CMU School of Drama


Thursday, August 07, 2008

We have scientists on the arts, but where are the artists on science?

flyover: "C.P. Snow, the novelist and chemist, once wrote about the two cultures: one being the scientists, the other being intellectuals, those who wrote for a wide audience in general-interest publications like Raritan and The New Criterion. He said there was too much of a divide between them. They didn’t know how to talk to each other. And this divide is what characterizes the life of the mind in the West.

In his view, the scientists were going to stay the same, that is, set on their course. So it was up to the intellectuals — the historians, novelists, poets, journalists, policy writers — to relate to the rest of the world what scientists were doing, why, and why it mattered. These would make up what he called The Third Culture."

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