Reflection on C.P. Snow’s 1959 Lecture The Two Cultures: the Pathological Divide between Arts & Science

Reflection on C.P. Snow’s 1959 Lecture The Two Cultures: the Pathological Divide between Arts & Science

With a focus on the concept of AND

Let’s start with a poem that was written by a lady I shared time with at a Franciscan retreat in Arizona with last week:   A Creation Poem by Valerie Hart

In the beginning was the One

And she was all

And all was she

And there was no difference

She was love

And love needed the beloved

In a flash

Matter burst into being

The matter was in her

And the matter was her

And the matter was loved

Matter expanded

Growing and changing bathed in love

Galaxies, suns and planets emerged

And they were loved

On at least one planet life began

And it was loved

Life grows and changes

Becoming more and more complex

And it is loved

And life became self-conscious

And it is very loved.

 

In his speech Snow’s thesis was that science and the humanities which represented “the intellectual life of the whole of western society” had become split into “two cultures” and that this division was a major handicap to both in solving the world’s problems. Today this division is obvious and the fact that we cannot solve obvious problems that are killing us because of this division is obvious – and yet we cannot reunite the two halves of our beings. Let’s explore this idea of what some call the “split brain” problem now by first reading bits from his speech [Wikipedia] and then considering the concept of AND and its implications on how we try to survive the death spiral we find ourselves in today.

By training I was a scientist: by vocation I was a writer. That was all. It was a piece of luck, if you like, that arose through coming from a poor home.
But my personal history isn’t the point now. All that I need say is that I came to Cambridge and did a bit of research here at a time of major scientific activity. I was privileged to have a ringside view of one of the most wonderful creative periods in all physics. And it happened through the flukes of war—including meeting W. L. Bragg in the buffet on Kettering station on a very cold morning in 1939, which had a determining influence on my practical life—that I was able, and indeed morally forced, to keep that ringside view ever since. So for thirty years I have had to be in touch with scientists not only out of curiosity, but as part of a working existence. During the same thirty years I was trying to shape the books I wanted to write, which in due course took me among writers.  There have been plenty of days when I have spent the working hours with scientists and then gone off at night with some literary colleagues. I mean that literally. I have had, of course, intimate friends among both scientists and writers. It was through living among these groups and much more, I think, through moving regularly from one to the other and back again that I got occupied with the problem of what, long before I put it on paper, I christened to myself as the ‘two cultures’. For constantly I felt I was moving among two groups—comparable in intelligence, identical in race, not grossly different in social origin, earning about the same incomes, who had almost ceased to communicate at all, who in intellectual, moral and psychological climate had so little in common that instead of going from Burlington House or South Kensington to Chelsea, one might have crossed an ocean.

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 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.

In 2008, The Times Literary Supplement included The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution in its list of the 100 books that most influenced Western public discourse since the Second World War.^[

Now that we understand Snow’s thesis let’s examine the response of the educated class to it:

“In his 1963 book Snow appeared to revise his thinking and was more optimistic about the potential of a mediating third culture. This concept was later picked up in John Brockman’s The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution. Introducing a reprint of The Two Cultures, 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. Stephen Jay Gould’s 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. Simon Critchley, in Continental Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction suggests: [Snow] diagnosed the loss of a common culture and the emergence of two distinct cultures: those represented by scientists on the one hand and those Snow termed ‘literary intellectuals’ on the other. If the former are in favour of social reform and progress through science, technology and industry, then intellectuals are what Snow terms ‘natural Luddites’ in their understanding of and sympathy for advanced industrial society. In Mill’s terms, the division is between Benthamites and Coleridgeans. That is, Critchley argues that what Snow said represents a resurfacing of a discussion current in the mid-nineteenth century.”

And so the dominant response of the time was that Snow was old fashioned and out of date and modernity had solved the problem. If so, how is that religious extremism is on the rise? That Trump was elected? That we are totally incapable of making the changes need to survive the self inflicted damage that Climate Change and the destruction of our ecosystems is wrecking upon us? How is that addictions of all kinds are on the rise? Well, let’s take Snow’s basic idea of a division in our minds created by a flawed education system and cultural worldview and posit the following:

We are not split into two worldviews, but many. We have no AND thinking and feeling, only OR. We have, both at the level of our culture and individual, fragmented into multiple personalities that are not integrated and incapable of communicating with each other. This deep fragmentation partially explains our addictions, increasing isolation, daily mass shootings in the USA, denial of the existential threats created by our growth obsessed and individualistic way of life and epidemic of mental illnesses of various kinds now common among us, especially among our youth.  Thus, we need to change, but change is painful. Imagine you have a splinter [I use this metaphor because I get splinters every few weeks] and it is infected. You don’t notice it until it is painful. Then getting it out is even more painful and for me at least usually involved some blood and a very sharp pin. Change about an issue, if not dealt with for too long, is like that. I believe that most people unconsciously know we need to change, but they don’t want the pain. How do I know this? By the denial I see all around me. Here is an example:

Students & Faculty at Ohio State Respond to Bill That Would Restrict College Discussions of Climate Policies

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31052023/ohio-state-college-climate-bill/

The Ohio General Assembly has a proposed a wide-ranging bill includes a provision that designates climate policy as a “controversial belief or policy” and says faculty must “encourage students to reach their own conclusions about all controversial beliefs or policies and shall not seek to inculcate any social, political, or religious point of view.”

In other words, denial – a fracture of ideology from reality, or as climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe says: “You can say gravity isn’t true, but if you step off the cliff, you’re going down.”

This proposed policy. is also a fracture of politics from Science. A fracture in a country obsessed with freedom [you can carry a gun openly in many states to “protect” yourself] that allows daily mass shootings in the name of freedom but considers climate change a political rather than fundamentally scientific issue. Furthermore, even if it is a “political” issue isn’t free speech a fundamental tenant of democracy? Not if you are in denial and not if you suffer from multiple personality disorder, now called Dissociative identity disorder.

Well, I think that Snow got it partially right, but today we don’t have two cultures incapable of have a civil conversation – we have many. So, what can we do? We need a return to thinking AND instead of OR. Reason AND Faith. Self AND Other. Joy AND Sacrifice. Democracy AND visionary leadership. Human development AND inclusion of other species in our attempts to improve our quality of life. Peace AND struggle. Courage AND Caution.  Given that most of you reading this are on the logical side of the spectrum I leave you with the words of a Christian writer Wendell Berry and what he sees as our “problematique”. As you read below it all about LIMITS – our old idea first made famous in COR’s funded book “The Limits to Growth” in 1972. In the meantime, all the very best and you heal the divides and divisions in your life and frayed relationships with those in your community, friends circle and family. Remember, saving the world starts at home.

One of the most significant themes of your recent work is debunking the myth of freedom—correcting the idea that limitless choice and limitless options make us happy.

Yes.

But my sense is that people are instinctively resistant to the idea that having fewer choices might ultimately lead to greater happiness. There’s a powerful insistence, in this country, that the best life is the freest life.

I want a limit to the amount of politics that gets into this conversation. But I did let politics into “The Art of Loading Brush” when I said that President Trump is sexually liberated and fiscally unregulated. Liberals are not acknowledging this, but he’s the embodiment of an ideal that has liberal and conservative versions: “If you want it you should have it.” My friend David Kline, an Amish man and environmentalist, said to me one time, “The idea of finding yourself falls very strangely on Amish ears. After all, we Amish are not trying to find ourselves, we’re trying to lose ourselves!” You see how that lines up with the traditional insistence upon certain limits.