“The ability… to experiment with imaginary situations, gives man a freedom… the pleasure in trying out and exploring imaginary situations. A child's play is concerned with this pleasure; and so is much of art, and much of science… [P]ure science… is a form of play, in this sense.”

— Jacob Bronowski

"The Imaginative Mind in Art" (1978)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The ability… to experiment with imaginary situations, gives man a freedom… the pleasure in trying out and exploring ima…" by Jacob Bronowski?

Jacob Bronowski 79

Polish-born British mathematician 1908–1974

Related quotes

“Some of them defined ideology as an imaginary relationship to a real situation.”

Kim Stanley Robinson (1952) American science fiction writer

Source: Red Mars (1992), Chapter 6, “Guns Under the Table” (p. 460)

“Joseph was correct when he spoke of entities creating stages upon which to act out their problems. The point is that once the play begins, the actors are so completely engrossed in their roles that they forget that they themselves wrote the play, constructed the sets or are even acting. The reason is rather apparent: If you know that a situation is 'imaginary,' you are not going to come to grips with it.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 184, quoting from Seth Session 31

“Out of the shadow of the abstract man, who thinks for the pleasure of thinking, emerges the organic man, who thinks because of a vital imbalance, and who is beyond science and art.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

“In science and in art and in self-knowledge we explore and move constantly by turning to the world of sense to ask, Is this so?”

Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974) Polish-born British mathematician

Part 2: "The Habit of Truth", §11 (p. 45–46)
Science and Human Values (1956, 1965)
Context: In effect what Luther said in 1517 was that we may appeal to a demonstrable work of God, the Bible, to override any established authority. The Scientific Revolution begins when Nicolaus Copernicus implied the bolder proposition that there is another work of God to which we may appeal even beyond this: the great work of nature. No absolute statement is allowed to be out of reach of the test, that its consequence must conform to the facts of nature.
The habit of testing and correcting the concept by its consequences in experience has been the spring within the movement of our civilization ever since. In science and in art and in self-knowledge we explore and move constantly by turning to the world of sense to ask, Is this so? This is the habit of truth, always minute yet always urgent, which for four hundred years has entered every action of ours; and has made our society and the value it sets on man.

“I give so much pleasure to so many people. Why can I not get some pleasure for myself?”

John Belushi (1949–1982) American comedian, actor, and musician

Quoted in: Robert Andrews (2003), The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations. p. 144

“The play-it-safe pessimists of the world never accomplish much of anything, because they don't look clearly and objectively at situations, they don't recognize or believe in their own abilities to overcome even the smallest amount of risk.”

Benjamin Hoff book The Tao of Pooh

Source: The Tao of Pooh

“I got offended on behalf of my imaginary kids. [...] My children are not gonna be playing out on grass. They will be up in their rooms playing violent video games and catfishing pedophiles.”

John Mulaney (1982) American actor and comedian

The Comeback Kid (2015)

“The irruption of the supernatural into our world is a much more enticing notion to explore than the same thing happening in some past time, or in a wholly imaginary world.”

Elizabeth Hand (1957) American writer

Strange Horizons interview (2004)
Context: Faeries might have been wandering around in Victorian England. I can believe that. But it is a more difficult thing to think that they might be wandering around Camden Town now.
It is more of a jump, but I find that more interesting in many ways. The irruption of the supernatural into our world is a much more enticing notion to explore than the same thing happening in some past time, or in a wholly imaginary world.

“As opposed to science ideology has the precise function of hiding the real contradictions and of reconstituting on an imaginary level a relatively coherent discourse which serves as the horizon of agents' experience.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

Source: 1990s, Ideology (1991), p. 136

“People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“The ability… to experiment with imaginary situations, gives man a freedom… the pleasure in trying out and exploring imaginary situations. A child's play is concerned with this pleasure; and so is much of art, and much of science… [P]ure science… is a form of play, in this sense.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Jacob Bronowski 79

Related quotes

Related topics