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The Two Cultures

#1
C C Offline
http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc...296&cn=139

EXCERPT: [...] C. P. Snow was talking and writing about what he famously called "the two cultures".

"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. 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 now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question -- such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? -- not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had." -- C. P. Snow 1959

It is almost fifty years since Snow's warning about two cultures. The term two cultures has entered the general lexicon as shorthand for differences between two attitudes. These are:

1. the increasingly constructivist world view from the humanities, in which the scientific method is seen as embedded within language and culture; and hence relativistic.

2. the scientific viewpoint, in which the observer can still claim to objectively make unbiased and non-culturally embedded observations about nature.

And it is almost thirty five years [1979] since The Glyph published an exchange between John Searle and Jacques Derrida that called for people to pay attention to postmodernist theories of language and reality. I remember reading the exchange at the time and in the interest of objectivity I admit that I thought then and think now that Searle was the winner. I also should admit that I had no idea what Derrida was up to most of the time....
#2
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:"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 now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question -- such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? -- not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had." -- C. P. Snow 1959

I think it's disingenuous to test people's intelligence by asking them the definition of technical terms familiar only to those in the science field. It's not quite like asking "Can't you read?" One could equally test scientists with literary terms like "irony" and "synecdoche" but it really wouldn't prove anything more than that each field has its own specialized jargon that is not familiar to outsiders.

As far as which party I'd rather go to, one of scientists or one of poets/writers, I'd probably choose the poets/writers. The literary world holds more hope for some sort of spiritual transcendence from our material condition than the scientific world does.
#3
Yazata Offline
(Dec 4, 2014 01:30 AM)C C Wrote: "A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. 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 have to admit that I couldn't describe it either. I remember it being taught to me decades ago, but I've never used it and can't even recall it any longer.)

I think that Snow's right though. What he says is important. The intellectual and cultural gulf between the sciences and the humanities is huge and it's only widened since his time.

Quote:I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question -- such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? -- not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language.

I think that I could still give a pretty good definition of those.

It's interesting and a little telling that people on the science side of the chasm are typically better informed about the humanities side than vice-versa. It's common for scientists to dabble in the arts, for example, playing musical instruments or producing paintings. It's far less common for literature professors to be amateur scientists.

Quote:So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their Neolithic ancestors would have had." -- C. P. Snow 1959

As science has grown more difficult and more institutionalized, it's become more and more closed to outsiders.

Back in the 18th century, it was common and even stylish for educated people to dabble in scientific experiments. They would clear away the dirty plates after dinner and pull out prisms and pendulums for their guests to tinker with. The Ph.D. degree, awarded on the basis of a research dissertation, didn't exist yet. (It appeared in 19th century Germany.) Many prestigious universities didn't even award degrees in the sciences. Science was often self-taught and the more ambitious would apprentice themselves out to noted researchers in their fields. There weren't huge barriers to entry. (Becoming good was a lot harder.)

Today, the Ph.D. has kind of become an entry-ticket into the sciences and becoming a scientist requires something like ten years of grueling university education just to get a foot in the door somewhere as a post-doc. The gap between the amateurs and the professional has never been wider and, not surprisingly, we see fewer and fewer amateur scientists today.

The general public is growing less interested in the sciences every day, since science is so difficult, intimidating and removed from their everyday experience. Science is turning into something like a hermetic order of initiates, channeling the secrets of the universe to the rest of humanity.  And there's little that anyone else can do but to accept it on faith.  


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