9 ms·

The Two Cultures

149 points by DanI-S 13y ago

rubidium 13y ago
For a PDF version of the lecture, see here: http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/2cultures/Rede-lecture-2-cultures.pdf http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/2cultures/Rede-lecture-2... This is quite a gem. I'm surprised I haven't seen it before.
rmk2 13y ago
Well, thankfully that problem will soon be solved in England! The government has enacted a programme that should soon bear fruit, thanks to the introduction of "impact" and weighing publications in a new, innovative, carefully considered and consensual way. Soon, it will be the country of one culture (since only biased pundits would dare to say: the country of no culture), finally correcting the horrible mistakes of the past!
lkrubner 13y ago
Much has been written about this article. For instance: ---------------- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5273453/Fifty-years-on-CP-Snows-Two-Cultures-are-united-in-desperation.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5273453/Fifty-years-on... Such was the intensity of debate that it might be supposed that these were age-old themes: but in fact, the idea of separating academic disciplines into groups known as science and humanities was no older than the 19th century. The term "scientist" was only coined in 1833, and it was not until 1882 that another Rede Lecturer, Matthew Arnold, discussed – under the title of "Literature and Science" – whether or not a classical education was still relevant in an age of great scientific and technical advance. ---------------- There are also many themes in this article that are specific to Britain in the 1950s: ---------------- Snow compared Britain unfavourably with the US and USSR, in terms of numbers of young people who remained in education to the age of 18 and above. The British system, he argued, forced children to specialise at an unusually early age, with snobbery dictating that the children would be pushed towards the "traditional culture" and the professions, rather than science and industry. Arnold was responding – with infinitely more courtesy than Leavis – to an earlier lecture by T H Huxley, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his rumbustious defence of evolution, who argued that science was as valid an intellectual training as the classics. It was not a popular opinion. As late as my own childhood in the Sixties, the bright boys were expected to read classics at Oxford, and the less bright steered towards the labs. ---------------- I think 2 things are worth remembering about any such debate: 1.) as a civilization becomes more advanced, the people in it tend to become more specialized. If you grew up in 1700, it was perhaps possible to read all of the classics, in literature (Homer) and medicine (Galen) and philosophy (Aristotle) and physics (Aristotle) and math (Euclid). But nowadays it is impossible to study every branch of knowledge to any meaningful depth. 2.) for all of the obvious disadvantages that come with specialization, there are also many advantages (indeed, that is why specialization exists). A modern potter has a fantastic array of choices regarding materials, which did not exist even 50 years ago. A historian today must pick a narrow speciality, as there are now many millions of documents to look through to be considered an expert -- indeed, I have a friend who has specialized in the American Civil War, and he once said "If you have only read 1,000 books about the American Civil War, then you are just an amateur." And in the old days the village blacksmith might have known how to make both a hoe and a horse hoof shoe but a modern mechanic needs to specialize regarding devices (cars? domestic machines? textile plants? telecommunications?) but then also pick a sub-specialty (if a car mechanic, then foreign or domestic? Perhaps a few particular brands). There is an economic benefit to specialization. I worry that gets forgotten when this debate comes up.
- padobson 13y ago
  This is great, you summed up every idea I had while reading this in a way that was far more articulate than I could have. I only have one thing to add: If there is an economic and even, possibly, a societal benefit to specialization, and The Two Cultures idea complains about the rift between the humanities and the sciences, then has someone properly updated the material to show how much more specialized society is becoming? The Wiki article talks about a possible third culture, but it seems to me you could become fairly deeply specialized in business/economics without ever needing a classical humanities education or a classical math/science education.
- msluyter 13y ago
  Specialization is something I often wonder about. Consider the following analogy: the sum of human knowledge is represented by a giant circle (though not necessarily perfectly circular in shape). Anything inside the circle is that which is known; anything outside is unknown. You're born in the center, and as you learn, the set of what you know extends towards the edge. As you mentioned, at some point in time, you could know all of the circle; now you can only know some subset of it. If you're a scientist or whatnot, you actively move the edge outward. My question is, will we ever reach a point where it takes so long to move from the center to the edge that we'll eventually stop making progress? In mathematics, it already takes considerable time to reach the knowledge boundary (30 years or so?) Will we reach a point where it takes greater than a lifetime? Or, is it possible to jump to the edge by skipping some foundational knowledge (could you do higher math without knowing, say, calculus, for example?) What are the risks of doing so? And ultimately, how does a complex society hang together when each person has (at most) knowledge of a tiny subset of available knowledge?
  - lkrubner 13y ago
    You get at the degree to which all human knowledge is limited by the central nervous system that humans possess. There must be some finite number of axons and dendrites that can be stuffed into the cranium of a human, and even if there is a sophisticated system of compression and/or multiplexing in use, we can probably assume that a finite amount of axons and dendrites can only carry a finite amount of information. Thinking of the physical limits on human knowledge leads to a model of knowing that puts the central nervous system at the center of our our experience of the universe. There may be an absolute reality that exists outside of us, but since all of us are human (I assume) we must admit that our knowledge of that absolute reality will forever be shaped by that central nervous system. The limits of the central nervous system cause humans to look for models of reality that fit well with those limits. For instance, there is The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_... Because of the (very very finite) limits on working memory, the human mind leans heavily on heuristics that allow simple models to stand in for the complexity of reality. No human being could easily work with a physics model that had 1 million variables: therefore we tend to look for models that have a handful of variables, yet still give us reasonably good estimates. Just yesterday there was posted to Hacker News an article about a slinky, and that article contains a good demonstration of the kind of simplifying assumptions we often make to reason about problems that are too complex to approach directly: "I decided to idealize the problem like this: the slinky is an ideal spring with mass distributed uniformly throughout. It is also a spring that can pass through itself. These assumptions make analyzing the problem easier." And of course, we often present students with problems where the difficulty of achieving perfect measurements of variables is simply assumed away. For instance in this exercise: http://www.uta.edu/ce/nsf/ret/docs/lesson-plans/reynolds08-5.pdf http://www.uta.edu/ce/nsf/ret/docs/lesson-plans/reynolds08-5... The important things to measure are: force, deflection, torque, moment of inertia, stress and strain. Often, in real life situations, engineers have no way to perfectly measure these things. Large engineering projects proceed with various methods for getting reasonable estimates: known upper and lower bounds, prototypes, isolated testing of particular connections, etc. The smartest people alive never get to the point where they really know reality, they only know estimates. I do not mean to make this point overly philosophical, I am talking about practicalities here: there may be an absolute reality that we can know directly, but when it comes to doing anything useful, we develop estimates using fairly simple models, models which are well suited to the limits of our minds. In some sense, the models we build about the world are always simplified models that make it easier for our limited central nervous systems to make estimates about the world. I just offered a physics examples of simplifying assumptions, but I could also focus on the humanities. Perhaps your life's goal is to figure out the "real" reasons why the French Revolution happened, or why Communism was so popular for so long, or why the Industrial Revolution happened -- the possibilities are as limitless as the combination of all the variables in action over the course of centuries, the psychology and biology of billions of people, and the technology that existed at the time, and the weather and the crops and the economy and the religions and the amount of sunlight reaching the earth and everything else, combining exponentially to some very large sum. You might research the issue for 40 years, but in the end, if you want to draw some useful conclusion, something that others can benefit from, something that might influence policymakers in the future, you will need to come up with a simplified model that focuses on the handful of variables that you regard as the most important. There is another model of knowing, which takes for granted the absolute reality outside of us. That model is well summarized by this XKCD comic: http://xkcd.com/435/ http://xkcd.com/435/ In that model, biology is a sub-branch of physics, which is a sub-branch of math. However, if you focus on the limits of the central nervous system as the practical limit of human knowing, then you end up with a model where physics and math (and everything else) is a sub-branch of biology, specifically, a sub-branch of neurology. Even the two models of human knowing that I describe in this post to Hacker News can be thought of as sub-branches of neurology. All human knowing is, in some sense, a clever hack of our neurology, and certainly all heuristics and models are hacks which adapt to the limits of that neurology. There is nothing wrong with simple models, so long as they allow us to get useful work done. But I think our reliance on simple models tells us why specialization is so important. If a person can study a subject for 40 years and, having read tens of thousands of documents, still distills the data down to a small handful of variables, a model that gracefully adapts to the limits of the human mind, then we must admit that it is the rare human being who goes much beyond simple models. In those cases where simple models don't work, and where there only thing that works is a model with hundreds or thousands of variables, then clearly, achieving an understanding of such models must surely be the work of a lifetime. You need to get to studying when you are 20, and you need to specialize, because when you are 50 you will still be only approaching the ideal, never quite there, only approaching it, still learning more.
netcan 13y ago
"The number 2 is a very dangerous number: that is why the dialectic is a dangerous process. Attempts to divide anything into two ought to be regarded with much suspicion"
ArekDymalski 13y ago
Very inspiring. I just wonder if it's just the tone of Wikipedia article or does this lecture really suggests that science > humanities?
- rmk2 13y ago
  Why do you think it was posted here, without comment, just as a simple wikipedia link? The whole point is that it is widely understood as the quintessential idea of the sciences finally overcoming the constraints enforced upon them by the obsolete humanities. The whole emphasis on the modern and technological development paints exactly that picture, tying the science/humanities dichotomy firmly into a progress narrative which necessarily means that the modern (sciences) will have to overcome (and thus leave behind) the old, i.e. the humanities.
  - DanI-S 13y ago
    I posted the article. I don't feel that it makes sense to say that one side of the dichotomy is superior to the other. The main point is that the dichotomy is false.
    - rmk2 13y ago
      I do not disagree. However, I have learned my lesson from previous discussions on this site, and I am quite sure that most of the upvotes-without-comments do not simply upvote because they think that this dichotomy is something to be questioned and doubted.
      - DanI-S 13y ago
        In retrospect, I shouldn't be so surprised that people here have chosen to read it as proclaiming Science as being superior. That doesn't stop it from being disappointing, and even a little disturbing. Many people here will become leaders of tomorrow; I hope they are able to pick up some intellectual maturity along the way.
    - theoh 13y ago
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 13y ago
> "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'm not convinced that either of these is really important for a general education. I think educators fixate on romantic ideals of what is important to know while ignoring the subject matter that is relevant to ordinary life. Where I grew up, the required high school curriculum includes a lot about ancient civilizations, creative writing, chemistry and physics, and algebra. It didn't teach how to write a persuasive proposal in a business context, string together a logically-sound argument, or form inferences from empirical data, and taught very little about contemporary politics or recent American or world history. It didn't teach how to mediate an interpersonal conflict at work, delegate a task, or effectively communicate an idea in a presentation. I lament that I spent so much time "learning" in school and have so little to show for it. I know about different kinds of cloud formations, which extinct native American cultures lived where, the difference between the soil composition in different parts of the country, spectral lines in different gasses, etc. This is trivia. I see the argument made by Snow as simply lamenting that there is under-emphasis on one particular set of romanticized unnecessary knowledge and over-emphasis on a different set. Most of physics, chemistry, etc, are neither directly relevant to your typical person nor readily digestible as being illustrative of more general principles that are relevant. A core educational curriculum would be better served teaching more fundamental concepts directly: scientific method, statistical methods, data analysis, etc.
- rmk2 13y ago
  What you propose is to simply replace the dichotomy science/humanities with another, that of applied/theoretical, which necessarily moves the division and fault lines. That way, in addition to the humanities, a number of theoretical subjects also fall off the cliff, namely theoretical physics, non-applied parts of mathematics, logic etc. This, in fact, does not transcend the dichotomy, it makes it worse by imposing additional limitations and essentially directly applying useful/useless as a criterion.
  - rayiner 13y ago
matthewtoast 13y ago
Mentioned in this article is "The Third Culture" by John Brockman of Edge.org. That book is worth a read, even nearing 20 years in publication. It introduces the ideas of several fascinating scientists (among them Dan Dennett and Lynn Margulis) whose work manages to transcend the stated "two cultures," bringing science to bear on what were traditionally seen as "humanist" problems and vice-versa. These are thinkers who've taken responsibility for bringing their ideas directly to the public, rather than waiting for writers, journalists and, ahem, "insight pornographers" (if you follow HN) to do it for them. I first read it after obtaining my English degree, and it felt like I'd been shot with a sudden antidote to a haze of intellectual nonsense. I wonder how well it contrasts against the current trend in glossy pop science, which I suspect may be the flip-side of the same coin.
- rmk2 13y ago
  The idea of a (re-)integration of the two sides of Snow's dichotomy (alongside a critique of the concept of "The Two Cultures") can be found in Herbert Marcuse's essays[1]. There, Marcuse talks about the sciences' funding by the military-industrial complex and the position of the humanities as a potentially regulating (e.g. ethical) moderator to curb an overbroad influence on the sciences by forces outside the disciplines (or system). [1]: Herbert Marcuse: Bemerkungen zu einer Neubestimmung der Kultur (Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture), in: Daedalus. Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Winter 1965.
3rd3 13y ago
Feynman referred to this issue at the end of his second Messenger Lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0xTfdt6qw&list=PL71D034A47B46E643&feature=player_detailpage#t=3022 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0xTfdt6qw&list=PL71D034A47B... Transcript: .. To summarize, I would use the words of Jeans, who said that "the Great Architect seems to be a mathematician". To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. C.P. Snow talked about two cultures. I really think that those two cultures separate people who have and people who have not had this experience of understanding mathematics well enough to appreciate nature once. It is too bad that it has to be mathematics, and that mathematics is hard for some people. It is reputed - I do not know if it is true - that when one of the kings was trying to learn geometry from Euclid he complained that it was difficult. And Euclid said, "There is no royal road to geometry". And there is no royal road. Physicists cannot make a conversion to any other language. If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in. She offers her information only in one form; we are not so unhumble as to demand that she change before we pay any attention. All the intellectual arguments that you can make will not communicate to deaf ears what the experience of music really is. In the same way all the intellectual arguments in the world will not convey an understanding of nature to those of "the other culture". Philosophers may try to teach you by telling you qualitatively about nature. I am trying to describe her. But it is not getting across because it is impossible. Perhaps it is because their horizons are limited in the way that some people are able to imagine that the center of the universe is man...
rokhayakebe 13y ago
I think most of our problems come from the misuse and misunderstanding of two words: debate and dialectic. Western culture DEBATES every effing thing so much so that presidential candidates have a series of publicized DEBATES where they each defend their plan to lead a nation. If we were instead taught to have DIALECTICS and frankly try and remove the word DEBATE from our dialogues, we could start to solve big problems as the author suggests. However everyone is darn convinced their knowledge is superior. Of course the irony is that it appears scientists are (in general) more dogmatic then any other group.
maerF0x0 13y ago
Read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance for an enjoyable (500pg) way to explore these "two cultures".
lkozma 13y ago
There is also a follow-up "The Two Cultures of Mathematics" by Timothy Gowers. I found it a crystal clear explanation of the differences between the schools of "problem solving" and "theory building" - and particularly of what really motivates "combinatorics". https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf‎ https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf‎
cstross 13y ago
Key point: for decades in the UK, school education forked at age 16 -- the point at which you specialized. Prior to age 16 you'd be studying for exams in 6-10 subjects: originally 'O' (ordinary) levels, then GCSEs. (School leaving age was 16.) If you wanted to continue and eventually go to university, you then went on to study for 2 years for 'A' (advanced) level exams -- roughly equivalent to year 1 or 2 at a US university. (British taught university degrees were typically 3 year courses.) However, this was intensive enough that typically you'd only take 3 or 4 'A' level subjects. This forced early specialization -- dropping either all science or all arts subjects. (This system ran from the late 1940s through the 1990s, subject to fine-tuning. So, for example, in 1981-83 I was taking four 'A' level subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, and 'general studies' (a vague attempt to shoe-horn the entirety of the liberal arts field into one quarter of the student's time).)
revscat 13y ago
This seems to ignore a rather important the a rather important third culture: the free-market capitalist. Why was this not mentioned? It is certainly an important one insofar as western culture is concerned, and has risen to become far more important and influential than the other two.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  I don't think capitalists are a separate category in and of themselves - they invariably belong in one camp or the other. Elon Musk is a scientist. Andy Warhol is an artist. Both are known for savvy and shrewd capitalistic exploitation of their talents. A capitalist who is neither scientist nor artist is not much of a capitalist at all, for he/she has nothing upon which to capitalize. All business, at the end of the day, is the exploitation of an art or a science to fulfill a need.
  - revscat 13y ago
    Mitch McConnell. Michael Bloomberg. The Koch brothers. Vladimir Putin. The NSA. There are many, many political actors which shape Western culture that this essay does not account for.
rch 13y ago
"The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are." -- http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/
bchjam 13y ago
"The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are." http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/
everyone 13y ago
Personally I think something is either rational and evidence based (or at least attempting to be) or it is not. I would posit that this divide seems apparent simply because scientists and humanities people are for some reason grouped together in the same institutions. Imagine if half of CERNS facility was given over to say, cheesemaking, I'm sure a similar dichotomy would be commented upon.
peter303 13y ago
In my life a see a large assymetry between the cultures. A fiar number of scientists/engineers I know are good in the arts, theater, music etc. I dont se as many humanities types as familar with science. I observed this MIT, Harvar,and Stanford where I have degrees and took courses.
graycat 13y ago
Snow's Two Cultures was something I loudly cheered when I first read about its points and for years afterward. But now the book and the OP strike me as not well considered. Net, the 'humanities' have a role much more important than is commonly or easily described. It took me a while to understand this point. Sure, as an insecure a young nerd facing the world, both nature and society, I wanted 'control' of my life, in particular, 'security', and for those wanted the power of 'truth' and didn't want to settle for anything less solid than, say, plane geometry or, in a pinch, mathematical physics. Of course then only some of this could I articulate. So, something like 'The Song of Hiawatha' with "By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water ..." seemed to me as mostly nonsense and gibberish and at best maybe something lightly entertaining but nothing like the 'truth' for the power I was seeking. And maybe I was correct, but I'm reluctant to return to that poem to be more sure! Eventually I concluded that (1) there is a lot about the world, where I was trying to get control and security, that was too complicated and subtle for mathematics and/or mathematical physics to do me any good and (2) that part of the world was so important to my life that, even though I didn't have solid tools to address it, I still had to handle it in some sense. Maybe 'The Song of Hiawatha' wouldn't help me handle those complexities, but eventually I discovered that some parts of the humanities could to at least a useful extent. Generally my central criticism of the humanities was that, in strong contrast with mathematics and mathematical physics, and, really, most of engineering, technology, medical science, medicine, and even law, the humanities (1) did not make clear just what they were claiming was true and (2) for any claims nearly never provided convincing evidence. While these remain valid criticisms, amazingly in places the humanities can be important nevertheless. Still, I was often torqued at the humanities: E.g., in, say, the English departments, a common claim was that English literature had a lot of good knowledge of people and would help readers understand people. I concluded, and still do, that maybe a little. Once I discovered the E. Fromm, The Art of Loving, awash in real practical expertise, well considered and formulated, about people, I concluded that Fromm was a good example of progress on information for understanding people. For more on love specifically, actually some of the relevant articles on Wikipedia seem quite good -- at least in places they have explained some of what I figured out more or less independently, at enormous cost, and added a lot more. So, it is possible to get some understanding of people, but for this purpose I would mostly set aside English literature as too thin and/or even misleading. For understanding people, I'd say that the most important contribution of English literature to understanding people is that some people like English literature. The crack in my scorn that got me started with the humanities classical music. A brilliant person once said, "Music doesn't mean anything.". Well, maybe, maybe not, but it still can be useful for someone wanting to understand people or even themselves, amazingly. Classical music was able to 'reach' me in part because there were usually few or no words to take literally and, thus, argue with. Well, it turns out that classical music has something of a language, especially about human emotions. If want to understand people, the biggest chapter is human emotions. Classical music is an example of a common definition of art as in the communications, interpretation of human experience, emotion. Well, it can be easy enough to find parts of classical music that are quite effective meeting this definition of art. So, here there is some progress in understanding humans. One description of much of the media is vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment which sounds next to worthless for the audience and, maybe, is, but we can reduce this description to vicarious emotional experience and, then, learn about people by feeling their emotions -- and art has a lot of this and, thus, can help a person understand people. For some value for the audience, good art is supposed to be universal and, then, often a person in the audience can see where the art is describing things much as in their life from which that person can conclude, "I'm not the only one who has encountered such a thing. That thing is not unique to me. Whatever I did to make that thing happen, others did the same, and maybe some of the main causes are not really from me.". E.g., a few weeks ago I did a search for a girl I knew and fell in love with in high school. Yup, the Internet showed me a scan of a high school annual with her picture as a Homecoming Queen candidate. To me she was always the prettiest human female I ever saw in person or otherwise. Then many of those days with her, decades ago, came back to me as if they were last week. She was my first love and, apparently, burned into my brain -- I can no more forget her than I can forget my own name. Well, we were young: We saw each other for 18 months and started when she was just 12 and in the seventh grade and I was 14 and in the ninth grade. I was a nerd, socially awkward, and not good at understanding the emotions of a young woman, and we were both afraid of rejection. So we were to afraid to communicate clearly and accumulated quite a list of false beliefs about each other that had us making mistakes in our relationship. At one point, some of her mistakes got me to draw some seriously wrong conclusions, and I walked away from her. I don't think that there was anything seriously wrong, and everything wrong was based just on mis-communications, My heart was broken, and I later discovered that so was hers. Then there's Wagner's opera Lohengrin, first performed in 1850, about a knight, Lohengrin, of the Holy Grail who marries sweet Elsa. Yes, the Wagner "Bridal Chorus" or "Wedding March" music is from their marriage in that opera. Elsa is misled by an evil witch, makes a mistake, and Lohengrin is forced to walk away from his new bride. So, Lohengrin told me that I was not the first guy to walk away from the young woman he loved and that such things go back to at least 1850. Also, Lohengrin and I made similar mistakes: We asked too much of the understanding of our women and should have had arranged a less 'brittle' situation. Nerd guys: Listen up here and learn. As good art communicates emotions about the human experience, members of the audience can begin to learn more about other people. The best art, in the humanities, can be astoundingly effective in communicating about humans; we don't want to be without the results; and technical fields are so far no substitutes. Took me a while to see these points.
rasengan0 13y ago
1992 Neil Postman http://youtu.be/KbAPtGYiRvg http://youtu.be/KbAPtGYiRvg Introduction "In 1959, Sir Charles Snow published The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly SOS

149 points by DanI-S 13y ago

For a PDF version of the lecture, see here: http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/2cultures/Rede-lecture-2-cultures.pdf http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/2cultures/Rede-lecture-2... This is quite a gem. I'm surprised I haven't seen it before.

rmk2 13y ago

Well, thankfully that problem will soon be solved in England! The government has enacted a programme that should soon bear fruit, thanks to the introduction of "impact" and weighing publications in a new, innovative, carefully considered and consensual way. Soon, it will be the country of one culture (since only biased pundits would dare to say: the country of no culture), finally correcting the horrible mistakes of the past!

lkrubner 13y ago

Much has been written about this article. For instance: ---------------- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5273453/Fifty-years-on-CP-Snows-Two-Cultures-are-united-in-desperation.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5273453/Fifty-years-on... Such was the intensity of debate that it might be supposed that these were age-old themes: but in fact, the idea of separating academic disciplines into groups known as science and humanities was no older than the 19th century. The term "scientist" was only coined in 1833, and it was not until 1882 that another Rede Lecturer, Matthew Arnold, discussed – under the title of "Literature and Science" – whether or not a classical education was still relevant in an age of great scientific and technical advance. ---------------- There are also many themes in this article that are specific to Britain in the 1950s: ---------------- Snow compared Britain unfavourably with the US and USSR, in terms of numbers of young people who remained in education to the age of 18 and above. The British system, he argued, forced children to specialise at an unusually early age, with snobbery dictating that the children would be pushed towards the "traditional culture" and the professions, rather than science and industry. Arnold was responding – with infinitely more courtesy than Leavis – to an earlier lecture by T H Huxley, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his rumbustious defence of evolution, who argued that science was as valid an intellectual training as the classics. It was not a popular opinion. As late as my own childhood in the Sixties, the bright boys were expected to read classics at Oxford, and the less bright steered towards the labs. ---------------- I think 2 things are worth remembering about any such debate: 1.) as a civilization becomes more advanced, the people in it tend to become more specialized. If you grew up in 1700, it was perhaps possible to read all of the classics, in literature (Homer) and medicine (Galen) and philosophy (Aristotle) and physics (Aristotle) and math (Euclid). But nowadays it is impossible to study every branch of knowledge to any meaningful depth. 2.) for all of the obvious disadvantages that come with specialization, there are also many advantages (indeed, that is why specialization exists). A modern potter has a fantastic array of choices regarding materials, which did not exist even 50 years ago. A historian today must pick a narrow speciality, as there are now many millions of documents to look through to be considered an expert -- indeed, I have a friend who has specialized in the American Civil War, and he once said "If you have only read 1,000 books about the American Civil War, then you are just an amateur." And in the old days the village blacksmith might have known how to make both a hoe and a horse hoof shoe but a modern mechanic needs to specialize regarding devices (cars? domestic machines? textile plants? telecommunications?) but then also pick a sub-specialty (if a car mechanic, then foreign or domestic? Perhaps a few particular brands). There is an economic benefit to specialization. I worry that gets forgotten when this debate comes up.

padobson 13y ago
This is great, you summed up every idea I had while reading this in a way that was far more articulate than I could have. I only have one thing to add: If there is an economic and even, possibly, a societal benefit to specialization, and The Two Cultures idea complains about the rift between the humanities and the sciences, then has someone properly updated the material to show how much more specialized society is becoming? The Wiki article talks about a possible third culture, but it seems to me you could become fairly deeply specialized in business/economics without ever needing a classical humanities education or a classical math/science education.
msluyter 13y ago
Specialization is something I often wonder about. Consider the following analogy: the sum of human knowledge is represented by a giant circle (though not necessarily perfectly circular in shape). Anything inside the circle is that which is known; anything outside is unknown. You're born in the center, and as you learn, the set of what you know extends towards the edge. As you mentioned, at some point in time, you could know all of the circle; now you can only know some subset of it. If you're a scientist or whatnot, you actively move the edge outward. My question is, will we ever reach a point where it takes so long to move from the center to the edge that we'll eventually stop making progress? In mathematics, it already takes considerable time to reach the knowledge boundary (30 years or so?) Will we reach a point where it takes greater than a lifetime? Or, is it possible to jump to the edge by skipping some foundational knowledge (could you do higher math without knowing, say, calculus, for example?) What are the risks of doing so? And ultimately, how does a complex society hang together when each person has (at most) knowledge of a tiny subset of available knowledge?
- lkrubner 13y ago
  You get at the degree to which all human knowledge is limited by the central nervous system that humans possess. There must be some finite number of axons and dendrites that can be stuffed into the cranium of a human, and even if there is a sophisticated system of compression and/or multiplexing in use, we can probably assume that a finite amount of axons and dendrites can only carry a finite amount of information. Thinking of the physical limits on human knowledge leads to a model of knowing that puts the central nervous system at the center of our our experience of the universe. There may be an absolute reality that exists outside of us, but since all of us are human (I assume) we must admit that our knowledge of that absolute reality will forever be shaped by that central nervous system. The limits of the central nervous system cause humans to look for models of reality that fit well with those limits. For instance, there is The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_... Because of the (very very finite) limits on working memory, the human mind leans heavily on heuristics that allow simple models to stand in for the complexity of reality. No human being could easily work with a physics model that had 1 million variables: therefore we tend to look for models that have a handful of variables, yet still give us reasonably good estimates. Just yesterday there was posted to Hacker News an article about a slinky, and that article contains a good demonstration of the kind of simplifying assumptions we often make to reason about problems that are too complex to approach directly: "I decided to idealize the problem like this: the slinky is an ideal spring with mass distributed uniformly throughout. It is also a spring that can pass through itself. These assumptions make analyzing the problem easier." And of course, we often present students with problems where the difficulty of achieving perfect measurements of variables is simply assumed away. For instance in this exercise: http://www.uta.edu/ce/nsf/ret/docs/lesson-plans/reynolds08-5.pdf http://www.uta.edu/ce/nsf/ret/docs/lesson-plans/reynolds08-5... The important things to measure are: force, deflection, torque, moment of inertia, stress and strain. Often, in real life situations, engineers have no way to perfectly measure these things. Large engineering projects proceed with various methods for getting reasonable estimates: known upper and lower bounds, prototypes, isolated testing of particular connections, etc. The smartest people alive never get to the point where they really know reality, they only know estimates. I do not mean to make this point overly philosophical, I am talking about practicalities here: there may be an absolute reality that we can know directly, but when it comes to doing anything useful, we develop estimates using fairly simple models, models which are well suited to the limits of our minds. In some sense, the models we build about the world are always simplified models that make it easier for our limited central nervous systems to make estimates about the world. I just offered a physics examples of simplifying assumptions, but I could also focus on the humanities. Perhaps your life's goal is to figure out the "real" reasons why the French Revolution happened, or why Communism was so popular for so long, or why the Industrial Revolution happened -- the possibilities are as limitless as the combination of all the variables in action over the course of centuries, the psychology and biology of billions of people, and the technology that existed at the time, and the weather and the crops and the economy and the religions and the amount of sunlight reaching the earth and everything else, combining exponentially to some very large sum. You might research the issue for 40 years, but in the end, if you want to draw some useful conclusion, something that others can benefit from, something that might influence policymakers in the future, you will need to come up with a simplified model that focuses on the handful of variables that you regard as the most important. There is another model of knowing, which takes for granted the absolute reality outside of us. That model is well summarized by this XKCD comic: http://xkcd.com/435/ http://xkcd.com/435/ In that model, biology is a sub-branch of physics, which is a sub-branch of math. However, if you focus on the limits of the central nervous system as the practical limit of human knowing, then you end up with a model where physics and math (and everything else) is a sub-branch of biology, specifically, a sub-branch of neurology. Even the two models of human knowing that I describe in this post to Hacker News can be thought of as sub-branches of neurology. All human knowing is, in some sense, a clever hack of our neurology, and certainly all heuristics and models are hacks which adapt to the limits of that neurology. There is nothing wrong with simple models, so long as they allow us to get useful work done. But I think our reliance on simple models tells us why specialization is so important. If a person can study a subject for 40 years and, having read tens of thousands of documents, still distills the data down to a small handful of variables, a model that gracefully adapts to the limits of the human mind, then we must admit that it is the rare human being who goes much beyond simple models. In those cases where simple models don't work, and where there only thing that works is a model with hundreds or thousands of variables, then clearly, achieving an understanding of such models must surely be the work of a lifetime. You need to get to studying when you are 20, and you need to specialize, because when you are 50 you will still be only approaching the ideal, never quite there, only approaching it, still learning more.

netcan 13y ago

"The number 2 is a very dangerous number: that is why the dialectic is a dangerous process. Attempts to divide anything into two ought to be regarded with much suspicion"

ArekDymalski 13y ago

Very inspiring. I just wonder if it's just the tone of Wikipedia article or does this lecture really suggests that science > humanities?

rmk2 13y ago
Why do you think it was posted here, without comment, just as a simple wikipedia link? The whole point is that it is widely understood as the quintessential idea of the sciences finally overcoming the constraints enforced upon them by the obsolete humanities. The whole emphasis on the modern and technological development paints exactly that picture, tying the science/humanities dichotomy firmly into a progress narrative which necessarily means that the modern (sciences) will have to overcome (and thus leave behind) the old, i.e. the humanities.
- DanI-S 13y ago
  I posted the article. I don't feel that it makes sense to say that one side of the dichotomy is superior to the other. The main point is that the dichotomy is false.
  - rmk2 13y ago
    I do not disagree. However, I have learned my lesson from previous discussions on this site, and I am quite sure that most of the upvotes-without-comments do not simply upvote because they think that this dichotomy is something to be questioned and doubted.
    - DanI-S 13y ago
      In retrospect, I shouldn't be so surprised that people here have chosen to read it as proclaiming Science as being superior. That doesn't stop it from being disappointing, and even a little disturbing. Many people here will become leaders of tomorrow; I hope they are able to pick up some intellectual maturity along the way.
  - theoh 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

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rayiner 13y ago

> "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'm not convinced that either of these is really important for a general education. I think educators fixate on romantic ideals of what is important to know while ignoring the subject matter that is relevant to ordinary life. Where I grew up, the required high school curriculum includes a lot about ancient civilizations, creative writing, chemistry and physics, and algebra. It didn't teach how to write a persuasive proposal in a business context, string together a logically-sound argument, or form inferences from empirical data, and taught very little about contemporary politics or recent American or world history. It didn't teach how to mediate an interpersonal conflict at work, delegate a task, or effectively communicate an idea in a presentation. I lament that I spent so much time "learning" in school and have so little to show for it. I know about different kinds of cloud formations, which extinct native American cultures lived where, the difference between the soil composition in different parts of the country, spectral lines in different gasses, etc. This is trivia. I see the argument made by Snow as simply lamenting that there is under-emphasis on one particular set of romanticized unnecessary knowledge and over-emphasis on a different set. Most of physics, chemistry, etc, are neither directly relevant to your typical person nor readily digestible as being illustrative of more general principles that are relevant. A core educational curriculum would be better served teaching more fundamental concepts directly: scientific method, statistical methods, data analysis, etc.

rmk2 13y ago
What you propose is to simply replace the dichotomy science/humanities with another, that of applied/theoretical, which necessarily moves the division and fault lines. That way, in addition to the humanities, a number of theoretical subjects also fall off the cliff, namely theoretical physics, non-applied parts of mathematics, logic etc. This, in fact, does not transcend the dichotomy, it makes it worse by imposing additional limitations and essentially directly applying useful/useless as a criterion.
- rayiner 13y ago

matthewtoast 13y ago

Mentioned in this article is "The Third Culture" by John Brockman of Edge.org. That book is worth a read, even nearing 20 years in publication. It introduces the ideas of several fascinating scientists (among them Dan Dennett and Lynn Margulis) whose work manages to transcend the stated "two cultures," bringing science to bear on what were traditionally seen as "humanist" problems and vice-versa. These are thinkers who've taken responsibility for bringing their ideas directly to the public, rather than waiting for writers, journalists and, ahem, "insight pornographers" (if you follow HN) to do it for them. I first read it after obtaining my English degree, and it felt like I'd been shot with a sudden antidote to a haze of intellectual nonsense. I wonder how well it contrasts against the current trend in glossy pop science, which I suspect may be the flip-side of the same coin.

rmk2 13y ago
The idea of a (re-)integration of the two sides of Snow's dichotomy (alongside a critique of the concept of "The Two Cultures") can be found in Herbert Marcuse's essays[1]. There, Marcuse talks about the sciences' funding by the military-industrial complex and the position of the humanities as a potentially regulating (e.g. ethical) moderator to curb an overbroad influence on the sciences by forces outside the disciplines (or system). [1]: Herbert Marcuse: Bemerkungen zu einer Neubestimmung der Kultur (Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture), in: Daedalus. Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Winter 1965.

3rd3 13y ago

Feynman referred to this issue at the end of his second Messenger Lecture: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0xTfdt6qw&list=PL71D034A47B46E643&feature=player_detailpage#t=3022 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0xTfdt6qw&list=PL71D034A47B... Transcript: .. To summarize, I would use the words of Jeans, who said that "the Great Architect seems to be a mathematician". To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. C.P. Snow talked about two cultures. I really think that those two cultures separate people who have and people who have not had this experience of understanding mathematics well enough to appreciate nature once. It is too bad that it has to be mathematics, and that mathematics is hard for some people. It is reputed - I do not know if it is true - that when one of the kings was trying to learn geometry from Euclid he complained that it was difficult. And Euclid said, "There is no royal road to geometry". And there is no royal road. Physicists cannot make a conversion to any other language. If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in. She offers her information only in one form; we are not so unhumble as to demand that she change before we pay any attention. All the intellectual arguments that you can make will not communicate to deaf ears what the experience of music really is. In the same way all the intellectual arguments in the world will not convey an understanding of nature to those of "the other culture". Philosophers may try to teach you by telling you qualitatively about nature. I am trying to describe her. But it is not getting across because it is impossible. Perhaps it is because their horizons are limited in the way that some people are able to imagine that the center of the universe is man...

rokhayakebe 13y ago

I think most of our problems come from the misuse and misunderstanding of two words: debate and dialectic. Western culture DEBATES every effing thing so much so that presidential candidates have a series of publicized DEBATES where they each defend their plan to lead a nation. If we were instead taught to have DIALECTICS and frankly try and remove the word DEBATE from our dialogues, we could start to solve big problems as the author suggests. However everyone is darn convinced their knowledge is superior. Of course the irony is that it appears scientists are (in general) more dogmatic then any other group.

maerF0x0 13y ago

Read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance for an enjoyable (500pg) way to explore these "two cultures".

lkozma 13y ago

There is also a follow-up "The Two Cultures of Mathematics" by Timothy Gowers. I found it a crystal clear explanation of the differences between the schools of "problem solving" and "theory building" - and particularly of what really motivates "combinatorics". https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf‎ https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf‎

cstross 13y ago

Key point: for decades in the UK, school education forked at age 16 -- the point at which you specialized. Prior to age 16 you'd be studying for exams in 6-10 subjects: originally 'O' (ordinary) levels, then GCSEs. (School leaving age was 16.) If you wanted to continue and eventually go to university, you then went on to study for 2 years for 'A' (advanced) level exams -- roughly equivalent to year 1 or 2 at a US university. (British taught university degrees were typically 3 year courses.) However, this was intensive enough that typically you'd only take 3 or 4 'A' level subjects. This forced early specialization -- dropping either all science or all arts subjects. (This system ran from the late 1940s through the 1990s, subject to fine-tuning. So, for example, in 1981-83 I was taking four 'A' level subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, and 'general studies' (a vague attempt to shoe-horn the entirety of the liberal arts field into one quarter of the student's time).)

revscat 13y ago

This seems to ignore a rather important the a rather important third culture: the free-market capitalist. Why was this not mentioned? It is certainly an important one insofar as western culture is concerned, and has risen to become far more important and influential than the other two.

potatolicious 13y ago
I don't think capitalists are a separate category in and of themselves - they invariably belong in one camp or the other. Elon Musk is a scientist. Andy Warhol is an artist. Both are known for savvy and shrewd capitalistic exploitation of their talents. A capitalist who is neither scientist nor artist is not much of a capitalist at all, for he/she has nothing upon which to capitalize. All business, at the end of the day, is the exploitation of an art or a science to fulfill a need.
- revscat 13y ago
  Mitch McConnell. Michael Bloomberg. The Koch brothers. Vladimir Putin. The NSA. There are many, many political actors which shape Western culture that this essay does not account for.

rch 13y ago

"The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are." -- http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/

bchjam 13y ago

"The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are." http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/

everyone 13y ago

Personally I think something is either rational and evidence based (or at least attempting to be) or it is not. I would posit that this divide seems apparent simply because scientists and humanities people are for some reason grouped together in the same institutions. Imagine if half of CERNS facility was given over to say, cheesemaking, I'm sure a similar dichotomy would be commented upon.

peter303 13y ago

In my life a see a large assymetry between the cultures. A fiar number of scientists/engineers I know are good in the arts, theater, music etc. I dont se as many humanities types as familar with science. I observed this MIT, Harvar,and Stanford where I have degrees and took courses.

graycat 13y ago

Snow's Two Cultures was something I loudly cheered when I first read about its points and for years afterward. But now the book and the OP strike me as not well considered. Net, the 'humanities' have a role much more important than is commonly or easily described. It took me a while to understand this point. Sure, as an insecure a young nerd facing the world, both nature and society, I wanted 'control' of my life, in particular, 'security', and for those wanted the power of 'truth' and didn't want to settle for anything less solid than, say, plane geometry or, in a pinch, mathematical physics. Of course then only some of this could I articulate. So, something like 'The Song of Hiawatha' with "By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water ..." seemed to me as mostly nonsense and gibberish and at best maybe something lightly entertaining but nothing like the 'truth' for the power I was seeking. And maybe I was correct, but I'm reluctant to return to that poem to be more sure! Eventually I concluded that (1) there is a lot about the world, where I was trying to get control and security, that was too complicated and subtle for mathematics and/or mathematical physics to do me any good and (2) that part of the world was so important to my life that, even though I didn't have solid tools to address it, I still had to handle it in some sense. Maybe 'The Song of Hiawatha' wouldn't help me handle those complexities, but eventually I discovered that some parts of the humanities could to at least a useful extent. Generally my central criticism of the humanities was that, in strong contrast with mathematics and mathematical physics, and, really, most of engineering, technology, medical science, medicine, and even law, the humanities (1) did not make clear just what they were claiming was true and (2) for any claims nearly never provided convincing evidence. While these remain valid criticisms, amazingly in places the humanities can be important nevertheless. Still, I was often torqued at the humanities: E.g., in, say, the English departments, a common claim was that English literature had a lot of good knowledge of people and would help readers understand people. I concluded, and still do, that maybe a little. Once I discovered the E. Fromm, The Art of Loving, awash in real practical expertise, well considered and formulated, about people, I concluded that Fromm was a good example of progress on information for understanding people. For more on love specifically, actually some of the relevant articles on Wikipedia seem quite good -- at least in places they have explained some of what I figured out more or less independently, at enormous cost, and added a lot more. So, it is possible to get some understanding of people, but for this purpose I would mostly set aside English literature as too thin and/or even misleading. For understanding people, I'd say that the most important contribution of English literature to understanding people is that some people like English literature. The crack in my scorn that got me started with the humanities classical music. A brilliant person once said, "Music doesn't mean anything.". Well, maybe, maybe not, but it still can be useful for someone wanting to understand people or even themselves, amazingly. Classical music was able to 'reach' me in part because there were usually few or no words to take literally and, thus, argue with. Well, it turns out that classical music has something of a language, especially about human emotions. If want to understand people, the biggest chapter is human emotions. Classical music is an example of a common definition of art as in the communications, interpretation of human experience, emotion. Well, it can be easy enough to find parts of classical music that are quite effective meeting this definition of art. So, here there is some progress in understanding humans. One description of much of the media is vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment which sounds next to worthless for the audience and, maybe, is, but we can reduce this description to vicarious emotional experience and, then, learn about people by feeling their emotions -- and art has a lot of this and, thus, can help a person understand people. For some value for the audience, good art is supposed to be universal and, then, often a person in the audience can see where the art is describing things much as in their life from which that person can conclude, "I'm not the only one who has encountered such a thing. That thing is not unique to me. Whatever I did to make that thing happen, others did the same, and maybe some of the main causes are not really from me.". E.g., a few weeks ago I did a search for a girl I knew and fell in love with in high school. Yup, the Internet showed me a scan of a high school annual with her picture as a Homecoming Queen candidate. To me she was always the prettiest human female I ever saw in person or otherwise. Then many of those days with her, decades ago, came back to me as if they were last week. She was my first love and, apparently, burned into my brain -- I can no more forget her than I can forget my own name. Well, we were young: We saw each other for 18 months and started when she was just 12 and in the seventh grade and I was 14 and in the ninth grade. I was a nerd, socially awkward, and not good at understanding the emotions of a young woman, and we were both afraid of rejection. So we were to afraid to communicate clearly and accumulated quite a list of false beliefs about each other that had us making mistakes in our relationship. At one point, some of her mistakes got me to draw some seriously wrong conclusions, and I walked away from her. I don't think that there was anything seriously wrong, and everything wrong was based just on mis-communications, My heart was broken, and I later discovered that so was hers. Then there's Wagner's opera Lohengrin, first performed in 1850, about a knight, Lohengrin, of the Holy Grail who marries sweet Elsa. Yes, the Wagner "Bridal Chorus" or "Wedding March" music is from their marriage in that opera. Elsa is misled by an evil witch, makes a mistake, and Lohengrin is forced to walk away from his new bride. So, Lohengrin told me that I was not the first guy to walk away from the young woman he loved and that such things go back to at least 1850. Also, Lohengrin and I made similar mistakes: We asked too much of the understanding of our women and should have had arranged a less 'brittle' situation. Nerd guys: Listen up here and learn. As good art communicates emotions about the human experience, members of the audience can begin to learn more about other people. The best art, in the humanities, can be astoundingly effective in communicating about humans; we don't want to be without the results; and technical fields are so far no substitutes. Took me a while to see these points.

rasengan0 13y ago

1992 Neil Postman http://youtu.be/KbAPtGYiRvg http://youtu.be/KbAPtGYiRvg Introduction "In 1959, Sir Charles Snow published The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly SOS