indeed, Dr Harris is going to be a speaker at the upcoming Enquiry Conference in Birmingham in June, along with other notable Humanists such as A.C. Grayling and Andrew Copson.

I find it puzzling that I still come across the perception of Humanists depicted in the cartoon above. The assumption is that Humanism is like a religion with no core beliefs and values. Most Humanists don’t want to go door-to-door Jehovah’s Witness style to talk about their beliefs (though you will find the odd person who does). The truth is that we Humanists have very definite ideas about the open society, democracy, ethics, secularism, free speech, human rights and the value of science and education, even when we differ on other views such as taxation or the desirable size of government, which is why there are Humanists in most of the major parties (UKIP, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour and Green). We have plenty of pamphlets and books and they are not blank, but our ideas are not dogmatic. Humanism is more of a method, involving the weighing of evidence when deciding on any matter. It’s about asking the question, “What sort of reasons do you have for holding the position you hold” or “What evidence is there that what you say is true”. It is a rejection of arguments based on authority or faith. It promotes engagement with political life through democratic processes; it does not dictate any party political allegiance.

Euthyphro

This is the transcript of my 2 minute Pause for Thought on BBC Radio Humberside on Sunday 25th April 2010:

On what basis do people decide what is good and what is bad? Many people think that our ideas about justice, goodness and the right way to live can only have come to us through the commandments of an almighty and perfectly good God. In 380 BC, the philosopher Plato wrote a dialogue called Euthyphro which highlights a problem with this way of looking at things. In the dialogue, Plato’s teacher Socrates asks his friend Euthyphro this question. “Is that which the gods love good because they love it, or do they love it because it is good?” If the former is true, then the gods could choose to love anything they want, whether or not we humans would consider it good. A god could decide that something we think of as bad was good and vice versa. Alternatively, if the gods love the good simply because it is good, then what is good and bad must exist independently of any God. So whether there is or is not a God, I don’t think that believing in God or following the teachings of ancient scripture can absolve us of the responsibility of deciding which values and ideas are going to govern our lives. I think we have to discern these values using experience and an understanding of human nature, and whatever creed you believe in, deciding what is good and true is ultimately a judgement you make yourself. The fact that we have decided to think one thing or another does not necessarily make us right, but carefully thinking about our actions and there likely consequences has to be a better foundation for the good life than blindly following the rules laid down in ages past by people whose understanding of life was limited.

Democracy

This is the transcript of my 2 minute Pause for Thought on BBC Radio Humberside on 16th April 2010:

Franklin D. Roosevelt once said “Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves – and the only way they can do that is by not voting”. The general election is almost upon us and for the first time in five years, each of us will have the opportunity to cast our vote to decide the next government of our country. Recent decades have seen a sharp fall in the number of people exercising their democratic right to vote in elections. Voter turnout reached a peak in the 1950 general election where 82% of those eligible to vote did so, but by 2001 only 59% voted. The greatest decrease is in the number of young people participating in the electoral process. What are the reasons for this and should we be worried? Some might say that British people are increasingly content with their lives and the society they live in and don’t really care which of the major political parties forms a government. Others might suggest disillusionment with politicians fuelled by recent media stories about expense claims, but the decline had set in long before these stories surfaced. Perhaps people are too busy to vote, but busy doing what? Many people are more likely to vote for contestants on the X-Factor or Dancing on Ice than to vote in a general election. Some people think that their vote will make no difference to the outcome – they are just wrong. Winston Churchill said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms of government that have been tried. Democracy does not exist everywhere in our world and I don’t think we should take it for granted. It is a precious defence against those who would seek to curtail our freedoms or deprive us of our rights.

Religion and Morality

This is the transcript of my 2 minute Pause for Thought on BBC Radio Humberside on 15th April 2010:

Albert Einstein once said that a person's ethical behaviour should be based on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs and that no religious basis is necessary. He went on to say “Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.” I have sometimes met people who say that in order to lead a good and moral life it is necessary to believe in God, to say your prayers and to be religious. Is there a link between morally good behaviour and being religious? I would like you to try to think of an ethical statement or a moral action performed by a religious person that could not have been performed by someone without a religious faith. I doubt if you could think of anything. Now try to think of a wicked thing said or an evil action performed that has been done specifically in the name of religious faith. I’m sure that you can think of at least one example. Do the religious authorities in our world have any special insight in to right and wrong? Reading the newspapers it seems increasingly difficult to think so. It seems to me that the idea of morality has been hijacked by religion. I think that reason, experience and shared human values are a better guide to a good life than ancient holy books and traditions based on a pre-scientific understanding of the universe. Kindness, generosity, goodness and justice do not depend on a belief in the supernatural. I agree with the Nobel Prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg who said “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion”.

The Human Genome Project

This is the transcript of my 2 minute Pause for Thought on BBC Radio Humberside on 14th April 2010:

It was seven years ago today that an international consortium of scientists announced to the world that they had completed work on what many regard as the greatest scientific project of all time. This was the completion of the Human Genome Project which involved the complete mapping of the twenty-three thousand genes of a human being. We are already seeing advances in medicine as a direct result of the project, such as the identification of genes associated with diabetes, autism and breast cancer. Ultimately the therapies and treatments that will be developed have the potential to reduce human suffering and unhappiness on an unprecedented scale. One of the things genetics has taught us is how closely related humans are to other animals, sharing 98 per cent of our genes with our closest ape relatives. We have come a long way since great thinkers such Michael Servetus who was the first European to describe the circulation of the blood and Giordano Bruno who first suggested the possibility of life on other planets were burnt at the stake for heresy in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. There is reason to hope that the human race is just at the beginning of the scientific understanding of our world yet to a significant extent we are still wedded to the superstitious beliefs and practices of the ancient world, which hold us back and can exacerbate or even cause the harms that threaten our existence. I think that the time has come for our society to put away childish things and to embrace the world that science has revealed to us, rather than persist with the dogmatic certainties of ancient faiths. The great thing about science is that if a theory is shown to be false, it is discarded and replaced by a better idea. If only the same could be said for all of our discourse.

Faith Schools

This is the transcipt of my 2 minute Pause for Thought broadcast on BBC Radio Humberside on 13th March 2010:

About a third of state schools in the UK are “Faith Schools” or “schools with a religious character”. The number of Faith Schools is increasing and many people think that this is a good thing but I am not one of them. I would like to see more community schools with good discipline, high academic standards and a positive ethos, though not an ethos that assumes a commitment to religious dogma. We need schools where children are taught to think critically. In 2008 the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said that “in our increasingly multi-faith and secular society it is hard to see why our taxes should be used to fund schools which discriminate against the majority of children and potential staff because they are not of the same faith". This September sees the opening of a new private faith school in Hull which is being set up with the intention of teaching children a literal interpretation of the Bible, complete with Adam, Eve and the apple and talking about God will be an integral part of all subjects. The website quotes Proverbs 22 , verse 6, “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it”. That’s what worries me. Of course, in an open, pluralist and multi-cultural society such as ours, the state should promote tolerance and recognition of different values and beliefs, but is separating children according to the religious or in my case lack of religious beliefs of their parents the best way to create social harmony and cohesion? Just think of the history of Northern Ireland. I agree with Dr Jonathan Romain, the Rabbi of Maidenhead Synagogue who said “I want my children to go to a school where they can sit next to a Christian, play football in the break with a Muslim, do homework with a Hindu and walk back with an atheist ... Schools should build bridges, not erect barriers.”