Blog
Time to Let Go of the Two Cultures?
Åsa Jansson & Ben Alderson-Day
Nineteenth-century philosopher and social theorist Auguste Comte famously proposed
“that there is one kind of objective knowledge in the world, and that the natural
sciences have shown in practice what it is” (Smith,
2007: 93).
Would that it were so simple. The nineteenth century may have heralded a new scientific
objectivity, but the birth of modern academic disciplines as we know them today
also gave us the tools with which to critique discourses of objectivity and singular
conceptions of truth. In this way, the natural and the human sciences have been
locked together in a critical embrace since the beginning of the modern period.
This uneasy yet mutually constitutive relationship was very much in evidence
at a recent debate hosted by the Foundation
for Science and Technology to mark the sixtieth anniversary of
C.P. Snow’s famous ‘Two Cultures’ lecture. In the spring of 1959, Snow delivered
the Rede Lecture at Cambridge, arguing that a chasm had developed between the natural
sciences and the humanities, so deep as to constitute “a gulf of mutual incomprehension”.
For Snow, “literary intellectuals” and physical scientists – his two proposed magnetic
poles – not only talked past one another, but in some cases took pride in their
ignorance of the other. Indeed, the former were “natural Luddites” that had never
“tried, wanted, or been able to understand the industrial revolution”. To avoid
this trap, Snow called for an education system that discouraged narrow specialisation
at university level and earlier, and reoriented how different types of knowledge
were valued in British society.
Since then the Two Cultures debate has become a perennial fixture of sorts –
an intellectual’s Old Firm derby. A curiosity of this area, however, is just how
many speakers are at pains to challenge its premise from the start. Many of the
evening’s contributions from both speakers and the audience highlighted in different
ways the ambivalent and often tense relationship between the humanities and the
natural sciences, and agreed with the importance of achieving closer and better
communication and collaboration between the two spheres. But most started from the
position of rejecting any notion of two cultures being a valid observation.
Chris Skidmore,
the universities minister, spoke of his own enjoyment of moving through different
academic fields and cultures (narrowly avoiding an academic career in Tudor history
to go into politics). In his view, a truly interdisciplinary education would provide
students with the most useful knowledge from both the sciences and the humanities
to equip them with the skills needed to respond to the challenges of a rapidly changing
modern world.
Sir Venki Ramakrishnan,
the president of the Royal Society, challenged Snow’s stereotyped characterisation
of the sciences – highlighting the diversity and creativity within scientific practice
- and noted that today the situation is almost the reverse of what Snow posited
in his lecture. It is the natural sciences, not the humanities, that currently wields
the greatest influence over contemporary society, over how we perceive and make
sense of the world; scientists are, conversely, not necessarily as well versed in
humanities culture and language as Snow suggested.
If Snow’s diagnosis was so flawed, the question arises as what drives the appeal
(or at least, recurrence) of the Two Cultures concept. One clue may come from the
contribution of
Prof Helen Small
(Oxford), who spoke on the vociferous reaction to Snow’s lecture
by the literary critic FR Leavis, writing over two years after in 1962. The
strength of Leavis’ ire did much to build the legend of the Two Cultures, and there
is an open question as to whether the debate would still have the same afterlife
without Leavis’ response. That response might be considered extreme (and borderline
vitriolic), even when read today, but perhaps it belies a truth about some of what
Snow had to say about intellectual pride and the horizons of our knowledge. Do we,
personally, know enough about climate change? Or gene therapy? Or artificial intelligence?
Do we take the time to truly think of the human impacts of our work, whether social, political,
or ethical? Do silos act to protect, as well as limit?
A second problem that can ensue from rejecting Snow’s argument is a mood of glib
positivity about interdisciplinarity. Interdisciplinary exchange can sometimes be
treated as an intrinsic good in discussions of this kind: it becomes something we
should all be aiming for, aspiring to, and revelling in - together, we can break
down boundaries and bask in the light of shared knowledge. But interdisciplinarity
is messy, hard, and uncomfortable in many cases. Whether one rejects the concept
of two cultures or seeks to correct such a schism, a commitment to working across
disciplines demands intellectual generosity, resources, and a curiosity about how
such endeavours work in practice.
Prof Jane MacNaughton (Durham University) provided an example
of this via the work of Durham’s Institute for Medical Humanities, which hosts a
number of interdisciplinary projects and collaborations. In her contribution she
outlined how the strength of the humanities lies in the power of analysis and critique,
tools which can help us understand how and why current challenges emerged. It is
crucial that this critical component is not lost when the humanities are fused with
the natural sciences, but rather that it forms the basis for thinking about what
kind of future we want.
Such work, however, is not without constant challenges. Often a large degree
of cross-talk between disciplines can disguise fundamental misunderstandings between
participants. In Rethinking Interdisciplinarity, Callard and Fitzgerald
(2015) discuss how
attempting to create interdisciplinary spaces where the humanities or the social
sciences meet with the natural - in this case the neuro - sciences is fraught with
pitfalls, and suggest that existing attempts by humanities scholars to engage with
the neurosciences have often taken either the form of critique or of naive acceptance.
The latter in particular may sometimes be based on a limited reading and understanding
of the relevant scientific literature.
How, then, can we build meaningful and mutually comprehensive interdisciplinarity
between the two cultures? Despite questioning Snow’s diagnosis, many at the event
would appear to have agreed with his prescription, in more ways than one. The aim
for a more varied education – both at undergraduate level and earlier – was endorsed
by many of the speakers, and reflected in the ensuing comments from the audience,
which centred around school qualifications systems encouraging breadth as well as
depth (such as the international baccalaureate, or even the lesser-spotted AS level).
Other solutions offered – such as flexible and part-time undergraduate courses,
or two year degrees – did not seem to offer breadth in the same way. But the aim
for interdisciplinary education as a repertoire of employable skills in the 21st
century also echoed some of Snow’s original (and often forgotten) reasons for bringing
the two cultures together: to ensure the youth of mid 20th century Britain would
not be left behind in the technological revolution and Britain’s declining influence
as a world power.
While not wanting to discount the importance of teaching young people the skills
needed to thrive in a rapidly changing world, interdisciplinary education and study
must be more ambitious. If we allow the current social and economic order to dictate
what kind of knowledge is useful and which skills are needed to respond to existing
challenges, we risk losing some of the most valuable qualities of both the natural
sciences and the humanities. Within the former, it is crucial to allow time and
space for open-ended exploration and investigation, for curiosity about the natural
world and our place in it to develop in new directions different or even contrary
to current political and economic priorities. As for the latter, the most valuable
skills offered by the humanities arguably belong to the realm of critical thinking
and ethical problem solving. Such skills are essential for developing and conducting
ethically responsible research and education in both the sciences and the humanities,
as well as in any interdisciplinary fusion of these spheres. Human beings are complex
thinking, feeling beings whose scientific judgement is never truly objective, but,
as Donna Haraway (1988)
has suggested, always partial and situated. It follows that meaningful and mutually
respectful interdisciplinarity must begin with recognition of our disciplinary biases
and the limits of our knowledge, as well as with a willingness to learn and listen
to perspectives, languages, and concerns that might at first seem utterly foreign
and incomprehensible.
Dr Åsa Jansson & Dr Ben Alderson-Day are members of
Hearing the Voice at Durham University,
an interdisciplinary project on voice-hearing (or auditory verbal hallucinations).
They are both affiliates of Durham’s Institute
for Medical Humanities. For more information about the practice of interdisciplinarity,
you may wish to visit Working Knowledge,
a collection of resources for running interdisciplinary research projects.