The first three chapters in Jacob Bronowski’s book, The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination are related to, and help give insight to college students moving out of their house and starting their new life away at college. At Vanderbilt, we will see, witness, hear, and perceive many new things, scenes, and ideas. This is all a part of furthering our education and expanding our knowledge. The first chapter is about how what we see and witness is translated and interpreted by our brains. The second chapter is about communicating with others, as we will have to do at college. We will also have to meet new friends and teachers as we are settling into our new surroundings. The third chapter is on linguistics and how the things that we say can be taken, oftentimes, in more than one way. So we should be careful about what we say and think before we speak.

As incoming freshman, we will have to come in contact with new things. Some of these things include joining a fraternity, writing a thesis paper, getting thrown into a room and made to live with a person we have never met before. We will have to learn to become somewhat on our own. In the first chapter, Bronowski writes, "you cannot see the world without the intervention of the physical senses" (6). This first chapter is about sight and how our physical senses are where we really get our knowledge about the world around us. This applies to college life because moving into a new surrounding, one has to be aware of what goes on around them. By being attentive, one gains knowledge and can share and acquire more knowledge about what goes on and is going on around them through interaction with others. Maybe these interactions with classmates could form the foundations of strong as well as lasting friendships. Humans have, "the ability to utter cognitive sentences (which no other animal can do) and the ability therefore to exercise knowledge and imagination" (Bronowski, 9). The main point the first chapter makes that really relates to a freshman’s college experience is that,

Simply put, sight plays a big role in contributing to our knowledge and stimulating our imagination. This is a critical point or concept when getting adjusted to a new and unknown college setting.

The second chapter brings attention to how complex the human language is compared to that of animals, in addition to analyzing the language and the way we react to it. This could be helpful to new college students because it could help them with communication and opening up to others and making friends. " ‘The origins of knowledge and imagination,’ would be inconceivable in a world of animal or machine languages because you cannot convey knowledge in a language in which these two things [information and instruction] are always and indissolubly linked in the message" (Bronowski, 32). Through human language, we are able to share and communicate with others, emotions, both those that the speaker is feeling and those that the words convey. We can communicate instructions on how to do something or what we want done, and we can also get across information. We can also gain the same as aforementioned by listening and engaging in conversations with others. To accurately and efficiently converse we must put, "reconstitution beside internalization, from our also being able to see ourselves as if we were objects in the outside world. That is the very nature of language; it is impossible to have a symbolic system without it" (Bronowski, 38).

In the third and last chapter, the focus is on scientific language. I think this relates more indirectly, but Bronowski writes about language evolving and that scientific language is the same no matter where you are from or what language you speak. "Science is a rather peculiar language because it only contains statements that are, in the context of a particular theory, true. We do not, for instance, say, ‘Well, G=k ^mm’/r2 is a sentence in this language. And in this language is G=k ^mm’/r3’ " (Bronowski, 47). This is similar to how college students have to almost speak the same "lingo." You have to speak on the same level as the person to which you are talking. Scientific language is very similar to the previous chapter on language in that you have to use it to give as well as receive ideas to and from others. As human language does, scientific language also analyzes, "The sentence into constituents which represent separable entities in the outside world-things or actions. So science constantly seeks in the descriptive sentences for separable entities which can either be perceived in the outside world or, more often, have to be inferred speculatively in the outside world" (Bronowski, 47). Humans need to speak and communicate and speak from the truth and knowledge that we are ordained with, and to share that knowledge with others and for them to impart their knowledge to us.

In closing, these chapters relate to humans in general, but especially to those entering college. From questioning and exploring our senses and our language to taking in everything through our senses and sharing that with others through language. If this does not help students directly, then it will in the long run, when they begin to analyze our language and the origins of their knowledge and imagination.