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....
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....