Word: bronowsky
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Steeped in the common-sense science of the Victorian Age, the public thinks of scientists as dangerous warlocks. "The popular picture of the scientist," says Bronowski, "lends itself to the basic totalitarian tricks which exploit the insecurity of the ignorant: an awe of the specialist, a hidden hatred of him, and a cleft between his way of thinking and theirs...
...Britain's Political Quarterly, Dr. Jacob Bronowski, of the British National Coal Board, tries to explain why scientists are viewed with suspicion by most nonscientists. "The scientist," says Bronowski, "is not only disliked, but also distrusted." Governments treat the scientist as "indispensable, but unreliable, a hangdog hangman who has the bad manners to be good at war work and the impertinence to find it distasteful. The public thinks that he has no conscience, and his security officer fears that he has two consciences . . . He is unhappy between his scientific creed and his social loyalty: between, that is, the long...
...recent issue of Britain's Nature, Dr. J. Bronowski of the Central Research Establishment of the National Coal Board takes issue with Dr. Shannon. A chess-playing computer, he says, could be made to learn by experience just as a human being does. It could be given a memory of unlimited capacity. It could remember each move in all the games it had played. By classifying moves, it could determine which were most successful in each chess situation. It could even classify its opponents by the character of their moves. Eventually, says Bronowski, when the computer's memory...
What would happen if two experienced chess machines played one another? The more experienced machine, thinks Bronowski, would always win. "In human life," he says, "maturity is always offset by loss of other powers. The machine, on the other hand, will become more and more experienced but will never lose any other faculties. That is the real difference between the human being and the machine in these circumstances. The machine can mature without growing old, getting better and better. So in this case, the most mature machine will always win, provided, of course, there is no mechanical failure. All good...