Customer Reviews

The Two Cultures (Canto)

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In today's society, Liberal Arts people call scientists "nerds." Scientists call liberal arts people "fuzzies" or "bohemians." Both hold misconceptions about each other that are sometimes true and sometimes not. This classic book talks about and tries to promote cooperation between these "two cultures." Writing about his experience as a person trained in science but pursuing a writing career, Snow precisely identifies the problems of the two cultures miscommunicating with each other. It was written in the late 1950s, in Britain, so the American reader might not understand all the references. Still, Snow's work has influenced a wide range of contemporary thinkers, and has been in no small part an influence on the "writing across the curriculum" movement in American universities. Whether you are interested in the humanities or the sciences, this book clearly will show you the tensions you will face dealing with the "other culture," and the problems such stereotypes pose for mod

The Two Cultures is probably more famous as an idea which ignited discussion than as the lecture it is. This edition of C.P. Snow's classic includes a brilliant introduction by Stefan Collini. I'm surprised that none of the other reviewers mention this portion of the edition, a substantial 64 pages, because for me it was the most interesting read. That is, only after having read The Two Cultures and a follow-up essay by Snow and pondered what may still apply today in his argument I went back and read the Collini. His introduction put Snow's work in its proper historical contexts (those of post-war Britain as well as Snow's own life) and updates us with some of the major points of the historical discourse that followed. I recommend that Collini's essay is read after Snow's, and together they make a very fine read.

This book defines the irrational and dangerous gulf that divides our artistic-intellectual community from our scientific. Its first publication was explosive, its effect historic. Written with the grace of a major novelist and the elegance of pure scientist, it was, and is, an original. A true original. Of how many books can one say, "It changed the way we think?" This single, short book did exactly that. It does that still.

Let's call it a must read.

Every representation I've seen of this work was wrong, or so incomplete as to be gravely misleading. As usual, the glib sound-biters omit not only the interesting parts of the points they quote, they omit the real point of the essay.

If anyone reads the second half of this essay, they see that it writes about the widening gap between rich countries and poor - the technologically trained and untrained. Yes, Snow writes about the schism and even mutual suspicion between the communities of liberal arts and hard sciences. That's just a fact, at least as true now as it was 45 years ago. That is not what's interesting.

The consequence is what matters. Overpopulation, mass starvation, and destruction by war or disease are political problems. The solutions must involve tools provided by technology. The tragedy of "the two cultures" is the breakdown between the politicians who must wield the tools and the technologists who must create them. This is not about technology controlling the world, it is about creating a generation of thinkers who can reason about both social and technical problems. It is about education that allows people to examine the physical facts of the physical world that underly so many curable causes of human misery. It is about understanding the technology of possible solutions well enough to weigh the costs and rewards in a rational way.

As I write this, the 2000-era Bush administration is busy firing science advisors who don't give the "right" answer, is cancelling the space research programs that have given the largest volume of new knowledge, and creating new scorched-earth policies for environmental management. It's a problem not just in the US, but worldwide. This is exactly the failure that Snow hoped so fervently that educated men and women would have the wisdom to prevent.

In this book, Sir Charles P. Snow examines what he sees as a splitting of the intelligentsia into two subcultures, the literary and the scientific. He cites anecdotal evidence of how ignorant literary figures are concerning fundamental scientific principles and how few works of literature have been read by the typical scientist. Snow is certainly qualified to see both sides of this issue. During World War II, he was in charge of the British program of scientific recruitment and is a first-class novelist. He also notes conservative/liberal tendencies among various groups within the scientific community.
He is of course correct, but the splitting is an inevitable consequence of the advance of science. As the amount of knowledge about a field of science grows, it takes more time and effort to succeed in the field. With the increase in commitment, there is less time for the individual to pursue other interests. However, that is not a wholly satisfactory excuse. Scientists are also part of the human condition and are almost always members of the advantaged class. Snow argues that they should be cognizant of the plight of the poor around the world and understand their moral obligation to try to alleviate poverty.
Scientists are often and justifiably considered to possess an intellectually narrow focus. Snow is very articulate in pointing out that society is damaged when some of the best and brightest remove themselves from the search for solutions to the current problems. Even though great advances have taken place in science in the forty years since Snow put forward these observations, they are just as valid as they were then. There is a lot of common ground between the literary and scientific communities, and Snow explains why it is critical that both sides occupy as much of it as possible. All people who are concerned with the problems of modern society should read this book.

I read the original as a convocation assignment when i went off to college in 1963. The history update in this volume is very useful and interseting to me. The original concept is also still interesting which probably means it is a good book as well as an influential one for education.

This was formative of my two cultures career. The updates to the 1959 lecture really only serve to emphasize how right Snow was in the first place. There is a contemporary preface by a "lit crit" that shows that the insularity of the two cultures persists. Yes, scientists should read and talk more. But the literary types should at least learn their times tables. I don't think that will do it, however. You have to be interested in things and how things work as well as in ideas. A great and fast read. The essay itself is barely 51 large-type pages.

C.P. Snow argues about two cultures he was personally part of: the literary intellectuals and the science intellectuals. And in these two cultures there is a serious lack of communication and inter subjective knowledge. While this may be true, I find it's a very limited argument and fails to take in the many different subcultures that may or may not be the strength of industrialization but nevertheless influences the social and cultural whole of the both the countries and world we know of. Also disregarded is Western civilization's pragmatism that has permeated since the enlightenment, the ideas of separation of religion and state are also applied to all teachings apart from the universals of liberty, individual rights and the pursuit of happiness. So the scientists will lack in the social and literary fields, while the literary and cultural intellectuals will lack in the technological fields. Specialization has most certainly increased from the medieval period to the Renaissance to the Industrial revolution and scientific achievements, to the current information age, although this book was written well before in 1959 and 1963.

Integration is necessary to reach planetary unity and peace, however degrees of compartmentalization are required to technologize the world. So there has to be some balance here. Snow does make a well-known point in the comparisons of industrialized nations verses the undeveloped and there is a clear different in the level of living conditions. Capital, manpower and educative resources are required in all countries for integration to occur.

I agree that man is much better off in the industrialized nations as opposed to those that are not, however, much of the agricultural societies that existed prior to the Renaissance and Enlightenment were from a self-employed collective society that lacked the existential despair and Anst from lack of security that we have so prevalent today. Thus they existed in far more psychological security and there's much to be said on that for the human psyche. To be a self-employed artisan over a low paid factory employee, this is the result and it was not always favorable. There is a trade-off and the demystification and desacredization are serious and profound negative consequences in our modern technological society. Feudal agricultural and superstition have left but the radical wonder and appreciative amazement of childlike marvel with fascination and curiosity have long gone as well.

However Snow makes a good argument on the stupidity of any groups that have power and influence over society. Such groups should not lack in either literary and technological knowledge - as the majority of the leaders of our government do today, and the public for that matter, thus endorsing many (not all) inadequate governmental decisions based on surface and shallow reasonings. And thus we have overpopulation, destruction of the environment, nuclear weapons, and religious absolutism, the loss of pragmatism, cultural warfare and so forth.

Also, I didn't particularly care for the writing style of this book and had trouble digesting it. If it was written less arbitrarily, with fewer words I think it would be even much smaller than it already is, but more tolerable as well.

Why Can't We Just Get Along?

Rodney King's famous complaint could apply just as well to this compilation of CP Snow's classic, and updated, lecture and the dialogue it created. Just as useful, Snow actually offered a way ahead on answering the question. Part of the problem, as the lecture made clear, was the issue of overspecialization in education--an error of opposite and equal proportions to overgeneralization in education. As it turns out, the world needs both specialists and generalists--as well as though rare individuals who are polymaths (multitalented experts at whatever they choose to do--Da Vinci, Napoleon, T. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Lee Kuan Yew). He identifies the key problem, that in forging an identity for oneself, either in the humanities or the sciences, one often comes to disesteem "the other." Americans seem very prone to this. This argument applies to any two cultures sort of dynamic--military versus civilian, doctors versus lawyers, faithful versus agnostic or atheist, educated versus uneducated, blue collar versus white collar--and so is useful beyond the bounds of simply considering scientists versus the liberal arts. Highly recommended--I would direct readers directly to the lecture first, and then the commentaries.

John T. Kuehn. Ph.D. (History)
Master of Science in Systems Engineering
Commander US Navy
Fort Leavenworth, KS

The author tells us that he is a novelist who happens to have had scientific training and is thus in a unique position to testify that writers and scientists tend not to understand one another. Fair enough; I'm perfectly willing to take his word for this. The problem is that his essay lurches abruptly and unaccountably far from this original premise. Scientists become science; science becomes technology; technology becomes industry. His complaint ceases to be a reciprocal misunderstanding and becomes that writers, and the intelligentsia in general, fail to appreciate properly what an unqualified horror the entire history of the human race preceding nineteenth-century England was and what an unqualified boon for mankind the first and second industrial revolutions were. (This, of course, is the rhetorical equivalent of what unscrupulous salesmen call their "bait and switch" technique.) He refuses to acknowledge any attendant undesirable consequences of the industrial revolutions (such as, for example, sweat shops, child labor, poisoning of the air, water, and soil, overpopulation, nuclear war and the threat of nuclear war, etc., etc., etc.). He considers it England's sacred duty, its "white man's burden", as it were, to spread this industrialization to every corner of the globe as rapidly (and rabidly) as possible. Well, I think you get the idea. It isn't worth untangling the various logical errors (or deceptions -- depending whether they're deliberate) we encounter along the way. I should at least warn you, though, that there is little argument of any kind here and quite a lot of simple -- and vehement -- assertion.