{"id":39531,"date":"2017-06-30T14:05:03","date_gmt":"2017-06-30T13:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=39531"},"modified":"2017-07-03T09:40:56","modified_gmt":"2017-07-03T08:40:56","slug":"jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-multiculturalism-science-discourse-humanities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2017\/06\/30\/jeffrey-aronson-when-i-use-a-word-multiculturalism-science-discourse-humanities\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Multiculturalism: science, discourse, humanities"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jeffrey_aronson\"<\/a>To recap. After C P Snow\u2019s 1959 Rede Lecture<\/a> \u201cThe Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution\u201d, the Cambridge literary critic, F R Leavis, in his 1962 Richmond Lecture<\/a>, \u201cThe Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow\u201d venomously slandered Snow\u2019s abilities as a novelist and intellectual. Snow then wrote another essay, \u201cThe Two Cultures: A Second Look\u201d, published in the Times Literary Supplement<\/em> on 25 October 1963. Leavis gave more lectures, collected in Nor Shall My Sword<\/em> (Chatto & Windus, 1972), and Snow rounded off with another essay in the TLS<\/em> on 9 July 1970, “The Case of Leavis and the Serious Case”.<\/p>\n

Since then there has been a continual outpouring of commentary on the debate that ensued. Snow\u2019s lecture and follow-up essay were republished in a single volume by Cambridge University Press, with a long introduction by Stefan Collini, and numerous books and articles have appeared, including, among the most recent, From Two Cultures to No Culture<\/em>, a collection of essays edited by Robert Whelan (Civitas, 2009), and The Two Cultures Controversy<\/em> by Guy Ortolano (CUP, 2009). The phrase \u201c[the] two cultures\u201d is now part of the language, and a host of others have used it in reference to unrelated topics.<\/p>\n

The nature of the debate is superficially simple. Snow argued that between scientists and literary scholars there was \u201ca gulf of mutual incomprehension . . . a curious distorted image of each other\u201d. Snow reduced his position to the rather trivial distinction that scientists didn\u2019t read Dickens and literary scholars didn\u2019t know the second law of thermodynamics. For his part, Leavis did not criticise scientists; instead, he was keen to defend society against the possible loss of the civilising influence of literature. Snow, apparently evenhanded at the start of his lecture, was actually promoting the teaching of science above the humanities and Leavis the opposite. One might therefore have expected others who joined in to be similarly split, but in fact, as Ortolano has pointed out, Snow spent more of his time as a novelist than as a scientist and Leavis was famous for his trenchant criticism of his literary colleagues. Furthermore, some scientists, such as Michael Yudkin, in an essay first published in the Cambridge Review<\/em> and then in tandem with Leavis\u2019s lecture, and Michael Polanyi<\/a>,\u00a0criticised Snow, while some literary figures supported him.<\/p>\n

To explore the debate further, read Snow, Leavis, and Yudkin, continue with Lionel Trilling\u2019s essay<\/a> \u201cA Comment on the Leavis\u2013Snow Controversy\u201d, the most penetrating account by a contemporary of the two protagonists, and then the other books I have listed.<\/p>\n

Here I want to suggest that there are not two cultures, nor one, nor none, as some have suggested, but many. The Fields of Research (FOR) Codes website<\/a> gives a comprehensive list of academic research subjects, organised as follows:<\/p>\n