From the OED:

two cultures n. (in the terminology of C. P. Snow) science and the arts, considered as being in opposition to each other.

1959 Rede Lecture: “The Two Cultures”

I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups. …Literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension—sometimes (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding.

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?

[The literary culture] still like(s) to pretend that the traditional culture is the whole of ‘culture’, as though the natural order did not exist. As though the exploration of the natural order was of no interest either in its own value or its consequences. 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.

1962 Richmond Lecture: “The Two Cultures”

The callously ugly insensitiveness of the mode of expression is wholly significant. It gives us Snow, who is wholly representative of the world, or culture, to which it belongs….

Huxley’s 1880 “Science and Culture”

For culture certainly means something quite different from learning or technical skill. It implies the possession of an ideal, and the habit of critically estimating the value of things by comparison with a theoretic standard. Perfect culture should supply a complete theory of life… But we may agree to all this, and yet strongly dissent from the assumption that literature alone is competent to supply this knowledge.

Arnold’s 1882 Rede Lecture: “Literature and Science”

The ‘hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in his habits,’ this good fellow carried hidden in his nature something destined to develop into a necessity for humane letters. Nay, more; we seem to be even led to the further conclusion that our hairy ancestor carried in his nature, also, a necessity for Greek.

“Two cultures” stalemate

Proust Was a Neuroscientist (2007)

There is still no dialogue of equals. Scientists and artists continue to describe the world in incommensurate languages.

Questions for Discussion: If the “two cultures” still exist today, is that a

problem? Why or why not? If so, what do we do about it? I.e., we can’t

go back to a time when everyone was a generalist, so now what?

As a student, have you felt torn between the two cultures, forced to declare yourself a “numbers person” or a “word person”?