The Two Cultures

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures

by DanI-S • 13 years ago

149 80 13 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

rubidium• 13 years ago

For a PDF version of the lecture, see here: http://s-f-walker.org.uk/pubsebooks/2cultures/Rede-lecture-2...

This is quite a gem. I'm surprised I haven't seen it before.

rmk26• 13 years ago

Well, thankfully that problem will soon be solved in England! The government has enacted a programme that should soon bear fruit, thanks to the introduction of "impact" and weighing publications in a new, innovative, carefully considered and consensual way. Soon, it will be the country of one culture (since only biased pundits would dare to say: the country of no culture), finally correcting the horrible mistakes of the past!

lkrubner2• 13 years ago

Much has been written about this article. For instance:

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/5273453/Fifty-years-on...

Such was the intensity of debate that it might be supposed that these were age-old themes: but in fact, the idea of separating academic disciplines into groups known as science and humanities was no older than the 19th century. The term "scientist" was only coined in 1833, and it was not until 1882 that another Rede Lecturer, Matthew Arnold, discussed – under the title of "Literature and Science" – whether or not a classical education was still relevant in an age of great scientific and technical advance.

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There are also many themes in this article that are specific to Britain in the 1950s:

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Snow compared Britain unfavourably with the US and USSR, in terms of numbers of young people who remained in education to the age of 18 and above. The British system, he argued, forced children to specialise at an unusually early age, with snobbery dictating that the children would be pushed towards the "traditional culture" and the professions, rather than science and industry.

Arnold was responding – with infinitely more courtesy than Leavis – to an earlier lecture by T H Huxley, known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his rumbustious defence of evolution, who argued that science was as valid an intellectual training as the classics.

It was not a popular opinion. As late as my own childhood in the Sixties, the bright boys were expected to read classics at Oxford, and the less bright steered towards the labs.

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I think 2 things are worth remembering about any such debate:

1.) as a civilization becomes more advanced, the people in it tend to become more specialized. If you grew up in 1700, it was perhaps possible to read all of the classics, in literature (Homer) and medicine (Galen) and philosophy (Aristotle) and physics (Aristotle) and math (Euclid). But nowadays it is impossible to study every branch of knowledge to any meaningful depth.

2.) for all of the obvious disadvantages that come with specialization, there are also many advantages (indeed, that is why specialization exists). A modern potter has a fantastic array of choices regarding materials, which did not exist even 50 years ago. A historian today must pick a narrow speciality, as there are now many millions of documents to look through to be considered an expert -- indeed, I have a friend who has specialized in the American Civil War, and he once said "If you have only read 1,000 books about the American Civil War, then you are just an amateur." And in the old days the village blacksmith might have known how to make both a hoe and a horse hoof shoe but a modern mechanic needs to specialize regarding devices (cars? domestic machines? textile plants? telecommunications?) but then also pick a sub-specialty (if a car mechanic, then foreign or domestic? Perhaps a few particular brands).

There is an economic benefit to specialization. I worry that gets forgotten when this debate comes up.

padobson• 13 years ago

This is great, you summed up every idea I had while reading this in a way that was far more articulate than I could have.

I only have one thing to add: If there is an economic and even, possibly, a societal benefit to specialization, and The Two Cultures idea complains about the rift between the humanities and the sciences, then has someone properly updated the material to show how much more specialized society is becoming?

The Wiki article talks about a possible third culture, but it seems to me you could become fairly deeply specialized in business/economics without ever needing a classical humanities education or a classical math/science education.

msluyter• 13 years ago

Specialization is something I often wonder about. Consider the following analogy: the sum of human knowledge is represented by a giant circle (though not necessarily perfectly circular in shape). Anything inside the circle is that which is known; anything outside is unknown. You're born in the center, and as you learn, the set of what you know extends towards the edge. As you mentioned, at some point in time, you could know all of the circle; now you can only know some subset of it. If you're a scientist or whatnot, you actively move the edge outward.

My question is, will we ever reach a point where it takes so long to move from the center to the edge that we'll eventually stop making progress? In mathematics, it already takes considerable time to reach the knowledge boundary (30 years or so?) Will we reach a point where it takes greater than a lifetime? Or, is it possible to jump to the edge by skipping some foundational knowledge (could you do higher math without knowing, say, calculus, for example?) What are the risks of doing so? And ultimately, how does a complex society hang together when each person has (at most) knowledge of a tiny subset of available knowledge?

VLM6• 13 years ago

And are there natural boundaries and are 3-d space conventional area vs volume concepts relevant if whole new areas open up?

For example there was a relevant fear at one point that if we continued to discover another new chemical element every two decades or so, in a couple centuries no one could possibly know all the elements, perhaps not even name them all. But that growth had a natural border in the triple digit range; no problemo. Of course chemists found entirely new things to spend time on, rather than just discovering new elements.

There may very well be nothing more that can be learned WRT classical mechanics. Plenty of fun quantum and relativistic stuff to learn, but thats not on the "here be dragons" map which is now completely explored for classical mechanics, or as near to completely explored not to matter. Someday those fields will be fully explored and boring and closed to further exploration.

Another interesting topic is eventually stuff is forgotten when its irrelevant. What happens in a million years when most academic activity is reinventing useless stuff thats already been invented, found useless, and forgotten, so how do you stop the backlash from eliminating actually useful knowledge?

rprospero• 13 years ago

I'd argue that, as advances are made, it becomes easier to move faster through the circle. It's not that you're skipping foundation knowledge, but you're just learning one core piece. Instead of learning the area under an encyclopedia of curves, you learn integral calculus and you're done. Instead of memorizing thousands of rules involving the interaction of various charged objects, you learn Maxwell's four equations and you're done. Or, you could learn geometric calculus and then only need to learn one four-symbol equation. Instead of learning thousands of different circuits to accomplish thousands of different tasks, you learn one Turing machine.

Knowledge is constantly increasing, but we're also continually finding that a large amount of our previous knowledge was redundant. I once saw a great article, that I wish I could find again, list off a series of scientific laws that could all be derived from nothing but unit analysis. The circle grow larger, but our steps do as well.

lkrubner2• 13 years ago

You get at the degree to which all human knowledge is limited by the central nervous system that humans possess. There must be some finite number of axons and dendrites that can be stuffed into the cranium of a human, and even if there is a sophisticated system of compression and/or multiplexing in use, we can probably assume that a finite amount of axons and dendrites can only carry a finite amount of information.

Thinking of the physical limits on human knowledge leads to a model of knowing that puts the central nervous system at the center of our our experience of the universe. There may be an absolute reality that exists outside of us, but since all of us are human (I assume) we must admit that our knowledge of that absolute reality will forever be shaped by that central nervous system.

The limits of the central nervous system cause humans to look for models of reality that fit well with those limits. For instance, there is The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_...

Because of the (very very finite) limits on working memory, the human mind leans heavily on heuristics that allow simple models to stand in for the complexity of reality. No human being could easily work with a physics model that had 1 million variables: therefore we tend to look for models that have a handful of variables, yet still give us reasonably good estimates.

Just yesterday there was posted to Hacker News an article about a slinky, and that article contains a good demonstration of the kind of simplifying assumptions we often make to reason about problems that are too complex to approach directly:

"I decided to idealize the problem like this: the slinky is an ideal spring with mass distributed uniformly throughout. It is also a spring that can pass through itself. These assumptions make analyzing the problem easier."

And of course, we often present students with problems where the difficulty of achieving perfect measurements of variables is simply assumed away. For instance in this exercise:

http://www.uta.edu/ce/nsf/ret/docs/lesson-plans/reynolds08-5...

The important things to measure are: force, deflection, torque, moment of inertia, stress and strain. Often, in real life situations, engineers have no way to perfectly measure these things. Large engineering projects proceed with various methods for getting reasonable estimates: known upper and lower bounds, prototypes, isolated testing of particular connections, etc.

The smartest people alive never get to the point where they really know reality, they only know estimates. I do not mean to make this point overly philosophical, I am talking about practicalities here: there may be an absolute reality that we can know directly, but when it comes to doing anything useful, we develop estimates using fairly simple models, models which are well suited to the limits of our minds.

In some sense, the models we build about the world are always simplified models that make it easier for our limited central nervous systems to make estimates about the world.

I just offered a physics examples of simplifying assumptions, but I could also focus on the humanities. Perhaps your life's goal is to figure out the "real" reasons why the French Revolution happened, or why Communism was so popular for so long, or why the Industrial Revolution happened -- the possibilities are as limitless as the combination of all the variables in action over the course of centuries, the psychology and biology of billions of people, and the technology that existed at the time, and the weather and the crops and the economy and the religions and the amount of sunlight reaching the earth and everything else, combining exponentially to some very large sum. You might research the issue for 40 years, but in the end, if you want to draw some useful conclusion, something that others can benefit from, something that might influence policymakers in the future, you will need to come up with a simplified model that focuses on the handful of variables that you regard as the most important.

There is another model of knowing, which takes for granted the absolute reality outside of us. That model is well summarized by this XKCD comic:

http://xkcd.com/435/

In that model, biology is a sub-branch of physics, which is a sub-branch of math. However, if you focus on the limits of the central nervous system as the practical limit of human knowing, then you end up with a model where physics and math (and everything else) is a sub-branch of biology, specifically, a sub-branch of neurology. Even the two models of human knowing that I describe in this post to Hacker News can be thought of as sub-branches of neurology. All human knowing is, in some sense, a clever hack of our neurology, and certainly all heuristics and models are hacks which adapt to the limits of that neurology.

There is nothing wrong with simple models, so long as they allow us to get useful work done. But I think our reliance on simple models tells us why specialization is so important. If a person can study a subject for 40 years and, having read tens of thousands of documents, still distills the data down to a small handful of variables, a model that gracefully adapts to the limits of the human mind, then we must admit that it is the rare human being who goes much beyond simple models. In those cases where simple models don't work, and where there only thing that works is a model with hundreds or thousands of variables, then clearly, achieving an understanding of such models must surely be the work of a lifetime. You need to get to studying when you are 20, and you need to specialize, because when you are 50 you will still be only approaching the ideal, never quite there, only approaching it, still learning more.

theoh2• 13 years ago

In answer to the last question, how about Durkheim's theory of mechanical and organic solidarity? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_and_organic_solidari...

Your other comments remind me of what Lagrange said in 1781 about mathematics: "...I am not sure that I shall still do geometry ten years from now. I also think that the mine is already almost too deep, and must sooner or later be abandoned. Today, Physics and Chemistry offer more brilliant discoveries and which are easier to exploit"

http://www.westfield.ma.edu/math/faculty/fleron/quotes/viewq...

jackmaney• 13 years ago

The circle-knowledge analogy is depicted succinctly in Matt Might's Illustrated guide to a Ph.D. ( http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/ ).

It's often been said that Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was one of the last people to master and contribute to all of the fields of knowledge in existence during his time (eg http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leibniz/ ).

Speaking of just mathematics, we're WELL past the point where it's possible to cover the entire interior of the "mathematical circle". As an illustration, MathSciNet (http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/) is a mathematical review database that consists of prettymuch every mathematical book and peer-reviewed article in mathematics since the 1940's (and some well before 1940). As of this writing, there are just under three million publications stored in MathSciNet. And these articles are so specialized that a researcher in one area would have to exert a significant amount of effort to understand articles in a completely different area of research.

So, how do we go from the center of the mathematical circle to the edge? By starting with the basics and moving through a path of what's considered "important" (ie the broad survey provided by undergraduate mathematics courses: the calculus sequence, real analysis, abstract algebra, combinatorics, topology, etc) along the way.

jgreen10• 13 years ago

Computers to the rescue.

sp332• 13 years ago

Illustrated: http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

0xdeadbeefbabe• 13 years ago

I know someone who seems lazy and can't be bothered with important details that to me seem relevant to his job, but maybe he's a specialist in an area I can't possibly understand. How can you even tell if someone is specializing or just pretending to specialize?

Mikeb853• 13 years ago

There is an economic benefit to specialization. I worry that gets forgotten when this debate comes up.

There is. But when you get too entrenched in a single line of thought, then you lose the ability to solve problems that don't fit neatly into that single line of thought.

Witness all the science geeks who only know how to build or calculate things (but may not have a broader concept of the why or what of what they're doing - maybe this is why everyone has a start-up looking for a problem), and all the humanities or business people who can't figure out basic technology or other problems.

If science people had a better understanding of the humanities, philosophy, etc..., and humanities people learned to solve problems, I do think society would benefit.

This doesn't mean we shouldn't specialize, only that we should explore outside of our comfort zone and world view...

calinet63• 13 years ago

There is an economic benefit to a great many pursuits, but it is generally controlled by short-term benefits, at the maximum within the lifetime of a single human being, which is incredibly short-term still on a geologic time scale.

The benefits of generalization and broad understanding outlive a single person, a single society, or a single period of time. People who are well educated in the liberal arts, which includes both sciences and the humanities, will make more integrated decisions and more sane ones for the long term. We need those people; in my opinion we all need to be those people, even if we spend most of our time specializing. It's a subtle but critical difference.

I am utterly convinced of this: blind specialization will merely move humanity in an unknown direction which is the result of a self-reinforcing process of unknown origin or termination. Generalists will move humanity forward. It is the difference between a cancer and a baby: unmoderated growth versus life itself.

Do we want to go where economic gain takes us, effectively puppets of a multidimensional system beyond our full understanding or control, or do we want to move humanity forward? That is the question.

protonfish• 13 years ago

Your 1.) is missing a point that has been passed over throughout most of this thread - knowledge does not build up over time like so much detritus. New discoveries replace old, inaccurate ones. It is conceivable that with sufficient optimization of scientific models, one could have a superior understanding of the world using less total data than older models without even taking into account the excising of blatantly verbose and inaccurate beliefs.

jimm• 13 years ago

Good point. Also, new knowledge often builds on old by adding layers of abstraction, allowing the creation of new knowledge using these higher layers. More importantly, it allows the teaching (and learning) of these abstractions which implies that new people don't have to keep learning the "old" things from the ground up.

jboynyc• 13 years ago

There is an economic benefit to specialization. I worry that gets forgotten when this debate comes up.

It's possible to be mindful of the economic benefit and still lament what specialization does to the human spirit. Max Weber's Science as a Vocation might stand as a case in point.

netcan• 13 years ago

"The number 2 is a very dangerous number: that is why the dialectic is a dangerous process. Attempts to divide anything into two ought to be regarded with much suspicion"

ArekDymalski• 13 years ago

Very inspiring. I just wonder if it's just the tone of Wikipedia article or does this lecture really suggests that science > humanities?

rmk26• 13 years ago

Why do you think it was posted here, without comment, just as a simple wikipedia link? The whole point is that it is widely understood as the quintessential idea of the sciences finally overcoming the constraints enforced upon them by the obsolete humanities. The whole emphasis on the modern and technological development paints exactly that picture, tying the science/humanities dichotomy firmly into a progress narrative which necessarily means that the modern (sciences) will have to overcome (and thus leave behind) the old, i.e. the humanities.

DanI-S2• 13 years ago

I posted the article. I don't feel that it makes sense to say that one side of the dichotomy is superior to the other. The main point is that the dichotomy is false.

rayiner5• 13 years ago

"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'm not convinced that either of these is really important for a general education. I think educators fixate on romantic ideals of what is important to know while ignoring the subject matter that is relevant to ordinary life.

Where I grew up, the required high school curriculum includes a lot about ancient civilizations, creative writing, chemistry and physics, and algebra. It didn't teach how to write a persuasive proposal in a business context, string together a logically-sound argument, or form inferences from empirical data, and taught very little about contemporary politics or recent American or world history. It didn't teach how to mediate an interpersonal conflict at work, delegate a task, or effectively communicate an idea in a presentation.

I lament that I spent so much time "learning" in school and have so little to show for it. I know about different kinds of cloud formations, which extinct native American cultures lived where, the difference between the soil composition in different parts of the country, spectral lines in different gasses, etc. This is trivia.

I see the argument made by Snow as simply lamenting that there is under-emphasis on one particular set of romanticized unnecessary knowledge and over-emphasis on a different set. Most of physics, chemistry, etc, are neither directly relevant to your typical person nor readily digestible as being illustrative of more general principles that are relevant. A core educational curriculum would be better served teaching more fundamental concepts directly: scientific method, statistical methods, data analysis, etc.

rmk26• 13 years ago

What you propose is to simply replace the dichotomy science/humanities with another, that of applied/theoretical, which necessarily moves the division and fault lines. That way, in addition to the humanities, a number of theoretical subjects also fall off the cliff, namely theoretical physics, non-applied parts of mathematics, logic etc. This, in fact, does not transcend the dichotomy, it makes it worse by imposing additional limitations and essentially directly applying useful/useless as a criterion.

rayiner5• 13 years ago

There is a dichotomy inherent in the task: some things will be taught as part of a general education, and some things will not be. I would argue that "usefulness" is a pretty great criteria for making distinctions to that end.

Also, "usefulness" does not automatically exclude theoretical fields. E.g. geometric proofs and logic and microeconomics are all theoretical, but I'd argue are also useful as part of a general education.

VLM6• 13 years ago

Essentially your complaint boils down to why are educational institutions providing education instead of the training their students actually need. Part of the problem is most people do need training more than education, but for social class reasons "every child must attend college to obtain an education" and so on.

We have an excellent vo-tech system for training, its just only for lower classes. Like $100K/yr plumbers. The middle upper classes are supposed to get a degree in french lit before becoming life long minimum wage coffee baristas.

This creates a certain level of social turmoil and confusion.

There is a secondary issue in that if you're young enough, modern K12 only teaches to a test, providing no education or training, merely memorized trivia as an elaborate daycare operation, as you describe. You could have gotten an education about the native american experience, its an interesting topic... pity all you got was trivia to answer multiple choice questions on a test.

rayiner5• 13 years ago

I think it's snobbery to imply that a class in business writing is "vocational training" while a class in creative writing is "education." Or a class in data analysis is "vocational training" while a class in algebra is "education." I'm not talking about vocational training, I'm talking about education.

zerohm• 13 years ago

I wish every high school made it mandatory for children to learn how to balance a checkbook and the implications of dept (time value of money).

Mikeb853• 13 years ago

Isn't this common sense?

recursive2• 13 years ago

Who uses checks?

lsc• 13 years ago

the implications of dept! sorry, I couldn't help myself.

But really, I think most high schools do teach that. I went to a highschool that was not very good at all, and we spent a fair amount of time on that in math class

im3w1l• 13 years ago

Meanwhile in Africa: Mobile phone payments are obsoleting cash, card and check

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/how-mobile-phones-...

Mikeb853• 13 years ago

Where I grew up, the required high school curriculum includes a lot about ancient civilizations, creative writing, chemistry and physics, and algebra. It didn't teach how to write a persuasive proposal in a business context, string together a logically-sound argument, or form inferences from empirical data, and taught very little about contemporary politics or recent American or world history. It didn't teach how to mediate an interpersonal conflict at work, delegate a task, or effectively communicate an idea in a presentation. I lament that I spent so much time "learning" in school and have so little to show for it. I know about different kinds of cloud formations, which extinct native American cultures lived where, the difference between the soil composition in different parts of the country, spectral lines in different gasses, etc. This is trivia.

The point is to learn how to 'learn'. Yes, memorizing endless facts can seem pointless, but the entire point of the classics is to gain a greater understanding of humanity in general, and to learn understanding.

strlen• 13 years ago

> Where I grew up, the required high school curriculum includes a lot about ancient civilizations, creative writing, chemistry and physics, and algebra. It didn't teach how to write a persuasive proposal in a business context, string together a logically-sound argument, or form inferences from empirical data, and taught very little about contemporary politics or recent American or world history. It didn't teach how to mediate an interpersonal conflict at work, delegate a task, or effectively communicate an idea in a presentation.

I've nearly had the same experience as you but my perception of it was very different. I attended one of the top 100 high-schools in the US and one of the top non-magnet public schools in my state. My curriculum was comprehensive, but yes -- prima facie, very little of it was seemed applicable (other than intro to business -- which helped me deal with personal finances, maths -- which helped me write "demo" programs, and of course CS classes).

On the other hand, I enjoyed"knowledge for the sake of knowledge" tremendously (e.g., History courses) but most importantly -- I felt that I learned a great deal between the lines in those classes. I wrote a great deal of persuasive essays in humanities courses, I begin to see American politics beyond simple slogans, and I read books that taught me a great deal about the human condition that I may have missed out in my suburb (All Quiet On The Western Front comes to mind) and even when they didn't -- they taught me to be a better conservationist at lunch time.

I'll note, however, that high school could have done a great deal more. I came to the US in the middle of 7th grade from former USSR and stepping into a US middle-school felt like a horrible practical joke: instead of chemistry and physics, for examples, there was one class called "science", and the quadratic formula would not be covered for another year.

I suspect, however, we've a different personality -- many of my classmates echo your views on this matter, equally as many echo yours. There was a similar split in college: equally as many greatly enjoyed general education/core requirements, others saw it as a hindrance to taking my engineering courses. On a micro-level it happened within the discipline as well and to an extent I was guilty of this: I wanted to crank out of code and not do integration by parts by hand, so I went through the "motions" rather than learn this by heart, which I came to regret years later when I tried to grok the kernel trick in machine learning.

I am, however, inclined to agree with you: we should teach the fundamental concepts directly, but not at the exclusion of general knowledge. Some students are motivated by practical applications, others more so by knowledge itself -- and this may varies by discipline. Given a college-level education is effectively necessity (even if a paper saying "B.S. in CS" is not always a hard requirement, the requisite proficiency is still expected) students who are not as intrinsically motivated to learn the material use self-discipline to compensate. This is not good news, as it reinforces the popular perception of education as "boring" by necessity and attractive only to people who like being bored.

lmm• 13 years ago

The second law of thermodynamics is not that kind of trivia. It's probably the most fundamental law in science, the one that lets you derive almost any phenomenon if you think about it hard enough (e.g. there's a derivation of the law of gravity from it).

matthewtoast• 13 years ago

Mentioned in this article is "The Third Culture" by John Brockman of Edge.org. That book is worth a read, even nearing 20 years in publication. It introduces the ideas of several fascinating scientists (among them Dan Dennett and Lynn Margulis) whose work manages to transcend the stated "two cultures," bringing science to bear on what were traditionally seen as "humanist" problems and vice-versa. These are thinkers who've taken responsibility for bringing their ideas directly to the public, rather than waiting for writers, journalists and, ahem, "insight pornographers" (if you follow HN) to do it for them. I first read it after obtaining my English degree, and it felt like I'd been shot with a sudden antidote to a haze of intellectual nonsense. I wonder how well it contrasts against the current trend in glossy pop science, which I suspect may be the flip-side of the same coin.

rmk26• 13 years ago

The idea of a (re-)integration of the two sides of Snow's dichotomy (alongside a critique of the concept of "The Two Cultures") can be found in Herbert Marcuse's essays[1]. There, Marcuse talks about the sciences' funding by the military-industrial complex and the position of the humanities as a potentially regulating (e.g. ethical) moderator to curb an overbroad influence on the sciences by forces outside the disciplines (or system).

[1]: Herbert Marcuse: Bemerkungen zu einer Neubestimmung der Kultur (Remarks on a Redefinition of Culture), in: Daedalus. Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Winter 1965.

3rd3• 13 years ago

Feynman referred to this issue at the end of his second Messenger Lecture:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0xTfdt6qw&list=PL71D034A47B...

Transcript:

.. To summarize, I would use the words of Jeans, who said that "the Great Architect seems to be a mathematician". To those who do not know mathematics it is difficult to get across a real feeling as to the beauty, the deepest beauty, of nature. C.P. Snow talked about two cultures. I really think that those two cultures separate people who have and people who have not had this experience of understanding mathematics well enough to appreciate nature once.

It is too bad that it has to be mathematics, and that mathematics is hard for some people. It is reputed - I do not know if it is true - that when one of the kings was trying to learn geometry from Euclid he complained that it was difficult. And Euclid said, "There is no royal road to geometry". And there is no royal road. Physicists cannot make a conversion to any other language. If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in. She offers her information only in one form; we are not so unhumble as to demand that she change before we pay any attention.

All the intellectual arguments that you can make will not communicate to deaf ears what the experience of music really is. In the same way all the intellectual arguments in the world will not convey an understanding of nature to those of "the other culture". Philosophers may try to teach you by telling you qualitatively about nature. I am trying to describe her. But it is not getting across because it is impossible. Perhaps it is because their horizons are limited in the way that some people are able to imagine that the center of the universe is man...

rokhayakebe• 13 years ago

I think most of our problems come from the misuse and misunderstanding of two words: debate and dialectic. Western culture DEBATES every effing thing so much so that presidential candidates have a series of publicized DEBATES where they each defend their plan to lead a nation.

If we were instead taught to have DIALECTICS and frankly try and remove the word DEBATE from our dialogues, we could start to solve big problems as the author suggests. However everyone is darn convinced their knowledge is superior.

Of course the irony is that it appears scientists are (in general) more dogmatic then any other group.

maerF0x0• 13 years ago

Read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance for an enjoyable (500pg) way to explore these "two cultures".

lkozma• 13 years ago

There is also a follow-up "The Two Cultures of Mathematics" by Timothy Gowers. I found it a crystal clear explanation of the differences between the schools of "problem solving" and "theory building" - and particularly of what really motivates "combinatorics".

https://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~wtg10/2cultures.pdf‎

cstross• 13 years ago

Key point: for decades in the UK, school education forked at age 16 -- the point at which you specialized. Prior to age 16 you'd be studying for exams in 6-10 subjects: originally 'O' (ordinary) levels, then GCSEs. (School leaving age was 16.) If you wanted to continue and eventually go to university, you then went on to study for 2 years for 'A' (advanced) level exams -- roughly equivalent to year 1 or 2 at a US university. (British taught university degrees were typically 3 year courses.) However, this was intensive enough that typically you'd only take 3 or 4 'A' level subjects. This forced early specialization -- dropping either all science or all arts subjects.

(This system ran from the late 1940s through the 1990s, subject to fine-tuning. So, for example, in 1981-83 I was taking four 'A' level subjects: physics, chemistry, biology, and 'general studies' (a vague attempt to shoe-horn the entirety of the liberal arts field into one quarter of the student's time).)

revscat2• 13 years ago

This seems to ignore a rather important the a rather important third culture: the free-market capitalist. Why was this not mentioned? It is certainly an important one insofar as western culture is concerned, and has risen to become far more important and influential than the other two.

potatolicious• 13 years ago

I don't think capitalists are a separate category in and of themselves - they invariably belong in one camp or the other.

Elon Musk is a scientist. Andy Warhol is an artist. Both are known for savvy and shrewd capitalistic exploitation of their talents.

A capitalist who is neither scientist nor artist is not much of a capitalist at all, for he/she has nothing upon which to capitalize. All business, at the end of the day, is the exploitation of an art or a science to fulfill a need.

revscat2• 13 years ago

Mitch McConnell. Michael Bloomberg. The Koch brothers. Vladimir Putin. The NSA.

There are many, many political actors which shape Western culture that this essay does not account for.

rch• 13 years ago

"The third culture consists of those scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world who, through their work and expository writing, are taking the place of the traditional intellectual in rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefining who and what we are."

-- http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/

bchjam• 13 years ago

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/

everyone• 13 years ago

Personally I think something is either rational and evidence based (or at least attempting to be) or it is not. I would posit that this divide seems apparent simply because scientists and humanities people are for some reason grouped together in the same institutions. Imagine if half of CERNS facility was given over to say, cheesemaking, I'm sure a similar dichotomy would be commented upon.

peter303• 13 years ago

In my life a see a large assymetry between the cultures. A fiar number of scientists/engineers I know are good in the arts, theater, music etc. I dont se as many humanities types as familar with science. I observed this MIT, Harvar,and Stanford where I have degrees and took courses.

graycat2• 13 years ago

Snow's Two Cultures was something I loudly cheered when I first read about its points and for years afterward.

But now the book and the OP strike me as not well considered.

Net, the 'humanities' have a role much more important than is commonly or easily described. It took me a while to understand this point.

Sure, as an insecure a young nerd facing the world, both nature and society, I wanted 'control' of my life, in particular, 'security', and for those wanted the power of 'truth' and didn't want to settle for anything less solid than, say, plane geometry or, in a pinch, mathematical physics. Of course then only some of this could I articulate.

So, something like 'The Song of Hiawatha' with "By the shores of Gitche Gumee, By the shining Big-Sea-Water ..." seemed to me as mostly nonsense and gibberish and at best maybe something lightly entertaining but nothing like the 'truth' for the power I was seeking. And maybe I was correct, but I'm reluctant to return to that poem to be more sure!

Eventually I concluded that (1) there is a lot about the world, where I was trying to get control and security, that was too complicated and subtle for mathematics and/or mathematical physics to do me any good and (2) that part of the world was so important to my life that, even though I didn't have solid tools to address it, I still had to handle it in some sense.

Maybe 'The Song of Hiawatha' wouldn't help me handle those complexities, but eventually I discovered that some parts of the humanities could to at least a useful extent.

Generally my central criticism of the humanities was that, in strong contrast with mathematics and mathematical physics, and, really, most of engineering, technology, medical science, medicine, and even law, the humanities (1) did not make clear just what they were claiming was true and (2) for any claims nearly never provided convincing evidence. While these remain valid criticisms, amazingly in places the humanities can be important nevertheless.

Still, I was often torqued at the humanities: E.g., in, say, the English departments, a common claim was that English literature had a lot of good knowledge of people and would help readers understand people. I concluded, and still do, that maybe a little.

Once I discovered the E. Fromm, The Art of Loving, awash in real practical expertise, well considered and formulated, about people, I concluded that Fromm was a good example of progress on information for understanding people. For more on love specifically, actually some of the relevant articles on Wikipedia seem quite good -- at least in places they have explained some of what I figured out more or less independently, at enormous cost, and added a lot more.

So, it is possible to get some understanding of people, but for this purpose I would mostly set aside English literature as too thin and/or even misleading.

For understanding people, I'd say that the most important contribution of English literature to understanding people is that some people like English literature.

The crack in my scorn that got me started with the humanities classical music. A brilliant person once said, "Music doesn't mean anything.". Well, maybe, maybe not, but it still can be useful for someone wanting to understand people or even themselves, amazingly.

Classical music was able to 'reach' me in part because there were usually few or no words to take literally and, thus, argue with.

Well, it turns out that classical music has something of a language, especially about human emotions. If want to understand people, the biggest chapter is human emotions.

Classical music is an example of a common definition of art as in the communications, interpretation of human experience, emotion. Well, it can be easy enough to find parts of classical music that are quite effective meeting this definition of art. So, here there is some progress in understanding humans.

One description of much of the media is vicarious, escapist, fantasy, emotional experience entertainment which sounds next to worthless for the audience and, maybe, is, but we can reduce this description to vicarious emotional experience and, then, learn about people by feeling their emotions -- and art has a lot of this and, thus, can help a person understand people.

For some value for the audience, good art is supposed to be universal and, then, often a person in the audience can see where the art is describing things much as in their life from which that person can conclude, "I'm not the only one who has encountered such a thing. That thing is not unique to me. Whatever I did to make that thing happen, others did the same, and maybe some of the main causes are not really from me.".

E.g., a few weeks ago I did a search for a girl I knew and fell in love with in high school. Yup, the Internet showed me a scan of a high school annual with her picture as a Homecoming Queen candidate. To me she was always the prettiest human female I ever saw in person or otherwise. Then many of those days with her, decades ago, came back to me as if they were last week. She was my first love and, apparently, burned into my brain -- I can no more forget her than I can forget my own name.

Well, we were young: We saw each other for 18 months and started when she was just 12 and in the seventh grade and I was 14 and in the ninth grade.

I was a nerd, socially awkward, and not good at understanding the emotions of a young woman, and we were both afraid of rejection. So we were to afraid to communicate clearly and accumulated quite a list of false beliefs about each other that had us making mistakes in our relationship. At one point, some of her mistakes got me to draw some seriously wrong conclusions, and I walked away from her. I don't think that there was anything seriously wrong, and everything wrong was based just on mis-communications, My heart was broken, and I later discovered that so was hers.

Then there's Wagner's opera Lohengrin, first performed in 1850, about a knight, Lohengrin, of the Holy Grail who marries sweet Elsa. Yes, the Wagner "Bridal Chorus" or "Wedding March" music is from their marriage in that opera. Elsa is misled by an evil witch, makes a mistake, and Lohengrin is forced to walk away from his new bride.

So, Lohengrin told me that I was not the first guy to walk away from the young woman he loved and that such things go back to at least 1850.

Also, Lohengrin and I made similar mistakes: We asked too much of the understanding of our women and should have had arranged a less 'brittle' situation.

Nerd guys: Listen up here and learn.

As good art communicates emotions about the human experience, members of the audience can begin to learn more about other people.

The best art, in the humanities, can be astoundingly effective in communicating about humans; we don't want to be without the results; and technical fields are so far no substitutes.

Took me a while to see these points.

com2kid• 13 years ago

we don't want to be without the results; and technical fields are so far no substitutes.

True enough, for now. Once our understanding of human psychiatry is more complete, a much more accurate model will hopefully be possible. Of course getting a true understanding of another's mental state at any point in time to simulate the model forward to predict their next behavior will be the hard part. Even doing such forward prediction with the (compared to biological brains) toy computers we have today is already almost impossible if one wants absolute certainty.[1]

Of course one can view all artistic observations of human behaviors so far as a sort of an indirect empirical guide to human behavioral patterns.

Although it is often to the frequent irritation of those of us not blessed with a natural abundance of social skills that those who have the understanding allowing them to write down such observations are also often unable to understand that others do not possess their same social talents and that therefore many unspoken assumptions need to indeed be spoken up of.

[1] Computers are of course 100% predictable, short of a true random # generator plugged into the side, but there is a large gulf of difference between "theoretically doable" and "here is a state frozen 8GB 3.2GHZ desktop PC, tell me what is going to happen next without booting it up."

graycat2• 13 years ago

Yup.

many unspoken assumptions

Yup. And had I known that, been able, in verbal, emotional, psychological, and social skills, to have acted on it, and done so at all well, then as soon as that girl I knew in high school, starting when she was 12, was out of high school and I was out of college, we would have gotten married and my life would have been much different and quite likely much better.

Side point: High school first love is not necessarily just a joke, just an unwelcome threat of too much emotional involvement, an unmarried pregnancy, or something just to be thrown away. In particular, a lot of high school girls will get married at the traditional time, in June after their high school graduation, so that from age 12 to marriage she is short of time to learn about young men, find some good catches, pick one, build a relationship, after trashing a few, go steady, and get engaged, all in time for her high school graduation.

To nerd boys talking to girls: Don't just play Anatomy 101 Hands on Lab, contact comfort cuddling, caring about her and protecting her, joining your life with hers, etc. and in addition be sufficiently articulate and clear with, right, a natural language, e.g., English, to eliminate "many unspoken assumptions". Else your communications can be poor leading to misunderstandings, that is, she can accumulate a list of things about you that are wildly false, and similarly for you about her. Then after a few weeks of you two acting on those misunderstandings, your relationship can be in real trouble. That's what that girl and I did; there was actually nothing really wrong, but the misunderstandings ruined our relationship.

Realize some emotions she likely has: First being a girl, her emotions are likely more intense than yours. E.g., she has emotions about pregnancy, if she gets pregnant some really strong, good emotions if she wants to be pregnant and some really strong, bad emotions if she doesn't. Second, learn to read her emotions in her facial expressions. Sorry, guys, even if you are a normal male and not a nerd, from birth she is an astoundingly talented and devoted reader of facial expressions while you are thinking about the posts in the crib, how the latch mechanism works, how to escape to get to the toy firetruck on the floor (not really a joke), and how to control it via C++ code. She does a lot of communicating with facial expressions. Third, with her strong emotions, and because she is a girl and generally more vulnerable to "the hostile forces of nature and society" than you are, she tends to be afraid. Indeed, serious anxiety disease is much more common for human females (maybe 4:1) than in males. So, one thing you should do, and that you might get hugs, kisses, and more for, is to help her with her fears, i.e., provide her with some emotional security. The relationship is not all about hands on lab. Fourth, one thing she is afraid of is being rejected by you. If you are a mean guy, then you may be able to exploit this to your (likely only short term) advantage and manipulate her to be intimidated, subordinate, subservient, subjugated, etc. (you don't really want that, do you?). If you are a nicer guy, then you will give her some of the highly coveted emotional security of letting her know you are not about to reject her -- right, she might take advantage of this, feel entitled, take you for granted, and abuse your effort. To know, read her emotions. Fifth, to help her with the emotions closer to your relationship, use the famous three little words, "I love you", sometimes a lot. And, "say it with flowers" or some such things. Else she can be afraid that you are drifting away from her. Sixth, realize that she's a mammal (not just a joke about her bust line) and, like all baby mammals (even though she is not exactly still a baby) she does not (emphasize this with flashing letters and some huge font size) want to feel alone -- for her to feel alone can be just terrifying to her. Indeed, one reason for cell phones is so that girls can continue to gossip while mobile, and they gossip (may I have the envelope please) so that they don't feel alone, so that they feel acceptance and approval from membership in a group that they get by bringing the group juicy tidbits of gossip (read some D. Tannen, long at Georgetown) -- built one of a heck of cell phone and smart phone industry. Seventh, when everything does hit the fan, slow down, calm down, back down, relax, count slowly to 20, maybe type in all your thoughts and review them 24 hours later, maybe even days later, etc., and see how to correct the situation. In all of this, be highly aware of her emotions. Did I mention the importance of her emotions? Maybe use some reflective listening techniques ("What I heard you explain was ...; is this about right?") also intended for good parenting of children and likely also useful if you are CEO of a startup.

There's more. Maybe I will get a blog and post a more complete and better organized presentation.

But for this thread, at least for now, some parts of the humanities can be crucial for understanding people.

rasengan0• 13 years ago

1992 Neil Postman http://youtu.be/KbAPtGYiRvg Introduction "In 1959, Sir Charles Snow published The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technopoly

SOS

The Two Cultures

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