My copy of The Two Cultures: And a Second Look (Mentor pbk, 1963), featuring a semi-abstract cover graphic that looks like a mushroom-shaped cloud rising from the guts of an ancient manual typewriter (just like mine) was purchased secondhand in a little Richmond bookshop in '84 when I was still an over-aged undergrad in philosophy at VCU. It is so marked up in places I can scarcely read it anymore.
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Abstract:
The Two Cultures is fascinating for a moral philosopher on two counts. First it's a moral argument by a scientific thinker; second it's a moral argument for science. It is also the first mass-market socio-political book to take "culture" as a central concept in its moral argumentation.
The book is analyzed here on three points. First, a close reading reveals how moral language is woven into the text. Second, the book is examined sans the moral language, to explain its best-selling success as (geo)political theater, with special attention to its critique of the educational system. Third, the moral argument itself is analyzed for its effectiveness, asking whether the moral dimension was a net gain (or even necessary) for Snow's overall point, and whether it succeeds as a moral argument for science.
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C. P. Snow knew he would stir controversy with his Rede Lecture at Cambridge in May 1959. In what became a classic statement on science and the humanities, Snow claimed literary intellectuals were creating a deep cultural rift. Generally the writers — Snow considered them creators of the "cultural milieu" — did not sympathize with the scientific interests of society. The future would belong to science, yet the literati did not understand science, convey its value, or credit it with doing any social good. The literati were backsliding on progress. Furthermore, these shortcomings were dangerous in the modern age.
The little paperback that appeared soon after the lecture — The Two Cultures, barely 50 pages — instantly electrified the intellectual atmosphere in Britain and beyond, and it sparked debate for years. In the literature on science and society written after 1959, the phrase "two cultures," sometimes lower case and unattributed as if all who can read will recognize it, appears repeatedly. It is Snow's signature catch-phrase, specifically used to discuss a purported fissure between the sciences and humanities.
Snow warned that Britain or the West in general could lose control of its own destiny, or forfeit its current advantages in history, for lack of understanding between scientists and the literati. He characterized a "gulf of mutual incomprehension" (12), becoming less polite and increasingly hostile, in which each camp regarded the other as out of touch and somehow lacking in grace, intelligence and wisdom. Among the writers, Snow thought, there was not only ignorance of science but an outright anti-scientific attitude. Many expressed existentialist themes, marked by a dark view of humanity and a pessimistic approach to life. They were creating a culture of indifference to progress. "If the scientists have the future in their bones," Snow wrote, "the traditional culture responds by wishing the future did not exist." (17)
Such intellectuals never had liked the Industrial Revolution, he said. "The traditional culture became more abstracted from it ... trained its young men for administration, for the Indian Empire, for the purpose of perpetuating the culture itself, but never in any circumstances ... equip[ped] them to understand the revolution or take part in it." (28) By 1959 the major intellectual fashion was existentialism in literature and philosophy, portraying life as lonely and essentially meaningless, leading to "a moral trap ... tempting one to sit back, complacent with one's unique tragedy, and let [the rest of the world] go without a meal." (14)
That moral trap would prove dangerous in the long run, Snow argued. Non-industrialized countries, looking at what seemed exemplary in the rapidly industrializing USSR and China, could see it was possible through scientific education, research and development to raise themselves out of poverty. If the West didn't participate in fostering Third World prosperity, the communist nations would, and "if that is how it turns out, we shall have failed, both practically and morally. ...History is merciless to failure. In any case, if that happens, we shall not be writing the history." (51)
The challenge for the West was to recognize its own self-interest. "If we are short-sighted, inept, incapable ... [Third World poverty] may be removed to the accompaniment of war ... but removed it will be. The questions are how, and by whom." (48) A staggering demand for capital, the unmet demand for scientists and engineers in undeveloped countries, the continuing threat of nuclear war, and overpopulation were "menaces" standing in the way. "This is one of those situations where the worst crime is innocence," he said.
Snow expressed the danger of producing a new generation of Luddites at a time when science might be the difference between failure and survival. The literary intellectuals were "natural Luddites" themselves. (27) Exactly as far as their world view — with its brooding, pessimistic self-absorption and its ambivalence or hostility toward science — was shared by policymakers, that far also would be the distance between needs and results in a world that wouldn't wait another 50 years for progress. Yet the governing ranks currently were trained in the classic humanities, not science.
Scientists, for their part, didn't read literary books, felt aloof from mundane affairs, and preferred if possible "pure" research, regardless of practical value. They were motivated by nothing beyond knowledge itself, and tended to be apolitical. They rarely appreciated what industry was in the social sense, loftily ignoring that progress depended on economic business and that industry must transform theory into technology for society to benefit from science.
Still, forgivingly, Snow noted humanitarian motives influenced the scientists he knew. They were not dedicated simply to advancing science for its own sake, but honestly intended to benefit humanity through knowledge.
Between these two cultures lay a distance neither seemed willing to cross. Each camp held its own view of humanity and interpretation of history and judged the other against it. While the scientists were creating progress, the literati — keepers of the "cultural milieu" — didn't even like it. The result was a shameful, dangerous cultural split, a conflict of world views in which science deserved to prevail.
Knowledge is progress. Science is the future. The literati were to blame for fighting the tide of history.
Snow proceeded to take the problem of the "two cultures" down to its roots in the educational system. "At 18, our [British] science specialists know more science than their contemporaries anywhere, though they know less of anything else." (37) British education was reserved for the gifted and the elite — and it turned out narrow specialists, whether in science or the humanities, in a way not found for instance in America. There, education was typically broad before it was deep; students were more socially mobile, egalitarian, less culture bound. Most important, they explored outside their specialties. They became more likely to hold a sympathetic view of progress, too, scientists or not.
Moreover, Snow pointed out, even Russia showed a better balance between scientists and intellectuals. That nation had embarked from the first upon a campaign of scientific education, rationally assessing its likely needs for talent and recruiting heavily to meet them. Soviet arts and literature were sympathetic, frequently depicting technicians and scientists as heroes, and so the culture emphasized industry and progress consistently. The entire society had been geared to building a scientific future; artists and intellectuals were part of the effort. No one was backsliding on progress in Russia. That difference, Snow thought, might well become the decisive historical advantage of the Soviet system — and the ruin of the West.
If the Soviets delivered progress to the Third World while the West only argued about it, whose world would it become?
RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME
The concept of a split between the intellectual or cultural milieu and the scientific interests of society, along with the argument that it presented a dangerous situation in an industrializing world, hit a nerve in Britain and elsewhere. The Two Cultures was translated and published around the globe, read by thinkers and public officials in countless countries. The Russian ambassador to Britain read it. So did John F. Kennedy. Before the 1960 election, Kennedy wrote to the president of the University of Virginia, who had brought the book to his attention, that he "would make use of it in future speeches." Indeed, he appears to have made use of it in future ideas, such as the Peace Corps and the US mission to the moon — steps with symbolic value certainly, but also practical and economic value beyond mere national defense. These agendas are almost textbook Snow.
The essay's call for better and broader science education still echoes today as well. Most politicians who stump for education mention math and science first, not history, music or linguistics (much less existential fiction) and commonly express the fear of falling behind other nations technologically. Textbook Snow again.
Yet Snow had published much the same article, by the same title, long before his Rede Lecture. That appeal was greeted by a yawn, scarcely noticed. ("The Two Cultures," New Statesman, October 6, 1956) This time, his words ricocheted through every time zone on earth. What was different in 1959? Why did this book resonate so strongly?
The answer is Sputnik.
The USSR launched the little satellite that startled the world in October 1957, followed in November by a heavier vehicle with a dog aboard. Over the next 40 months, Russia launched eight more Sputniks of increasing size. A few months before Snow's Rede Lecture, Luna 1 became the first vehicle to escape Earth's gravity; it flew within 6000 km of the moon, then was parked in a permanent heliocentric orbit between Earth and Mars. The last Sputnik flew in March 1961. The next month the Soviets sent Vostok 1 into orbit with Yuri Gagarin aboard.
Secretly, the first Russian ICBM completed a 6000 km test flight in August 1957, weeks before Sputnik. Operational tests on that system were finished in December 1959.
Throughout this period, the West looked on in awe and with fear. Nuclear warheads riding ICBMs were imminent and for some time it appeared all would be marked CCCP. Suddenly it was a scientific world in which the "other side" had the lead. Suddenly there was too much ignorance of science and Western survival was at stake.
Snow was speaking to a changed world.
The significance of Sputnik for attention to Snow's essay cannot be missed. By the time the book appeared, the public had been reacting to Sputnik for 18 months. Several satellites were orbiting even as Snow spoke, including the one around the sun. The major geopolitical issue of the moment had become, as it was called in the US, "the missile gap," certain to be a front-burner issue in the upcoming 1960 election.
Snow's message redefined the crisis. The book was wide-ranging, explicatory, unique and startling in its analysis, editorially masterful, populistic and clear. It hit a receptive public right between the ears.
In the popular imagination, President Eisenhower had been caught flat-footed by the Russians. To reassure everyone that America would not fall behind militarily or otherwise, he named a Special Assistant for Science and Technology, backed up by a committee of scientists; the member list reads like a late-50s Who's Who. The man Eisenhower appointed, James R. Killian of MIT, states in his memoir of those days (Sputnik, Scientists and Eisenhower, 1977) that the popular reaction to Sputnik was near hysteria.
Eisenhower, he says, urgently tried to convince the American people that "nobody's going to drop a bomb on your head," but for the most part people believed otherwise and were extremely upset. Lyndon Johnson was among the first politicians to make political hay of it as he began his bid for the Presidency. While he spoke of new programs to close the missile gap, Kennedy centered his nomination campaign more generally (and profoundly) on "getting America moving again," and eventually carried that theme to the White House.*
Snow's remarks about the West losing control of its own destiny closely resemble Killian's quote of Edward Teller at the time: that if the Russians passed the West in technology, "there is very little doubt who will determine the future of the world." A Japanese newspaper, Killian notes, called the first Sputnik "a Pearl Harbor for American science." As historians Frank Gibney and George Feldman stated in The Reluctant Spacefarers (1965): "There may be no magic catalysts in history, but the appearance of the Sputnik came very close to being one [for US space science]."
Certainly it was a catalyst for sales of The Two Cultures, well-aimed at a moment when science suddenly was regarded by nearly everyone as crucial to the balance of geopolitical power. We had thought we were safe behind our nuclear weapons until Russia got their own; now they had missiles too. The Soviets were ahead technologically, but the international propaganda value for communism was significant as well. Meanwhile, according to Snow, a moribund education system was training leaders in the ancient trivium.
Existential navel-gazing would be less fashionable for awhile.
Intriguingly, Snow didn't mention Sputnik in his book. He didn't need to. Taken against its historical backdrop, Snow's analysis of education, ignorance of science, rising expectations in the Third World and the risk of being left behind — most of which he had expressed in 1956 — lit up the intellectual sky.
The book was controversial though, mostly on the notion that a cultural atavism was standing in the way of progress and, indeed, endangering Western survival — and that atavism was the literati.
Snow was criticized at the time for imagining society divided into just two cultures, though he'd expressed reservations about that himself in the book. He'd opted for a deliberate level of complexity for his argument, he said. "I was searching for something a little more than a dashing metaphor, a good deal less than a cultural map." (16) Nonetheless, some critics thought more "cultures" would have made a more accurate picture, while others scoffed at Snow's entirely rhetorical polarization of intellectual society into scientists and ignorati. As Snow stated himself, "two is a dangerous number." Yet, two it was.
He was attacked venomously by literary figures. Some thought Snow simply didn't like their art and had reached for the biggest stick he could find. To some extent, this claim is valid but it does not explain all of Snow's disdain for the literati.
In the book he told of an impromptu test of scientific knowledge he sometimes sprang on writers at dinner parties: "How many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics?"* Many of his victims thought that was a bit crackpot. How many scientists could discuss Shakespeare or Milton? Or Hume, Bentham or Mill? Yet that only granted Snow's point: mutual incomprehension.
*In a closed system isolated from external sources of energy or gravity, energy (heat) always flows from warm to cold (towards entropy) and not the reverse, until entropy is complete. Thermodynamic entropy is uniform distribution of heat/energy throughout the system; once achieved, no further energy transfer can occur so long as the system remains isolated. The reverse transfer - cold to warm - is impossible. Absent new energy in the universe, its entropy is inevitable. (Some party-going existentialist poet should have replied that if chaos in the universe ever ends, we are dead.)
And so the little culture war was on.
Finally, some of his friends thought Snow had not distinguished clearly enough between science and technology; that most of his remarks about aloofness, impracticality and knowledge for its own sake applied only to a limited number of "pure" scientists. The record shows he did distinguish, made clear that the scientists in question valued "pure research" for status as much as knowledge, and thought engineers were admirably practical — and most likely Tory, too.
The book was still reverberating when, in 1963, Snow republished it with an appended "Second Look." He'd become a celebrity since the first edition; now his views were well known, albeit still controversial.
Response had been like a flood, he said, convincing him the ideas had been in the air all along and he'd merely given them words. (55) The Two Cultures had sparked letters in languages he couldn't even read, such as from Hungary, Poland and Japan. He spent months in the US, mostly basking in praise; the book became a Book-of-the-Month and its author even showed up on TV. By far most comments, he claimed, were positive reactions.
The "Second Look" appends some observations even more trenchant than the first. The added section is terse and sociological, accounts for objections, and sticks even closer to the original point. Snow's response to literary venom was to call it only venom, then debone a bit of D. H. Lawrence to show what he had meant. In effect he said the literati deserved what they got. From that he never budged.
He was honest enough to grant his impromptu dinner party test might take a real scientist to understand, so he proposed a different test. He chose molecular biology: it required only average gifts of intelligence and a desire to learn, he said, yet the literati scarcely understood that science either — and the reason was attitudinal.
Here Snow added one of the most perspicacious comments of the 20th century. In the 10 years since Francis Crick and James Watson had revealed the double helix structure of DNA (April 1953), it had become obvious that science one day would fully understand (which also means control) the chemistry of evolution. Snow wrote that eventually this knowledge would become more significant to humankind than physics or computers. Molecular biology, he wrote, "is likely to affect the way in which men think of themselves more profoundly than any scientific advance since Darwin's — and possibly moreso than Darwin's." (70; Snow's italics)
His upshot was again to shame the writers. They were ignoring another human endeavor likely to change humanity dramatically, in favor of existential gloom.
Snow provided a savvy defense of his having counted just two cultures. First he referred readers to his original remarks, choosing a level of complexity for his argument. Since he had made those comments the first time around, ignoring them would be a critic's fault. Next, he admitted he should have called his antagonists subcultures (61). Rhetorically this granted the critical point that more than two world views exist, even if he left them undiscussed.
But then, in a flash of inspiration, he took an extra step. He reached for a synthesis. Still neglecting the term "subculture," he predicted a third culture with its feet planted in both science and the humanities which had, "just to do its job, to be on speaking terms with the scientific [community]." (67) He wrote:
I have been increasingly impressed by a body of intellectual opinion, forming itself, without organization, without any kind of lead or conscious direction, under the surface of this debate. ...This body of opinion seems to come from intellectual persons in a variety of fields. ...All of them are concerned with how human beings are living or have lived. ...I am not implying they agree with each other, but in their approach to cardinal problems — such as the human effects of the scientific revolution, which is the fighting point of this whole affair — they display, at the least, a family resemblance. ...It is probably too early to speak of a third culture already in existence. But I am now convinced this is coming. ...[When it does] the focus of this debate will be shifted, in a direction which will be more profitable to us all. (67)
(Almost six decades later, the question is: where is it?)
THE MORAL DIMENSION
Charles Percy Snow, already a successful essayist and novelist before 1940, originally was educated in chemistry (some articles say physics) at Cambridge. He worked in the UK government, supervising scientific research programs during WWII and for a decade after, returning by the mid-50s to writing fulltime. Career themes, industry, technology, progress and the use and abuse of power were figures in his fiction as much as the human characters. One of his novels is an "insider's view" of politics skewing decisions that should be made on scientific merit. Appeals for scientific thinking were Snow's ouvre.
The Two Cultures in its general character is an appeal for a scientific approach to progress. That is not unique; many leading scientists published future-gazing "science and society" essays in the decades after WWII and the book belongs to that genre. But for such a little book, it is fascinating on several levels, the first of which is its exceptional influence on our society, then and now.
Indeed a cultural split does exist between those who think of progress in strictly scientific terms and several countervailing elements of society — some secular, some religious, some philosophical, artistic or academic — practically all of them in some sense political. Even the Modern Dance department must lobby for public funds. In the half-century since Snow wrote, scientists have become more politically astute as well, aware that they work in the public eye and often within the limits of the public pocketbook. Science is expensive. Today we live with "big science" as well as big government, due in no small part to Snow's electrifying contribution to debate. Opposition to big science is easy to find but for the most part, after Snow's Cold War analysis, science has been winning.
The once-and-future term "culture wars" certainly owes its coinage to the book and many of those debates relate directly to its scientific themes. For instance, wherever controversy arises over some new technology, especially those which manipulate the biological makeup of natural species, human or otherwise, Snow's vision of a cultural chasm still holds the field.
If the future must be strictly scientific, there are people who don't want to go — and their beliefs are the reasons why. Some objections are religious, such as the common poetic accusation that scientists "play God." But even in completely secular terms it is possible to challenge the hubris that perennially fallible human beings can deliberately control any natural process — from weather to evolution — in any better balance than nature does.
Several fronts in the "culture wars" are built along such lines. The controversy over teaching creationism in science class is an up-to-date example. So is US restriction of human stem-cell research. Genetically modified crops. Transhumanism. Climate change. A roomful of people could expand the list of controversies almost endlessly. The little culture war has grown, spawning so many cottage industries it's damn near an institution. Snow's aphorism is still correct: the human effects of the scientific revolution are the fighting point of the whole affair.
Meanwhile the least-discussed dimension of Snow's book is the most fascinating because it was the feature most responsible for its success: Snow was a writer. By far the most crucial factor in his whole exercise was not how correct he was — people still debate that — but rather his masterful deployment of rhetoric.
The power of scare-mongering in a crisis might seem, at first glance, to supply most of the book's rhetorical punch, combined with an abundance of pithy phrases such as "the worst crime is innocence" and "complacent with one's own unique tragedy," etc. But these are mere devices used in countless rip-roaring good jeremiads — flawlessly used in this case, of course, but still just commonplace.
Instead it is Snow's deployment of moral rhetoric that magnifies his message beyond the sum of its ordinary editorial parts. It is a moral argument for science, for one thing. There are good guys and bad, right actions and wrong, struggles for the hearts and minds of nations, and everlasting oblivion for those who choose darkness over light. Tension between good and evil is cranked up as high as it will go. The book is full of verbal fireworks, and the geopolitical arguments are brilliant, but the moral staging lights up the whole thing with panache. The moral dimension of the work is the source of its gravitas.
The moral argument succeeds as a rhetorical device — it's brilliant. It raises the stakes. It turns "the fighting point of this whole affair" into a dichromatic moral issue. Readers sense the moral baseline, though much of it is subtextual — progress is good and science is progress; science is good; anti-science is bad — tied to the signature point (and moral argument) of the book: progress is survival. Certainly survival is the most unassailable moral imperative ever wrought — the core principle that justifies self-interest, in fact — and thus the biggest stick a moral argument can use.
That would be praiseworthy except for one problem: Snow's argument is full of holes. In The Two Cultures, the strongest weapon rhetorically is the weakest point morally because Snow provokes more moral questions than he solves — right at the core, where progress equates to survival.
He sacrifices his literary kin on the altar of "progress" without asking whether every form of progress is scientific. If there is such a thing as moral progress — our constantly evolving definition of a just society, for instance — historically the humanities have been, if nothing else, the forum for such debates. Material progress always seems to happen no matter what; justice has always been the harder struggle.
Now suppose all progress is material. Snow sees no limit to it. He sees the "menace" of overpopulation, but how much material do we have? Is there no resource limit upon every hamlet on earth becoming as thick with automobiles, appliances and gadgets (not to mention trash) as Europe and the USA? No matter how extensive, earth's resources are finite. If there is a material limit, management of scarcity (and its effects) eventually will become a moral issue. Snow never considers this. Progress is just good.
He takes Stalinist-era Russian literature at face value, failing to notice that the Soviets jackbooted artists into the propaganda machine. Snow countenances the same thing west of the Iron Curtain, it would seem. Is progress the most important theme in art? What duties do artists owe the state? What would Solzhenitsyn say?
He completely ignores potential downsides of science and technology, such as dangers they can pose to the environment and society at the hands of the unscrupulous or power-hungry (or the Marketing Department).
He fails to notice any connection between "apolitical" and "politically naive" — which scientists demonstrated convincingly at Alamogordo. If "the worst crime is innocence," it seems there is plenty of that to go around. He notes scientists' "aloofness" but sees no obtuseness in it, especially about potential misuses of science — an opposition fighting point, if not his own.
He believes in "pure" research as much as any scientist, and believes there are practical benefits from even the most exotic — hooray for engineers. But he never suspects that every result that trickles out of a lab is not, ipso facto, a pure boon to humanity, morally or otherwise. The history of LSD or the heritable effects of BPA, let's say, would be instructive. (Rachel Carson's study of pesticides in the environment, Silent Spring, was published 1962. The contrast between the two best-sellers could not be any higher.)
And for one who plays the moral trump card, Snow appears to be unaware of a basic contradiction he creates in defense of science. Historically many scientists have maintained (especially under seige) that science is amoral — it has no moral content. In Snow's argument, science is good. Logically, science cannot be defended as amoral in the morning and in the afternoon promoted as a moral agent. By doing the latter, Snow breaks the line, compromising a barrier scientists have commonly used to deflect criticism. (A line that needed breaking, perhaps, but there and then, by Snow, was a polemical mistake.)
In sum, he uses black and white moral rhetoric to promote science as a noble cause. But by leaving out practically every shade of gray, he weakens the moral lynchpin of the book.
That weakness is not fatal to his overall argument, however. In fact, if the moral language is removed, it's still the same argument: progress is survival. That case may not be as strong as possible morally, but it is a valid prudential assessment nonetheless, given the competitive nature of modern international politics and economics.
The importance of Snow's use of moral language, then, is this: it's entirely rhetorical. It is not crucial to the argument; it's included for its editorial oomph.
What remains, if the moral dimension of the essay is subtracted?
First, the geopolitical argument stands intact: if non-Western nations foster Third World prosperity while Western nations do not, or if non-Western nations surpass the West in technology, then the West's influence upon the future — or our ability to determine our own destiny, as Snow has it — could decline, even to nothing. Essentially that is a mere truism, but the assessment is correct as the situation is defined by Snow. It's practically impossible to argue otherwise; in fact the same point could be made from any nation's perspective.
Second, the policy argument survives, but not on moral grounds: if the future is industrial (capitalist, socialist, or otherwise), and industrial progress depends on science, then scientific education, research and development must be supported in policy. Whether those must be government policies (rather than simply business priorities) is a question Snow did not address directly, though government support was implied. Politicians who read the book certainly read this into the text, however, and made decisions accordingly.
Ultimately the book is best considered as a classic contribution to the politics of progress — not its morality.
The real-world success of the book, then, was two-fold: it was punchy enough to become a best seller and correct enough to influence events. An editorialist can achieve no greater glory.
Except, of course, to be morally right in the process.
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Pro philosophers: Refrain from bleeding until actually shot. Weep at will.
--GC