The Two Cultures Revisited

Abstract

This article addresses the question of two cultures, that is, the relationship between the culture of natural scientists and the culture of literary intellectuals, a distinction made by C. P. Snow in his 1959 lecture, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. This reading of Snow draws from the theoretical and methodological strategies discussed by scholars interested in the supposed dichotomy between literature and science. Similar trends also can be found in social studies of science, where the constructive and rhetorical practices of scientists have been emphasized.

Polemical acts of rare extremism

“…The Two Cultures controversy is conventionally understood as the successor to an earlier clash disputing the relative priority of the arts and science; the Huxley and Arnold debate of the 1870s, sparked by Huxley's address at Josiah Mason College in Birmingham (Huxley, 1881: 15, 4 Hultberg, 1997: 196, Stinner, 1989. Huxley argued for the priority of the study of nature over culture, and of science over Arnoldian values (truth and beauty).…”

“…7 There Snow identified a rift between the sciences and the arts, claimed that this posed a threat to Britain and/or British Caroline Bassett -9781526160720 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 02/28/2022 04:10:40AM via free access influence in a post-colonial era, and called for this rift to be closed through measures resulting in the 'integration of Two Cultures' (Hultberg, 1997: 200), or two 'social orders' -those of literary culture and natural science (Snow 1959: 10). This demanded new forms of literacy and, complaining that literary cultures 'revel … arrogantly in their ignorance' (Hultberg, 1997), Snow argued that 'basic literacy' (Collini, 1993) should be judged not only by literary criterion but also by knowledge of scientific fundamentals: Shakespeare and the First and Second Laws (of thermodynamics) (Snow, 1959: 14). If the text of the lecture is explored in any depth, it is obvious that Snow's real concern was for the advancement of science and scientific values over other values; as Sam Leith put it, the 'apparent even-handedness of the way Snow articulated the divide is … deceptive; Snow was taking sides' (Leith, 2009).…”

“…The (loosely) anthropological register of much of Snow's lecture, at one with the novelistic style adopted in his fictions about public science, and aligning with his interest in science as practice (Hultberg, 1997), might have contributed to acceptance of the egregious 'evenhanded' reading; Dizikes argues that Snow's assumption of the role of 'eagle-eyed anthropologist' dissembled his sense of himself as the 'evangelist of our technological future' (Dizikes, 2009). But the message is clear enough, for Snow, science 'must progress over time' and will progress (Snow, 1959: 204), science is the basis of prosperity, security, and 'social hope' (Snow, 1959: 27), and the scientific orientation is progressive and creative, and so, therefore, are those who embody this orientation, those who live by scientific values.…”

Contents of Volume 52

“…Don't these words, below, stir in you a vision of the brutality that can be associated with work? Hultberg (1997), in discussing C. P. Snow's celebrated lecture on two cultures concludes that ''science and literature should be regarded not as two different cultures but rather as different forms of expression within one culture.'' My paradigm seeks to bridge Snow's two cultures, the culture of the natural sciences and the literary culture, where, in particular, I plead for the science of psychology to be bejeweled by literary culture.…”

Einstein Versus Neutrinos

“…In 1956, Charles Percy Snow coined the term The Two Cultures , referring to the distance separating the scientific and the humanistic worlds (Snow, 1956, 1959). This more or less old-fashioned term (Van Dijck, 2003) has been very useful to define the lack of communication existing between the literary world and the scientific world (Gregory & Miller, 1998; Hultberg, 1997). The distancing between these two groups is clearly shown in the relationship of the mass media with scientists and researchers (Nelkin, 1987; Valenti, 1999).…”