CP Snow after 50 Years

Posted on | May 8, 2009 | 7 Comments

For all the Sturm und Drang generated in the half century since Charles Percy Snow stood up to deliver his famous Rede Lecture at Cambridge University, few would deny that his words have, at least, served to remind us that an education that ignores either science or the arts/humanities at the expense of the other is an enfeebled education.

F.R. Leavis, in his extraordinarily vituperative rejoinder to Snow, aimed not at the central issue raised by Snow but at the ’stature’ of the man as a writer and thinker, showed himself for the arrogant and pompous fool that he was; Snow’s willingness a few years later to permit the Spectator to reprint the Leavis essay in full, despite the hurt it must have caused him, showed him for the thoughtful and fairminded man that he was (a view supported by a close reading of his novels). Indeed, Leavis, to his own dismay, found his ‘demolition’ of Snow’s argument taken by some as an unintended confirmation of the very intellectual chasm that Snow had posited.

While we still recall both the Snow lecture and the Leavis response, the latter is only remembered in the context of the former.

And today, Snow’s thesis is all the more critical, although the context has shifted considerably. It is a notion that touches on so many crosscurrents at the present time: the apparent dilution of science education in some curricula around the world (including close to home), the arguments over texts suitable for study in school (an argument that would once have been characterized as ‘highbrow’ against ‘middlebrow’ but which has extended beyond even that wrangle), the niggling nonsense from those who would elevate Intelligent Design and other metaphysical explanations for human existence/development to the same level as scientific arguments in school curricula, the continuing contempt for any kind of scientific rigour in the reporting of news and current affairs in many parts of the mass media, the clashes over the expanding and proliferating definitions of literacy into the fine arts, performing arts, life on the Web, and so on, and even the debate around the role of formal systems of education in nurturing our personal and collective creativity.

One constant remains from long before 1959 until today, of course: the nature of what it means to be educated is still being argued over. And so it should be.

Technorati Tags: cp snow, two cultures, fr leavis, education

Category: counterknowledge, creativity, curriculum, education, elitism, epistemology, journalism, knowledge, learning, literacy, literature, media, philosophy, schooling, science, society, teaching

Comments

7 Responses to “CP Snow after 50 Years”

Will Reader
May 8th, 2009 @ 3:31 pm

It is certainly sad that so few people have an understanding of the beauty of science. It is equally sad that the media dumbs down science and dumbs up art (and, strangely, economics). But I feel we are poorly served by the attempts made by some to pretend that science and art are the same kind of thing. They aren’t.
John Connell
May 8th, 2009 @ 3:36 pm

An unexpected point, Will, and an interesting one, regarding some who see art and science as the same thing. I would be curious to follow up any examples you might want to offer.
Stephen Downes
May 8th, 2009 @ 3:41 pm

The lecture and the debate was just covered in Seed, yesterday.
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/are_we_beyond_the_two_cultures/
John Connell
May 8th, 2009 @ 3:48 pm

Thanks, Stephen – I hadn’t previously followed up the ‘Third Culture’ idea. I like the sound of it, and will find out more.
Gordon Brown
May 9th, 2009 @ 10:27 am

Thanks John, and thanks Stephen for the link to Seed. I’ve just watched the Stephen Pinker clip, and would recommend his book ‘How The Mind Works’ as a good example of how to bridge the two cultures.
In more depressed moments, I wonder what CP Snow would have made of our current state of popular culture, where ignorance of both arts and science seems to be celebrated.
Regards,
Gordon
Will Reader
May 9th, 2009 @ 10:32 am

Had a hunt around for some stuff, all I could find was the following quotation:

“In the past few decades arts and sciences have become increasingly divided by the myth that they are fundamentally different pursuits,” said Professor Igor Aleksander, Pro Rector (External Relations) at Imperial College.

I think that they are fundamentally different, though I suppose that it depends on what you mean by ‘fundamental’: everything can be made to seem like everything else if you look at it long enough, or move into particularly rarefied levels of abtraction as I noted in this post of mine

http://willreader.blogspot.com/2009/03/good-question.html
Art Scatter » Portland Open Studios: what’s behind the gallery walls
October 9th, 2009 @ 1:01 pm

[...] but the good ones do it with method and structure. In spite of C.P. Snow’s famous lament in The Two Cultures (or maybe in support of it), the worlds of art and science aren’t all that far apart, at [...]