1/19/06 -- Notes by Jennifer Mensch

Chapter 1: “The Two Cultures”

This is Snow’s introductory chapter and its aim thus is to set out in its most general terms what he takes to be a fundamental break in the academy, a break so radical, according to Snow, that it might as well mark a schism in academic culture itself. These “two cultures” of the academy, the scientific and the literary, are supported in their differences, for Snow, by intellectual life as a whole in western society; a milieu whose support has led not only to an increase in feelings of hostility and suspicion between scientists and writers, but indeed has further deepened already entrenched ideals.

In diagnosing this break Snow sees as his task—a task for which he feels specially suited as a self-described member of both cultures—an attempt at rapprochement. Given their mutual incomprehension, Snow seeks first to identify the specific characters and attitudes of each. It is at this point that one begins to note a certain lack of objectivity in Snow’s catalogue, to suspect that while Snow might consider himself to be an impartial critic, his bias lies heavily in favour of the scientific worldview, a world populated, as Snow will put it, by men “naturally (having) the future in their bones” (16). The scientific culture shares common attitudes, standards, approaches and assumptions; their sameness in these cuts across differences in field, religion, politics, and class (16). This culture also shares the fact of its only most tenuous grasp and connection to the literary world, a fact evidenced, for Snow, by the shared sense that Dickens is a truly incomprehensible writer. In comparison to the culture of literary intellectuals “This culture contains a great deal of argument, usually much more rigorous, and almost always at a higher conceptual level … even though the scientists do cheerfully use words in senses which literary persons don’t recognize, the senses are exact ones, and when they talk about ‘subjective,’ ‘objective,’ ‘philosophy,’ or ‘progressive,’ they know what they mean” (18f.). Scientists may not be interested in books but when it comes to discussions of morality, for example, “they are by and large the soundest group of intellectuals we have” (19). As for the literary intellectuals—now variously referred to by Snow as the “traditionalists”—these men feel that if the scientist has the future in his bones then we might well be better off wishing the future did not exist (citing Orwell’s 1984 as a species of just such a wish). Writers are “vain,” pretending that traditional culture just is culture, acting “As though the scientific edifice of the physical world was not, in its intellectual depth, complexity and articulation, the most beautiful and wonderful collective work of the mind of man” (20). For all this, the literary culture can only best be described as “tone-deaf.”

Snow’s solution? We must rethink our education plan, fight against the natural Balkanisation developing in any system designed with an exclusive aim of creating specialized knowledge. England must take up the examples set by Russia and the U.S. in teaching science and technology to all of its students; it must forgo its class-based-baggage of admission policies meant mainly to distinguish and create students capable of passing tests, tests no longer either useful or necessary for the advancement of scientific and technological thinking. Only once science, indeed the culture of science, has been widely disseminated throughout the educational system, can we hope for a much needed rapprochement.

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Note on chapter 2 "Intellectuals as Natural Luddites."

FYI, I have added a wikipedia section on Luddites in the websites section.

This chapter makes the strong point that late 19th and early 20th century "intellectuals" were indeed of the Luddite persuasion, that is to say, they ignored, even scorned the industrial revolution and its aftermath. This occurred both in the UK and the US. As a result of this attitude, education did not include any information about science or industry and only "handymen" actually worked in industry. He points out that Henry Ford was one such handyman. At the same time Germans were training their "intellectuals" in the ways of industry and exporting skillful and educated scholars to the UK and Us where they were quite successful.

One of the main goals of education at the time in the UK was to prepare young men (not much mention of women!) for jobs in administration, particularly in India. There were those who tried to promote education in the sciences but alas, no one listened.

The academics had nothing to do with the industrial revolution; as Corrie, the old Master of Jesus, said about trains running into Cambridge on Sunday, 'It is equally displeasing to God and to myself'"

Snow talks of the importance of the industrial revolution to the poor and uses his grandfather, an obviously intelligent man with little education who spent his life working as a maintenance foreman. He states "The industrial revolution looked very different according to whether one saw it from above or below." It was responsible for improving the lives of all with jobs, food, medical care, etc. The down side was relevant to our times, "it makes it easy to organize for all-out war."

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“The Two Cultures: A Second Look”

How he framed “the essence of the lecture” in 1963:

In our society (that is, advanced western society) we have lost even the pretence of a common culture. Persons educated with the greatest intensity we know can no longer communicate with each other on the plane of their major intellectual concern. This is serious for our creative, intellectual, and, above all, our normal life. It is leading us to interpret the past wrongly, to misjudge the present, and to deny our hopes of the future. It is making it difficult or impossible for us to take good action. (60)

There is, of course, no complete solution. . . But we can do something. The chief means open to us is education—education mainly in primary and secondary schools, but also in colleges and universities. (61)

What he would change:

1. The clear line he drew between pure science and technology.

“The more I have seen of technologists at work, the more untenable the distinction has come to look. If you actually see someone design an aircraft, you find him going through the same experience—aesthetic, intellectual, moral—as though he were setting up an experiment in particle physics. The scientific process has two motives: one is to understand the natural world, the other is to control it. . . . Yet, in all scientific fields, however the word originated, one motive becomes implicit in the other. From medicine, which is a classical technology, men have worked back to ‘pure’ scientific problems—such as, say, the structure of the haemoglobin molecule. From cosmogony, which seems the most impractical of all subjects, have come insights into nuclear fission—which, for evil and potentially for good, no one could call an unpractical activity.” (67)

2. His binary construction of science versus literature. Now, he would add in the social sciences, those

“concerned with how human beings are living or have lived—and concerned, not in terms of legend, but of fact. . . . In their approach to cardinal problems—such as the human effects of the scientific revolution, which is the fighting point of this whole affair—they display, at the least, a family resemblance.”

“It is probably too early to speak of a third culture already in existence. But I am now convinced that this is coming. When it comes, some of the difficulties of communication will at last be softened: for such a culture has, just to do its job, to be on speaking terms with the scientific one.” (70-71)

3. His emphasis on physics, in choosing as his test question for scientific literacy, What do you know of the Second Law of Thermodynamics?

“I should now treat the matter differently, and I should put forward a branch of science which ought to be a requisite in the common culture, certainly for anyone now at school. This branch of science at present goes by the name of molecular biology. . . . It includes the leap of genius by which Crick and Watson snatched at the structure of DNA and so taught us the essential lesson about our genetic inheritance.” (72-3)

4. The title:

“The scientific revolution is the only method by which most people can gain the primal things (years of life, freedom from hunger, survival for children), the primal things which we take for granted and which have in reality come to us through having had our own scientific revolution not so long ago. Most people want these primal things. Most people, wherever they are being given a chance, are rushing into the scientific revolution.”

His main point: the change brought about by applied science is accelerating.

“Our response to it affects, and often determines, what we like and dislike in our world, what action we take, the nature of the art we value or practise, the nation of our appreciation of science. It determines also, I fancy, the way in which some straightforward proposals about education, intended to be simple and practical, have been made the jumping-off point for a debate on first and last things. (85-6)

He critiques modernist literature, drawing on Lionel Trilling’s The Modern Element in Modern Literature:

“the romantic conception of the artist only has full meaning if there is a social cushion, unaffected by change, unaffected by the scientific revolution, to fall back on. Such an attitude, such a desire, can lead to turning the original dichotomy on its head and taking an optimistic view of one’s individual condition and a pessimistic view of the social one.”

His response to modernist literature makes him ask a final question:

“It is not a rhetorical question, and I don’t know the answer. It would be a satisfaction to know it. The question is this: how far is it possible to share the hopes of the scientific revolution, the modest difficult hopes for other human lives, and at the same time participate without qualification in the kind of literature Trilling which has just been defined?”(96)

Major theme as he rephrases it:

“It is dangerous to have two cultures which can’t or don’t communicate. In a time when science is determining much of our destiny, that is, whether we live or die, it is dangerous in the most practical terms. Scientists can give bad advice and decision-makers can’t know whether it is good or bad. On the other hand, scientists in a divided culture provide a knowledge of some potentialities which is theirs alone. All this makes the political process more complex, and in some ways more dangerous, than we should be prepared to tolerate for long, either for the purposes of avoiding disasters, or for fulfilling—what is waiting as a challenge to our conscience and goodwill—a definable social hope.” (98)

Final recommendation:

“educate a large proportion of our better minds so that they are not ignorant of imaginative experience, both in the arts and in science, nor ignorant either of the endowments of applied science, of the remediable suffering of most of their fellow humans, and of the responsibilities which, once they are seen, cannot be denied.” (100)