Michael R. H. Swanson, Ph. D.
Office: GHH 215
Hours: M, 12:00-1:00
T, Th, 9:30 - 10:20 Or By Appointment
Phone: ext 3230
C.P. Snow, (born Oct. 15, 1905, Leicester, Leicestershire, Eng.—died July 1, 1980, London), was both a novelist a molecular physicist. He worried about the growing divide between academics on both sides of a cultural divide and delivered a famous lecture on the subject in 1959. In it he said,
The 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. They have a curious distorted image of each other. Their attitudes are so different that, even on the level of emotion, they can’t find much common ground. Non-scientists tend to think of scientists as brash and boastful. . . .
The non-scientists have a rooted impression that the scientists are shallowly optimistic, unaware of man’s condition. On the other hand, the scientists believe that the literary intellectuals are totally lacking in foresight, peculiarly unconcerned with their brother men, and in a deep sense anti-intellectual, anxious to restrict both art and thought to the existential moment. And so on. Anyone with a mild talent for invective could produce plenty of this kind of subterranean back-chat. On each side there is some of it which is not entirely baseless. It is all destructive. Much of it rests on misinterpretations which are dangerous.
Click on his picture to the left or the link to the right to read the Rede Lecture Essay, The Two Cultures,