The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf](apps.weber.edu) |
The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf](apps.weber.edu) |
But that's not quite true, is it. In the one case, he's asking someone to explain a very specific thing (one particular physical law), and in the other you're asking if they have been exposed to any example from a large set of things (any of Shakespeare's plays). If he'd asked "how many of you have heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics", or if he'd asked "how many of you can describe the plot of Coriolanus" the questions would be closer to equivalent.
Nitpicky, but relevant in the sense that it's not a fair example as originally stated.
The worst thing we do is fail to teach statistics to liberal arts majors. Then, as citizens, they make obvious mistakes about the relative costs and effects of things they advocate for or are against, and can be easily manipulated in any direction with attacks on their availability heuristics.
I don't think it's objectively harder - at the very least, [citation needed]. It might be subjectively harder for you. But one is a random factoid, the other one is a story. Humans are, in general, exceedingly good at stories. Facts, we tend to focus on the areas we know. You and I might be good at physics facts, or software facts. Somebody else might be good at agriculture facts, or knitting facts, or what-have-you.
But stories are universal. They connect. It's how most of humanity learns and shares knowledge. (See e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02036-8)
There's a pretty good likelihood that stories are ultimately easier to remember for a larger number of people than facts.
>>> Then, as citizens, they make obvious mistakes about the relative costs and effects of things they advocate for
I'll note that you're possibly wrong about relative costs of learning, too. What matters isn't only what you learn (though teaching stats would sure be a good thing), but also a willingness to approach issues with a bit of humility, and not claiming something as absolute fact until it provably is.
Didn't that ship already sail when they became liberal arts majors?
Frankly if you take a bunch of actual physics students out of the crowd immediately after having taken their final exam in statistical mechanics and ask them that same question, my guess is you'd only see about 50% of them give a confident and correct answer.
So... yeah. If you instead ask a bunch of random people "can anyone explain the idea of conservation of energy?" (the first law, of course), you're going to do much better.
You could describe it in a sentence or two, or you could write a book explaining why the typical summary misses out on the subtle details that really make it so interesting.
Here is a more apt equivalent question: "do you read a book front to back or back to front?"
(Mostly joking)
We'd study some essays like Snow's "The Two Cultures" and create reports on contemporary artists before breaking up into groups consisting of both engineering and art students with the goal of designing and implementing kinetic art. Coming from the engineering side, it was fun for me to get the chance to experience an academic art setting, and I think the class overall helped me overcome being immediately dismissive of more conceptual art as well as showing me tools and the frame of mind to approach and appreciate art.
For the artists, I think the goal of our professor was to build some technical literacy, and provide them with the technology that could inspire them, expanding their breadth of what could be feasibly done.
Though like this essay, the relationship between the two cultures could seem like it would turn adversarial or pretentious or dismissive, but I believe everyone in the class had a great time, and were all just excited to create things together.
- The Two Cultures of Mathematics by Tim Gowers: https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf
Discusses theory builders (think algebra) vs. problem solvers (think combinatorics) in mathematics, and how the latter have been sort of marginalized and under-appreciated in the community.
- Statistical Modeling: The Two Cultures by the legendary Leo Breiman
https://projecteuclid.org/journals/statistical-science/volum...
Discusses predictive modeling (think random forests and NNs) vs. statistical inference (think null hypothesis significance testing), and how the former have been under-appreciated in the stats community, to the detriment of statisticians.
Both very fun reads by two giants.
“In his famous Rede lecture of 1959, entitled “The Two Cultures”, C. P. Snow argued that the lack of communication between the humanities and the sciences was very harmful, and he particularly criticized those working in the humanities for their lack of understanding of science.”
For sure Tim Gowers would start a paper by citing a completely unrelated paper, which incidentally has the same title as his own.
Most recently, I was watching an interview with Iain McGilchrist. His thesis in "The Master and His Emissary" is that our society has veered too far towards the intellectual. According to his thesis, scientific concerns are dominating our decision making processes. The ills in society are caused by the exclusion of "right brain" or intuitive thinking in modern governance and in the general culture of modern society.
I don't really have an opinion on who is right or wrong. I can't really say if scientists lack sufficient knowledge about humanities subjects or visa versa. But it does feel like each side is pointing the finger at the other side.
It doesn't even matter what side you support, e.g. if you think McGilchrist is a crank or an apologist for a particular kind of reactionary element that is taking over populist rhetoric. There can be no movement towards a middle-ground when both sides insist that they are the ones being misunderstood and oppressed.
1. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/spider-man-pointing-at-spider...
The Two Cultures and The Scientific Revolution (1959) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30203398 - Feb 2022 (2 comments)
C.P. Snow – The Two Cultures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19328386 - March 2019 (1 comment)
The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12568791 - Sept 2016 (1 comment)
The Two Cultures - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6560085 - Oct 2013 (80 comments)
The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1025501 - Jan 2010 (1 comment)
Are We Beyond the Two Cultures? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=598451 - May 2009 (1 comment)
>I remember G.H. Hardy remarking to me in the 30's with some mild puzzlement: 'Have you noticed how the word "intellectual" is used nowadays? There seems to be a new definition that doesn't include Rutherford or Eddington or Dirac or Adrian or me.'
Its scientists complaining about not being accepted by the "cool kids". A tale as old as time.
The humanities are broadly trying to answer “what does it mean to be a human, and how should we live?”
Sure, physics provides the occasional relevant answer, but less directly. It discovers facts about nature, and sometimes those facts give the discussion more context.
That's quite condescending. Scientists must not know how to live, or what it means to be human, since they don't have an English degree.
Look, the humanities is where people who say things like "I'm not good with numbers" go. That's it.
>Anyway, the Russians have judged what kind and number of educated men and women a country needs to come out top in the scientific revolution. I am going to oversimplify, but their estimate, and I believe it's pretty near right
>As the scientific revolution goes on, the call for these men will be something we haven't imagined, though the Russians have.
>If our ancestors had invested talent in the industrial revolution instead of the Indian Empire, we might be more soundly based now. But they didn't.
Snow had a PhD in chemistry, but dropped out of science early on to write popular novels and to become a very successful bureaucrat. He had originally intended to call this lecture "The Rich and the Poor", because he was arguing about who was best qualified to govern society and solve the problems of the Third World.
The gist of the speech is that the traditional elites of society are not competent to govern because all they know about is the classics. He thinks only a scientific background can create a wise leader. If only a large enough percentage of the population would get a technical education, then society would become rational.
His position was extremely naive and never seriously accepted as he put it. The subsequent use of the term "two cultures" to mean a disjunction of the humanistic and scientific approaches to knowledge is not quite what he meant. He was railing against traditionalism and venting a deep animosity toward England's literary society.
A quote from William James:
Of all the insufficient authorities as to the total nature of reality, give me the "scientists" . . . Their interests are most incomplete and their professional conceit and bigotry immense. I know of no narrower sect or club, in spite of their excellent authority in the line of fact they have explored, and their splendid achievements there.
- C. P. SnowThere is no why, really.
The more interesting question revolves around should, from an ethical/moral perspective. The analytic tradition so favoured in the UK since Hume has been shown to be cracked (read, e.g., The Women Are Up To Something). Since WWII, progress has been made on that question, but Hume’s acolytes still cling dearly to mind, perhaps because of that same reductionism.
This is a very nice way to try and explain Dilbert-style Pointy Haired Bosses.
It's right there in Yeats, which the author also references:
> "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold /"
Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot image (14 February 1990) is rather deceptive when it comes to understanding the story of life on earth in the context of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics, but here it is:
https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot
Let's say we took that planet and dropped it out to the orbit of Pluto, which we also now have some great imagery of. Pluto is indeed chemically active, it turns out, in the subzero real of nitrogen ices and so on. Hence a better picture would be a transit of Earth across the Sun from say, the perspective of Mars:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Earth_from_Mars
> "No one has ever seen a transit of Earth from Mars, but the next transit will take place on November 10, 2084. The last such transit took place on May 11, 1984."
The only reason life developed on the 'pale blue dot' was that it was at a fairly optimal distance from our local star, which is pouring energy out into space at a ridiculous level relative to the amount captured by this tiny planet. That huge flood of energy is what allows life to swim upstream against the tide of entropy, aka the Second Law, by using that energy to create complex structures of only fleeting permanence, but eventually humans learned to use excess plant production to feed the literary geniuses who created the great works of imagination. Genetic information transfer was the imperfect mechanism (note all species go extinct over time) behind this story.
In literary-vs-science 'two-culture' terms, a return to sun-worship is a nice way of closing the gap. The Egyptians seem to have adopted the concept for ~150 human generations, maybe they were smarter than we are?
Here are some critiques of CP Snow's The Two Cultures:
1. It oversimplifies the relationship between science and humanities. Snow frames it as a polarization between the "two cultures" of science and literature, but in reality there are many connections, overlaps, and interactions between the fields.
2. It ignores the social sciences. Snow focuses mainly on natural science vs. literature, but ignores fields like psychology, sociology, economics, and political science that don't cleanly fit into either category.
3. It employs a deficit model. Snow portrays humanities scholars as lacking an understanding of science, rather than recognizing that both fields have different but legitimate areas of expertise.
4. It is Eurocentric. Snow's view of "culture" is rooted mainly in Western European traditions of science and literature. It ignores non-Western cultures and knowledge systems.
5. It frames science as value-neutral and objective while implying that humanities are value-laden and subjective. Many scholars argue that science is also shaped by social and cultural values.
6. It may exaggerate the gulf between the two cultures. While there are differences, there is also significant overlapping membership, shared influences, and common aims between scientists and humanities scholars.
7. It is dated. Snow's analysis, written in 1959, does not reflect many of the recent interactions and intersections between science and humanities that have emerged since then.
---
On the last point, Claude elaborates:
... here are some ways that CP Snow's The Two Cultures has become more dated since it was published in 1959:
1. Increased interdisciplinary work: There has been a major growth in interdisciplinary research that integrates methods and insights from both science and humanities. Fields like science and technology studies, cognitive literary studies, and neurohumanities have emerged.
2. Collaboration between scientists and humanists: There are many more examples today of scientists and humanities scholars working together on collaborative projects. This was less common when Snow was writing.
3. Science in humanities curriculum: Many humanities programs now incorporate more history, philosophy and social aspects of science into their curriculum. Students are exposed to both fields more holistically.
4. Humanities in science curriculum: There is a growing trend of incorporating ethics, communication and other humanities topics into science education as well. This helps develop more well-rounded scientists.
5. Porous boundaries: The traditional boundaries between disciplines have become more porous, allowing for ideas, methods and approaches to cross-pollinate between fields.
6. Broader public discourse: There is a more nuanced and sophisticated public discourse around science, technology and society that incorporates both scientific and humanistic perspectives.
7. Advances in technology: Rapid technological changes, like the internet and AI, have created new intersections and dialogues between science and humanities that Snow could not have envisioned.
So in general, over the past 60 years since The Two Cultures was published, there has been a massive increase in interaction, dialogue and integration between science and humanities. The traditional "gulf" that Snow described has become far more complex, multidirectional and dynamic. The metaphor of "two cultures" has become less relevant and useful to describe modern academia and intellectual life.
(This is a general comment about problematic decision making and is not a political attack on any individual person or party. I have observed similar patterns across the political spectrum.)
The one area where scientific concerns must never be allowed to dominate is in fundamental freedoms and human rights. Those cannot be analyzed scientifically in any productive way.
As I understand it, his principle complaint is that analytical thinking has become the default mechanism for decision making. For example, if we were to have a discussion on whether people should live in cities or suburbs/rural areas, some people would immediately go to quantities and metrics. Maybe questions about carbon footprints or the cost of transportation or the ability to distribute food. In fact, given the demographic of HN, the vast majority here would probably think that was the correct approach. McGilchrist argues that is the result of indoctrination.
As a counter example, consider yourself feeling hungry and looking in the fridge to decide what to eat. You are unlikely to make that decision primarily based on some kind of analytical process involving calories or costs. You might take those into account (e.g. by avoiding eating cake for breakfast or something) but you would also use your intuition and preference. The same is true when you choose where to vacation, or what music to listen to, or who to marry.
Yet applying the same kind of preference to most other societal decisions is frowned upon these days. We are taught to think critically, to follow the data, to use logic as our primary means. We are trained to silence the non-analytic parts of our decision making process as if allowing them to influence our decisions is almost evil. We are taught to be objective and to break down complex questions into smaller pieces that we can quantify.
This leads to a mismatch between the kind of decision making process that is natural in most areas of life and the decision making processes we champion in modern education and policy making. If you are to believe him, half of our brain is dedicated to an intuitive decision making process - so we are advocating for throwing out half of our wisdom. In his view, if an entire half of our brain is dedicated to that kind of reasoning then we should consider that it has sufficient usefulness that we ought not to completely ignore it or work so hard to suppress it.
Again, I'm poorly steel-manning his position and I don't entirely agree with him. But there is something to be said about his position and its effects. It is hard not to see the general trend to use science to answer all questions, even those that you point out ought to remain free from its dominance.
I'm still learning it and it's interesting but I can't shake the feeling that the process almost seems designed to day-dream up patterns and connections between things where there are none. On the other hand, any more quantitative approach seems like it would only be useful to confirm my pre-existing beliefs, and not significantly innovate on them.
Perhaps we need a bit of both.
I think some of the reality is that regardless of most other factors in our lives, love and relationships are a Big Deal, so stories in that realm have in some small way more usefulness. Thus, I know the plot of Romeo and Juliet better than I can give a summary of the Second Law.
edit: but since I'm here and fired up. here are some results from the trivial google search "famous humanities majors"
https://time.com/3964415/ceo-degree-liberal-arts/
https://blog.tesu.edu/10-notably-successful-people-with-libe...
https://www.businessinsider.com/successful-liberal-arts-majo...
Perhaps you could benefit from a humanities education to learn how to respond an argument and construct your own.
Ah, but you did, and you stepped in something that a lot of scientists (and devs) resent, having others assume that they are robots, without heart or passion or insight. What you said was even worse, one group of people are trying to understand "what it means to be human", implying that the other group of people is not. It's literally dehumanizing, and I called you out, and now you're responding with a puerile "is to".
I have two degrees, one in physics, one in philosophy, and with this response I realize I need to review the literature on expected value.
Humanities are the disciplines that focus on the question of what it is to be human. Sciences are the disciplines that focus on understanding physical reality, and in an indirect way the changes in our understanding of nature and physical reality do impact the discourse in Humanities.
None of that even remotely means anyone not involved in humanities is a "robot". You resent caricature of "devs" as "robots, without heart or passion or insight" and that is a false picture of devs, agreed. But that has nothing to do with the question of the two cultures.
The two cultures (actually the author managed to find a 3rd in "engineering" in his rather rambling rant) are ultimately about "tools". Here the tools in question are 'cognitive tools'.
The cultures are really cultures that grow around distinct cognitive tools.
When they say that, they don't mean it literally. It's like if they found themselves in a discussion about cleaning public toilets. They might say "Oh I'm not good with mops and liquid cleaning agents" or whatever to be polite, when what they really mean is more like "Oh I have people for that, I'm sorry to hear that you have to sell your time and labor for money, your grandparents should have been wealthier." but that would be rude and unproductively antagonistic.
The laws of Thermodynamics are fundamentals like "what is democracy"
Humans deal better with one shape than the other. That's the reason so many memorization techniques rely on stringing things together in stories.
The frequent retellings of familiar stories with new characters and plot twists suggests to me that there might not be as much learning involved in stories as pattern recognition. I have no citations to back that up but would be delighted to read a story that critiques the accepted story story.