A depiction of the "two cultures" of and the mutual dividing wall of incomprehensibility between the two groups. [26] |
“Roger Bacon (1214-1294)—the founder of English philosophy whose knowledge of chemistry and mathematics led him to recognize the value of deductive reasoning, establish a scientific method, and invent spectacles—who has been called the last man to know everything, the last man to bridge the two cultures.”As for a specific year in which the rift first emerged, in debate, a prominent demarcation might well the year 1833 and the Whewell-Coleridge debate, between English science historian William Whewell and English romantic philosopher Samuel Coleridge, centered around the growing inadequacies with the older term “natural philosopher”, which embraced the broader philosophical, theological, and moral concerns, but was not what some might call “real science”, after which the term "scientist" (1834) was introduced, by Whewell, to demarcate those who worked in the latter field (mathematician, physicist, or naturalist), as contrasted with those who worked in the former (philosophical, theological, and moral concerns).— Rushworth Kidder (2003), How Good People Make Tough Choices [24]
“The age of Faust [1772-1832] had been the age of the ‘Renaissance man’, a time when the possibility of universal knowledge, mastery of the arts and sciences, still seemed to be open to the ambitious mind; [thereafter] the separation and dispersion of intellectual endeavors, dubbed the ‘two cultures’ by C.P. Snow, [resulted]; [in the years to follow, individuals such as] Thomas Young (IQ=200?), Humphry Davy (IQ=185), [and] William Hamilton (IQ=170), could all make serious claims to humanistic breadth, if not universality, in their intellectual accomplishments; nevertheless, a rift between the arts and the sciences was evident, and a need was recognized to reconcile the apparent antagonism.”Burwick goes on to state that Johann Ritter's 1806 Physics as Art (Die Physik als Kunst) and Humphry Davy's 1807 "Parallels between Art and Science" were themed on this issue. [27]
In 1930, Judson Herrick famously said that modern universities are houses divided against themselves, social sciences on on side, the physical and natural sciences on the other, separated by the great wall of Humpty Dumpty. |
“These centrifugal movements, coming contemporaneously with the dedication of this new laboratory of the social sciences in the very heart of the citadel of the humanities, inevitably raise the questions: Where do the social sciences belong in an academic organization? and, What is a social science anyway?
An ancient teacher [Mark 3:25] once said, "If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand." (Ѻ) This has a personal application: "No man can serve two masters." A more modern philosopher has remarked that it is impossible to live in two unrelated worlds at once.
To an ignorant outsider it looks a little as if the social sciences may be in some danger of attempting this impossible acrobatic feat. The Great Wall stands today on our campus as a barrier between the natural sciences, whose domain is the world of objects, and the humanities, whose domain is the world of spiritual values [see: spiritual values]. Are the social sciences to remain dispersed on opposite sides of the Great Wall, or is the group as a whole to attempt to maintain a precarious balance astride the Wall, with one foot in the Elysian fields (Ѻ) of the humanities and the other solidly resting on the firm ground of scientifically controlled factual data? The available precedents indicate that neither of these alternatives will give a stable organization. The thing is likely to fall to pieces, one way or another. And this is not a trivial matter; it strikes down to the very soil within which are the roots of our university development, the original sources of academic achievement.
Traditionally, our social sciences are aligned with the humanities. And they must maintain this alliance with the realm of spiritual values and experiences if they are to be humanitarian in any proper sense. Traditionally, also, the natural and exact sciences, whose tools the social sciences are employing with increasing efficiency, are uncontaminated by spiritual values, by human emotion, sentiment, or any subjective coloring. We are face to face with a rather appalling dilemma.”
In 1938, John Dewey stated the first version of the two cultures "cleavage" or "split" as he called it. [31] |
“On the one hand the outstanding problem of our civilization is set by the fact that common sense in its content, its ‘world’ and methods, is a house divided against itself. It consists in part, and that part the most vital, of regulated meanings and procedures that antedate the rise of experimental science in its conclusions and methods. In another part, it is what it is because of application of science. This cleavage marks every phase and aspect of modern life: religious, economic, political, legal, and even artistic. The existence of this split is put in evidence by those who condemn the ‘modern’ and who hold that the only solution of the chaos in civilization is to revert to the intellectual beliefs and methods that were authoritative in past ages, as well as by radicals and ‘revolutionaries.’ Between the two stand the multitude that is confused and insecure. It is for this reason that it is here affirmed that the basic problem of present culture and associated living is that of effecting integration where division now exists. The problem cannot be solved apart from a unified logical method of attack and procedure. The attainment of unified method means that the fundamental unity of the structure of inquiry in common sense and science be recognized, their difference being one in the problems with which they are directly concerned, not to their respective logics. It is not urged that attainment of a unified logic, a theory of inquiry, will resolve the split in our beliefs and procedures. But it is affirmed that it will not be resolved without it.”
“The preference for prescientific thoughtways regarding our social relations has given rise to a fundamental and disastrous cleavage in our culture, for our social predicaments are what they are precisely because we have adopted an applied so extensively in our relations with the physical world. This ‘cleavage’, as John Dewey has said, ‘marks every phase and aspect’ of modern culture.”
A 50th anniversary depiction of American physicist Charles Snow’s famous 1959 “The Two Cultures” lecture, wherein he asserted to the effect that a great divide existed in society, between those who are scientifically literate (hard science), able to comprehend the second law, and those who are classically literate (humanities), able to comprehend Shakespeare. [5] |
“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 at the illiteracy 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 about the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?”
C.P. Snow | vs. | F.R. Leavis |
In 1962, British literary critic Frank Leavis launched a scathing attack on C.P. Snow's 1959 "two cultures" argument, which has resulted in what has come to be known as the Snow-Leavis controversy. [19] |
“The Corridors of Power furnished the title for one of Snow’s novels; it is all that is left of his work. Things are a little different with ‘the two cultures’. 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.”
“Running through [Broers'] lecture there is the thought that this lack of knowledge is, in itself, a fault. In this, he echoes C.P. Snow’s lecture, 'The Two Cultures', which bemoaned the fact that while scientists are expected to know their Shakespeare, those in the arts are not expected to know – and generally don’t know – the second law of thermodynamics. I side with those (such as F.R. Leavis) who think Snow was wrong. What is important about technology is that it works and that people make good use of it. For neither of these is it necessary that people know how how it works. What is important about Shakespeare and music is that they are appreciated with understanding. So it is important that people know their Shakespeare, but not important that they know the second law of thermodynamics, or how a telephone, or indeed a jet engine, works. It is important that someone knows how they work (otherwise we would not have them) but I can’t see why we all should.”
Q. Do you see a division or antagonism between the cultures of the sciences and humanities?
A. I see a division between the two cultures insofar as society has willfully allowed people to be okay about not knowing science, but has not allowed them to be okay about not knowing humanities and art. I think that is one of the major barriers that we need to tear down in order that science take its rightful place in the culture alongside music, art, theatre, dance, literature as something that you cannot dispense with [if you want to] consider yourself educated [and] engaged in the world conversation. And slowly, I think, that will happen.
“Indeed there are not two or three or four cultures: there is only one culture; our generation has lost its awareness of this … Historians, logicians, physicists—all are banded in one common enterprise, namely in their desire to weave an enlightened fabric of human knowledge.”— Wolfgang Yourgrau and Allen Breck (1966), “Proceedings of the first International Colloquium: focused on Logic, Physical Reality, and History” [29]
The Third Culture (1998), on the "third culture" of the science used in literature, edited by Elinor Shaffer (comparative literature scholar). |
See main: Two cultures geniusThe following are known "two culture geniuses", namely those to have successfully bridged the gap between literature and hard science:
● Johann Goethe [3]
● Voltaire | Supported Jean Sales' 1789 human molecular hypothesis.
● Henry Adams
“In his presentation of the ‘two cultures’ issue, C.P. Snow relates that he occasionally became so provoked at literary colleagues who scorned the restricted reading habits of scientists that he would challenge them to explain the second law of thermodynamics. The response was a cold silence. The test was too hard. Even a scientist would be hard-pressed to explain the Carnot engines and refrigerators, reversibility and irreversibility, energy dissipation and entropy increase, Gibbs free energy and the Gibbs rule of phase, all in the span of a cocktail party conversation. How much more difficult, then, for a non-scientist. Even Henry Adams, who sought to find an analogy for his theory of history in the second law of thermodynamics, had great difficulty in understanding the rule of phase.”
● Carl Djerassi (1923-) [7]
● G. Evelyn Hutchinson (1903-1991); quote: “Hutchinson was certainly a polymath, a rare scientist who bridged the two cultures, the scientific and the humanistic, so clearly portrayed in the books of C. P. Snow.” [4]
● John Bernal (1901-1971) [4]
A generic department logo for a future American two cultures university department, envisioned by Thims (2012) to teach, in a cross-disciplinary manner, the subject matter as outlined adjacent, all structured about the interrelationship between second law (Clausius) and the humanities (Shakespeare); the synthesis of which being first captured in the 1796 mind of Goethe (see: Goethe timeline). |
See main: Two cultures university departmentIn 2012, American electrochemical engineer Libb Thims began actively working towards an effort to found America's first two-cultures university department, similar to what is being done currently at Korea University (regarding social thermodynamics) and the University of Paderborn, Germany (by Jurgen Mimkes), and what historically was attempted at the University of Geneva, Switzerland (by Leon Winiarski). The structure of the aiming two cultures university is as follows:
● Leon Winiarski’s 1894 social mechanics course, University of Geneva; Switzerland; as outlined in his 1900 sociology symposium article "The Teaching of Pure Political Economics and Social Mechanics in Switzerland".
● Henry Adams’ 1910 proposal (A Letter to American Teachers of History) to begin teaching history thermodynamics in America.
● Pitirim Sorokin’s 1928 “mechanistic school of social thermodynamics”, which he subdivides as follows:1. Social mechanics
Representatives: A.P. Barcelo, Spiru Haret, Alfred Lotka2. Social physics
Representatives: Henry Carey3. Social energetics (or social thermodynamics)
Representatives: Ernest Solvay, W. Bechtereff, Wilhelm Ostwald, T.N. Carver, and Leon Winiarski4. Mathematical sociology
Representatives: Vilfredo Pareto and F. Carli
● Richard Hughes' 2008 political thermodynamics and government thermodynamics course, Texas Tech University, US;
● Korea University's 2011 social thermodynamics graduate school course;
(c) Human chemistry | similar to:
● Thomas Huxley’s 1871 call for the development of the field of social chemistry;
● Henry Adams’ 1885 definition of “social chemistry—the mutual attraction of equivalent human molecules—[as] a science yet to be created.”
● Albion Small's 1899 argument that ‘general sociology’ might be able to be defined in the future as ‘the science of human atoms and their behavior’.
● Frank Carlton's 1912 call for the inception of the sciences of social mechanics, social physics and social chemistry.
● Werner Stark's 1962 followup to Huxley's call for the development of the social chemistry;(b) Human physics | similar to:
● University of Bergen’s 2011 “Literature and Chemistry: Elective Affinities” symposium on literature chemistry centered on Goethe's 1809 Elective Affinities.
● Serge Galam's 1980s social atoms based sociophysics teaching program in France, French National Center for Scientific Research.
● Jurgen Mimkes’ 1992-present physical socio-economics department (and PhD students), University of Paderborn, Germany;
● Joseph McCauley’s 2005 econophysics department (and PhD students), University of Houston;
● Curtis Blakely's 2010 call for the development of sociophysics, treating people as particles, for application in the field of penology.
The synopsis of a 1971 two cultures symposium held at the University of Edinburgh, according to which a person who is two cultures literate should be familiar with the second law, genetic code, Miguel de Unamuno, and Orlando Gibbons. [16] |
“To read Snow’s 1959 lecture and Leavis’s 1962 reply in succession is to witness precisely the “mutual incomprehension” that Snow had originally described between literary intellectuals and natural scientists—with the only difference being that where Snow sought to engage, Leavis reacted with the defensiveness of a caged animal, and thoroughly undermined any serious point he may have had to make.”— Chris Mooney (2009), “The Science Lover and the Snob” [22]
“Physics is the sun and mathematics its core ... Chemistry and biology are the near planets and in increasing distant orbits, lie economics, linguistics, psychology, anthropology, sociology and political science. Even though history and philosophy lie in appreciably more distant orbits, they are not completely free of this force field. At the far edge of this hypothetical universe are the arts and literature, but they, too, are subject to this force field.””— Jerome Kagan (2009), The Three Cultures [28]
English literature science writer Peter Smith’s 2000 article “Elective Affinity: A Tale of Two Cultures”, which explains how German polymath Johann Goethe’s 1809 physical chemistry based romance novella Elective Affinities was really a C.P. Snow-stylized “two cultures” type of book, underlyingly a scientific treatise on human experience, a synopsis extension of his 1997 PhD dissertation on the same subject. [23] |