The Two Cultures is the title of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow. Its thesis was that the breakdown of communication between the "two cultures" of modern society — the sciences and the humanities — was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems. As a trained scientist who was also a successful novelist, Snow was well placed to pose the question. The Sir Robert Redes Lecturer is an annual appointment to give a public lecture, the Sir Robert Redes Lecture (usually Rede Lecture) at the University of Cambridge. ... C. P. Snow, born Charles Percy Snow, (1905-1980) was a scientist and novelist. ... Part of a scientific laboratory at the University of Cologne. ... The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view. ... A novel is an extended work of written, narrative, prose fiction, usually in story form; the writer of a novel is a novelist. ...

The talk was delivered 7 May in the Senate House, Cambridge, and subsequently published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. The lecture and book expanded upon an article Snow wrote for New Statesman magazine, published 6 October 1956, also entitled, 'The Two Cultures'. Published in book form, Snow's lecture was widely read and discussed on both sides of the Atlantic, leading him to write a follow-up, The Two Cultures: A Second Look (1963). The Senate House The Senate House of the University of Cambridge in the centre of the city is used mainly for degree ceremonies and formerly for meetings of the Council of the Senate. ... The New Statesman is a left-of-centre political weekly published in London. ...

Snow's ideas were not without critics, however. For example, he was derided by literary critic F. R. Leavis in The Spectator, who dismissed Snow as a "public relations man" for the scientific establishment. Frank Raymond Leavis (July 14, 1895 - April 14, 1978) was an influential British literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. ... This article is about the British weekly magazine: there are articles on several other magazines called The Spectator such as Addison and Steeles influential literary magazine, The Spectator (1711), and the others can be found at The Spectator (disambiguation). ...

Implications and influence

The term two cultures has entered the general lexicon as a shorthand for differences between two attitudes. These are

1. the increasingly constructivist world view suffusing the humanities, in which the scientific method is seen as embedded within language and culture; and
2. the scientific viewpoint, in which the observer can still objectively make unbiased and non-culturally embedded observations about nature.

"The phrase has lived on as a vague popular shorthand for the rift—a matter of incomprehension tinged with hostility—that has grown up between scientists and literary intellectuals in the modern world." In education, constructivism is a learning theory which holds that knowledge is not transmitted unchanged from teacher to student, but instead that learning is an active process of learning. ... Scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge, as well as for correcting and integrating previous knowledge. ...

This polarization of perspective certainly was a factor in latter 20th century academia. Snow's original argument relied on rhetorical devices. Roger Kimball writes: Roger Kimball is a conservative U.S art critic, essayist, and social commentator. ...

Snow himself, in his reconsideration, backed off some way from his dichotomized declarations. In his 1963 book he talked more optimistically about the potential of a mediating 'third culture'. This concept was later picked up in the 1995 book The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution by John Brockman. Introducing the reprinted The Two Cultures (1993), Stefan Collini has argued that the passage of time has done much to reduce the cultural divide Snow noticed; but has not removed it entirely. John Brockman (born 1941 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a literary agent and author specializing in scientific literature. ...

Stephen Jay Gould's 2003 book The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox provides a different perspective. Assuming the dialectical interpretation, it argues that Snow's concept of "two cultures" is not only off the mark, it is a damaging and short-sighted viewpoint; and that it has perhaps led to decades of unnecessary fence-building. It has been suggested that Darwinian Fundamentalism be merged into this article or section. ... The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magisters Pox is Stephen Jay Goulds posthumous volume exploring the historical conflict and division between the sciences and the humanities. ... Broadly speaking, a dialectic (Greek: διαλεκτική) is an exchange of propositions (theses) and counter-propositions (antitheses) resulting in a disagreement. ...

As philosophical avatar

Simon Critchley, in Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction (2001) suggests that in the lecture, Snow Simon Critchley is a British philosopher, working in Continental philosophy and related fields. ...

That is, Critchley argues that what Snow said represents a resurfacing of a discussion current in the mid-nineteenth century. Critchley describes the Leavis contribution to the making of a controversy as 'a vicious ad hominem attack'; going on to describe the debate as a familiar clash in English cultural history (ibid, p.51), citing also T. H. Huxley and Matthew Arnold. The Luddites were a group of English workers in the early 1800s who protested – often by destroying machines – against the changes produced by the Industrial Revolution that they felt threatened their jobs. ... John Stuart Mill (20th May 1806 – 8th May 1873), a British philosopher and political economist, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century. ... Jeremy Bentham (IPA: or ) (February 15, 1748 O.S. (February 26, 1749 N.S.) – June 6, 1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. ... Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 – July 25, 1834) (pronounced ) was an English poet, critic, and philosopher who was, along with his friend William Wordsworth, one of the founders of the Romantic Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets. ... Thomas Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley F.R.S. (May 4, 1825 - June 29, 1895) was a British biologist, known as Darwins Bulldog for his defence of Charles Darwins theory of evolution. ... Matthew Arnold Caricature from Punch, 1881: Admit that Homer sometimes nods, That poets do write trash, Our Bard has written Balder Dead, And also Balder-dash Family tree Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic, who worked as an inspector of schools. ...

Famous quotations

"I remember G. H. Hardy once remarking to me in mild puzzlement, some time in the 1930s, Have you noticed how the word "intellectual" is used nowadays? There seems to be a new definition which certainly doesn't include Rutherford or Eddington or Dirac or Adrian or me? It does seem rather odd, don't y'know."

"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?

I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question -- such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? -- not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had."

G. H. Hardy Professor Godfrey Harold Hardy FRS (February 7, 1877 – December 1, 1947) was a prominent British mathematician, known for his achievements in number theory and mathematical analysis. ... Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson OM PC FRS (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937), was a nuclear physicist from New Zealand. ... One of Sir Arthur Stanley Eddingtons papers announced Einsteins theory of general relativity to the English-speaking world. ... Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, OM, FRS (IPA: [dɪræk]) (August 8, 1902 – October 20, 1984) was a British theoretical physicist and a founder of the field of quantum physics. ... Edgar Douglas Adrian, 1st Baron Adrian (born London, 30 November 1889, died London, 4 August 1977) was a British electrophysiologist and recipient of the 1932 Nobel Prize for Physiology, won jointly with Sir Charles Sherrington for work on the function of neurons. ... The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the universal law of increasing entropy. ... Shakespeare redirects here. ... Unsolved problems in physics: What causes anything to have mass? Mass is a property of a physical object that quantifies the amount of matter and energy it is equivalent to. ... Acceleration is the time rate of change of velocity, and at any point on a velocity-time graph, it is given by the slope of the tangent to that point In physics or physical science, acceleration (symbol: a) is defined as the rate of change (or derivative with respect to... Physics (from the Greek, (phúsis), nature and (phusiké), knowledge of nature) is the science concerned with the discovery and understanding of the fundamental laws which govern matter, energy, space, and time. ... The term Western World or the West can have multiple meanings depending on its context. ... The Neolithic, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology that is traditionallly the. ...

See also

• Culture war
• Science wars
• Aldous Huxley
• Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, a 1998 book written by biologist Edward Osborne Wilson, as an attempt to bridge the gap between "the two cultures"
• Lewis Mumford
• Gerald Heard
• The Third Culture
• Edge Foundation
• John Brockman

The term culture war (sometimes pluralized as the culture wars) has been used to describe ideologically-driven and often strident confrontations typical of American public culture and politics since the 1960s, but especially beginning in the 1980s. ... The Science wars were a series of intellectual battles in the 1990s between postmodernists and realists (though neither party would likely use the terms to describe themselves) about the nature of scientific theories. ... This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims. ... Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge is a 1998 book by biologist E. O. Wilson. ... E.O. Wilson with Dynastes hercules E. O. Wilson, or Edward Osborne Wilson, (born June 10, 1929) is an entomologist and biologist known for his work on ecology, evolution, and sociobiology. ... Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian of technology and science. ... Henry Fitzgerald Heard commonly called Gerald Heard (October 6, 1889 - August 14, 1971) was an historian, science writer, educator, and philosopher. ... The Third Culture is the title of a book by John Brockman which discusses the work of several well-known thinkers who are directly communicating their new, sometimes provocative, ideas to the general public. ... The Edge Foundation was created in 1988 to seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them in a room together and have themselves ask each other the questions they are asking themselves. ... John Brockman (born 1941 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a literary agent and author specializing in scientific literature. ...

External links

• The lecture
• Web sites relating to the Snow-Leavis Controversy