A Dangerous Divide: The Two Cultures in the 21st Century

On the Web

Are We Beyond the Two Cultures?
A Seed magazine video feature published on the anniversary of Snow's lecture.

Bloggingheads: The Two Cultures
Chris Mooney and D. Graham Burnett discuss Snow's legacy.

Dot Earth
Andrew Revkin's blog on climate change and environmental issues at The New York Times.

Extreme Biology
Blog maintained by Stacy Baker and her students at the Calverton School in Huntingtown, MD.

FIRST
Dean Kamen's program, designed to inspire young people to pursue study and careers in science and technology.

Issues in Science and Technology
A forum for discussion of public policy related to science, engineering, and medicine, published by the National Academy of Sciences.

The Intersection
Blog by conference organizers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirschenbaum, hosted at Discover magazine.

Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial
An interactive Web site based on the NOVA documentary covering the Dover, Pennsylvania, court case concerning the teaching of evolution and creationism in schools.

The Loom
Carl Zimmer's blog, which focuses on topics in evolution.

Barack Obama Addresses the National Academy of Sciences
In this April 29, 2009, speech, the President set out his administrations priorities in science and technology.

Research!America
A nonprofit organization working to improve funding of health and medical research, and to encourage more scientists to become engaged in political life.

Science & the Arts
Organized at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Science & the Arts presents performances, films, and lectures that bridge the two cultures.

Science & the City
The public gateway to the New York Academy of Sciences, S&C presents events, produces a weekly podcast, and maintains a calendar of all public science events in the New York area.

Sciencecheerleader.com
Darlene Cavalier's blog encourages scientists and science enthusiasts to make themselves heard on issues related to science and technology.

ScienceDebate 2008
Read the post election report for information on the organization's achievements.

Science Friday: The Two Cultures, 50 Years On
Ira Flatow speaks with science historian Charles Seife about Snow's essay and its legacy.

Science in the Theater
Information about Dr. Atomic, Self Comes to Mind, and Hypermusic Prologue.

Union of Concerned Scientists
See the section on scientific integrity to learn more about the UCS's findings about the Bush administration, and its assessment of the Obama administration's efforts to restore science's role in policy making.

Books

Chapman M. 2007. 40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania. Collins, London.

Miller KR. 2007. Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution. Harper Perennial, New York.

Miller KR. 2009. Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul. Penguin, New York.

Mooney C. 2006. The Republican War on Science. Basic Books, New York.

Mooney C, Kirshenbaum S. 2009. Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. Basic Books, New York.

Ortolano G. 2009. The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature, and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Snow CP. 1993 (reprint edition). The Two Cultures. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Wilson EO. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Vintage, New York.

Articles

Blair A. 2008. Disciplinary distinctions before the "two cultures." The European Legacy 13: 577-588.

Collini S et al. 2009. Science and art: still two cultures divided? New Scientist (May 6).

Crease RP. 2009. 'Two cultures' turns 50. Physicsworld.com (May 1).

Dickson D. 2009. The real 'two cultures' divide. SciDevNet (May 21).

Dizikes P. 2009. Our two cultures. The New York Times (March 19).

Kemp M. 2009. Dissecting the two cultures. Nature 459: 32-33.

Mooney C, Kischenbaum S. 2009. The Culture Crosser. The New York Academy of Sciences Magazine (Spring).

Sponsorship

Special thanks to the following for their financial support of this event:

Gerry Ohrstrom

Thomas Campbell Jackson

The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation

On May 7, 1959, the British novelist and governmental science advisor C.P. Snow coined what was to become one of the more durable phrases in the history of 20th century intellectual life. Honored with the opportunity to deliver Cambridge University's annual Rede Lecture, Snow used the occasion to diagnose a fundamental rift in English academic, political, and intellectual life, a "gulf of mutual incomprehension" between what he called "the two cultures."

The two cultures in Snow's analysis were literary intellectuals on the one hand, and scientists on the other. A scientist by training, Snow circulated in both worlds, but saw little communication between the two, and a dangerous ignorance of science and technology within the literary community. Snow argued that this was not just petty academic chauvinism, but since many of the country's leaders were educated within this balkanized system, it posed a threat to the future of England's competitiveness and human progress, which he asserted relied on science and technology.

"The gap between the two cultures today is much less between scientists and literary intellectuals, as it is between science and the public."

Snow's polemic analyzed a problem in a specific time and place, but 50 years later it continues to resonate, even if we now face different issues in the 21st century. As NOVA executive producer Paula Apsell pointed out in a May 9, 2009, New York Academy of Sciences symposium celebrating the anniversary, "The gap between the two cultures today is much less between scientists and literary intellectuals, as it is between science and the public." Recent controversies in the United States over the teaching of evolution in schools, the discounting of scientific evidence and expertise within the Bush administration, and the shortage of Americans educated in science and technology all point to a fundamental disconnect.

At the Academy, scientists, journalists, historians, teachers, artists, activists, politicians, and inventors spent a day considering the legacy of the two cultures controversy, discussed current barriers in communication between scientists and others, and suggested practical ways to bridge the gap. The event was organized by authors Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum as part of the Academy's Science & the City program, in cooperation with the Science Communication Consortium, ScienceDebate 2008, and Discover magazine.

The two cultures in history

To put Snow's lecture in perspective, Harvard University historian Ann Blair traced the origins of the two cultures divide to the birth of natural philosophy in 13th-century European universities. For the first time, she explained, new faculties developed that were fundamentally independent of theological faculties, and were thus free to develop explanations of the world that did not rely on scriptures. By Isaac Newton's time in the 17th century, calculus and protocols for conducting observation began raising barriers of access for amateurs, broadening the gap between science and the public. William Whewell's coining of the term "scientist" in 1833 was a symptom of the further professionalization of science by that time, as scientific academies were founded and researchers increasingly specialized as, for example, biologists or chemists. By Snow's day, specialization had become even narrower, creating cultural gaps not just between scientists and nonscientists, but also between researchers in different fields.

But even if specialization has created walls between cultures, Blair argued that science as a whole has benefited greatly from disciplinary boundaries, and that there is value in preserving them and keeping science insulated from politics. Science's historical independence of ideology has earned it an authority that Blair argued is its most precious asset. At the same time, she suggested, "We also need to work to build bridges and communicate across those gaps... We need multiple cultures, each with recognized autonomy and authority and then bridged by individuals—specialists in education, in science writing—to help inform our public discourse."

Which two cultures?

Whether there be two or a multitude of cultures, science journalists like Carl Zimmer see their job as helping those not trained in science to understand it. In a panel session focusing on science communication, he explained, "For me, as a journalist, ultimately the two cultures are the scientists and everybody else, the people that we write for."

But who exactly is this audience, and why the seemingly widespread lack of understanding of science, and even antagonism to it? New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin pointed out that opposition to science is not easy to define politically. "The cultural aspects here are not just right/left. There is a rigidity to the way a lot of people examine what's out there in the science landscape, and we have a tendency culturally to overabsorb the stuff that fits our preconceptions and to ignore the stuff that doesn't." As Zimmer also pointed out, the anti-evolution movement is largely a conservative political position, while protests against vaccination come largely from the left. The problem in both cases is a rigidity of ideology that sets in and makes communication about the nuances of the scientific method difficult.

Paula Apsell said that she also observes a "frightening" anti-intellectual strain in American society that finds no use for science. This is a culture, she argued, "which feels science is a foreign language, that thinks science is too difficult, that they can't understand it, that it's vaguely malevolent and harmful, and even worse, that it's irrelevant... Perhaps ironically from the point of view of Snow, a lot of scientists are seen as the geeky, incomprehensible, snobby, arrogant intellectuals today." Science Friday radio host Ira Flatow echoed this perception, suggesting that there are many cultures, but that the fundamental split is between a "science satisfied" culture that believes science can explain things to them in satisfying ways, and another culture that is just not interested.

Left to right: Robert Keating, Paula Apsell, Ira Flatow, Andrew Revkin, Carl Zimmer. Click on the Media tab above to see video.

Given this situation, Zimmer suggested that the science journalist's role is to find ways to bridge the gap. His goal is to hit the "sweet spot" where he is explaining difficult concepts accurately and in ways that do not oversimplify, but also in a way that is accessible to those without the training to understand them fully. On television, Apsell feels she is constantly trying to answer the public's question, "Why should I care? Why is this relevant?" At NOVA, compelling storytelling is employed as a valuable tool for overcoming resistance to science.

The problem of communicating science does not exist only between the media and the general public, however. Within news organizations and broadcast media, the panelists remarked, structural pressures are making it increasingly difficult to cover science effectively.

Revkin said that one effect of the changing media landscape is that science desks are shrinking, leaving fewer people within news organizations with the training to understand the importance of developments in science and technology. "We're facing a world of more complexity," he pointed out, "with more decisions that have to be made in the policy arena that have a basis in science, and ever less experienced coverage." Activist and filmmaker Shawn Otto would emphasize this point later in the day, saying, "We are living in a time in America when most of the major policy questions resolve around science, and yet we have nobody covering it.... This is a major problem that does come out of the two cultures divide, and it probably is because the people who run a lot of these media organizations didn't like science and they don't think anyone else is interested in it either." When decisions about what content to publish rely too heavily on what advertising departments think they can sell, this can have a chilling effect on the amount of quality information about science that reaches the public.

At the same time, the panelists saw many positive developments in recent years. Apsell pointed out that, years ago, scientists weren't willing or didn't see the need to talk about what they do in public. This is changing, as she said she now gets great cooperation from researchers. And even if Ira Flatow faces challenges convincing advertisers to support what he does, he also cited the increasing popularity of Science Friday as a sign that at least a certain segment of the public is "thirsty" for science.

Although journalists presided over the panel discussion on science communications, they suggested ways scientists can help. Today more scientists than ever are sitting in front of cameras and writing for the public, but many still have trouble communicating their research effectively to laymen. "You shouldn't be able to get a PhD without knowing how to write a news column," Flatow argued. "You have to be able to explain what you do." The need is very great for scientists and journalists to reach out across the gap by making science more accessible and more human, the panelists agreed.

The two cultures in politics

Critical to Snow's original formulation of the two cultures was his conviction that science needs to inform political decision-making. "Closing the gap between our cultures," he argued near the end of the lecture, "is a necessity in the most abstract intellectual sense, as well as in the most practical. When those two senses have grown apart, then no society is going to be able to think with wisdom." Faced at the time with poverty in the developing world and the specter of the Soviet Union, the underlying message of his speech was that science and technology were critical tools for England to maintain its security.

For the scientific community, it was hard not to notice a similar argument in President Barack Obama's inaugural address and in his April 27, 2009, speech to the National Academy of Sciences, in which he described his science and technology priorities. Faced with the threats of climate change, energy shortages, and the United States' declining competitiveness in the global technology economy, science is once again rising in the list of national policy priorities. Obama's interest in science has been perceived as a breath of fresh air in comparison with the previous presidential administration, as it is now widely felt that the Bush administration took pains to discount science in its policy making. With this backdrop, a session at the conference presented many observations about how scientists can contribute to putting good science on the political agenda.

Left to right: Chris Mooney, Matthew Chapman, Shawn Otto, Francesca Grifo, John Porter, Darlene Cavalier. Click on the Media tab to see video.

One of the most vocal opponents to the Bush administration's devaluing of science was the Union of Concerned Scientists. As director of the Scientific Integrity Program at the UCS, Francesca Grifo explained, she and her organization became energized in the midst of "one of the most science-unfriendly administrations." Its mission became to document cases of abuse of science within the Bush government, compile this information as a resource, and distribute it to the press and others. The group also issued statements, which have been signed by 15,000 scientists, from a full spectrum of disciplines, across the country. They were reacting, Grifo said, to "the falsification and fabrication of data, the manipulation of information, the censorship and suppression of scientists, and so on."

John Edward Porter, currently chair of Research!America, and a former Congressman from Illinois who chaired the House Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, argued in a keynote address that despite the UCS's actions, the scientific community as a whole was not sufficiently vocal in its protest. "The only voices I heard really pounding on the table and saying 'this is wrong' as President Bush did more and more things to undermine scientific integrity was the Union of Concerned Scientists," he said. "That was a terrible mistake from which the whole scientific community should learn."

A factor in bringing science to the center of the Obama agenda was the work of ScienceDebate 2008. Spearheaded by Shawn Otto and Matthew Chapman, ScienceDebate addressed a virtual absence of discussion of science during the presidential campaign, even as issues such as energy policy and climate change would be, in Otto's words, "arguably the most important science policy questions that the next president was going to be facing." Although ScienceDebate did not succeed in convincing the two candidates to sit down for a debate on scientific topics, it identified a large public interest in science, and brought together leading scientists to speak out on the issue, including some who would go on to become President Obama's top scientific advisers.

"Scientists must do more to demonstrate the value of investing in science."

In his keynote address, Porter explained why it is important for scientists to be vocal in their advocacy for adequate funding of science and for proper and objective consideration of the latest scientific knowledge in policy-making—even under the Obama government. "Politicians and policy makers in America know very little about science," he explained. "About 4% of the U.S. House and Senate have any science background whatsoever." At the same time, a host of other programs also suffered from flat or reduced funding during the Bush administration, and constituencies interested in education, infrastructure, conservation, and many other fields are now making their voices heard to their representatives in Washington. Citing National Academy of Sciences President Ralph Cicerone, Porter pointed out that in this competitive landscape, "scientists must do more to demonstrate the value of investing in science."

With top scientists from around the world increasingly choosing to work in other countries where science is better funded and government is more welcoming, Porter argued that the need for scientists to advocate on behalf of science is urgent. And with a receptive President and Congress now in place, he suggested that a unique "window of opportunity" exists, and that "science has to walk through the door that the President has opened." Scientists can do a number of things, among which he suggested,

• making nominations for positions of leadership in federal government agencies that have not yet been filled
• working within academic departments to create a culture where public engagement is encouraged, in balance with typical imperatives to publish and secure grants
• writing op-ed articles on scientific topics in local newspapers
• inviting local government representatives to tour scientific facilities and explaining the work done there
• becoming a science adviser to a candidate

Ultimately, Porter argued that scientists must take the time to get away from the bench and be visible in the larger public community. "If the public and policy makers never hear their voices, never see a scientist, never are exposed to science, never understand its methods," he pointed out, "the chances of it becoming a high priority on our list of national priorities will be very low."

Science education, across a lifetime

Another key point of Snow's critique was that the educational system in 1950s Britain was fundamentally unable to produce individuals prepared to deal with the most important challenges of his age. Conservation biologist Stuart Pimm was 10 years old, living in a mining town in England at the time of Snow's lecture, and at the conference introduced himself as a product of the schooling system Snow was trying to push toward reform. For the first time, he said, careers in science and engineering became available to working class children of his generation, and many took advantage of the opportunities presented to them. Snow's concern was how to ensure that these "barbarians," as Pimm wryly characterized his milieu, were properly integrated into society.

Left to right: Sheril Kirshenbaum, Kevin Finneran, Adrienne Klein, Stuart Pimm, Stacy Baker. Click on the Media tab above to see video.

The two cultures concept remains relevant in our own time, speakers acknowledged repeatedly over the course of the day, because the United States faces immense challenges in adequately educating its citizens in science and technology. This is true particularly for school-age children but also for adults, for whom understanding what science reveals is often essential for making good, well-informed decisions. The symposium presented a diverse set of perspectives on why science and technology education is failing, and on how scientists, engineers, teachers, artists, and writers can help.

Inventor Dean Kamen posited quite provocatively in his keynote address that the problem with science education is not due to a lack in the "supply" of resources. Rather, he suggested, getting children to take interest in science is a problem of creating a "demand" within them. This is particularly true, he suggested, for children in difficult socioeconomic situations where becoming a professional scientist or engineer seems unachievable, and role models typically come from the worlds of Hollywood or professional sports. The problem is "not what we don't have," he explained. "It's what we have too much of in our culture—obsessions with nonsense, distractions, and a perverted sense of what's important that literally is in many cases the only perspective that most kids see."

In 1992 Kamen set out to do something about this by creating an organization he called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). The FIRST concept, he explained, was to "take all the positive trappings of sports, package them up, and put intense science, technology, and math in the middle of it." He began by recruiting leaders within prominent, Fortune 50 scientific and technology companies around the country to adopt schools, place their own engineers in the schools, and have them mentor the kids as they built robots able compete in a tournament. Since it was founded, FIRST has grown from a relatively small competition held in a high school gymnasium near Kamen's offices in New Hampshire to a national and even international event, involving thousands competitors who test their inventions head-to-head in professional sports arenas.

Kamen is proud of FIRST's outcomes. A Ford Foundation-sponsored study comparing outcomes in schools that participated in FIRST as opposed to peer-equivalent schools that did not found that students were 50% more likely to attend college if they'd been on a FIRST team, 3 times more likely to major in engineering, 9 times more likely to do internships, and 4 times more likely to choose engineering as a career. The study also found dramatic increases in the number of women and minorities pursuing careers in technology. Kamen interprets this success as evidence that "if kids see the power of analytical thinking and the power of the tools of science and math and engineering, we'll change kids' attitudes."

Stacy Baker, a ninth-grade biology teacher at the Calverton School in Huntingtown, MD, also emphasized the importance of meeting students on their own terms during a panel discussion on education issues. This is particularly critical in dealing with the age group she teaches, because studies have shown that the middle school years typically see a sharp decline in students' interest in science. "They come into my class, and I feel like I have to do a bit of science CPR on them, because they need to resuscitate this love they once had." They perceive science as boring, as requiring too much memorization, and see no opportunities for self-expression, a pursuit that is important in their teenage years.

When she asked her students what sorts of things would help them to learn science better, many expressed interest in new technologies like Facebook, videos, and video games. Others said they were interested in meeting and interacting with scientists, having them come into the classroom, help to write curriculum, or talk about practical topics related to having a successful career in the sciences.

When students interact with scientists and engineers, the experience is transformative.

Baker has attempted to address these interests by integrating Web 2.0 technologies like blogs into her classes, giving students the opportunity to put their work online, and to interact with professional scientists. "I really want to emphasize what this does to the students' self-confidence. Whenever one of my students gets something from a scientist, they're walking on clouds for weeks. You completely change their feelings for science." Similarly to John Porter's call for scientists to become more visible in political life, Brady and Kamen pointed to the important difference that scientists and engineers can make in encouraging students to pursue careers in science and technology.

If interactive tools can help to reach the younger generation, the arts can be an effective way to make science interesting, accessible, and relevant for adult audiences. As codirector of the City University of New York Graduate Center's Science & the Arts program, Adrienne Klein produces events that promote public understanding of science. Presenting theater, lectures, film, music, and dance, Science & the Arts also encourages artists to engage with scientific themes.

Such work performs two important functions, Klein observed. Even if they can't explain scientific ideas, artworks that use scientific themes can make people aware of complex, abstract scientific concepts in an interesting way. In addition, artists pose questions about science that most researchers don't generally stop to consider. "Does science," Klein asked, "have a claim to intellectual rigor beyond that of other disciplines? What social forces shape the questions and paradigms of scientific inquiry? Is science exclusively quantitative and is art exclusively qualitative?" In many cases, artists have also begun collaborating with scientists in creative and instructive ways.

As editor-in-chief of Issues in Science and Technology, the policy journal of the National Academy of Sciences, Kevin Finneran also finds it important to bring art into dialogue with science. In his journal he often presents work by artists who are "speaking back to science," bringing a different and complementary perspective to the enterprise. This dialogue, he suggested, is important, because even educated members of the public will inevitably have different opinions about the implications of science and technology than scientists do.

"Like fish who don't know they live in water," Finneran observed, "people in the scientific, technical, and engineering community often don't understand how much bias, how much of a worldview is built into that." As investigation proceeds in controversial fields like nanotechnology, synthetic biology, and neuroscience, he forecast, "there are a lot of very troubling and interesting questions that science is going to have to deal with." Addressing the implications of this work successfully will require awareness of different perspectives, and of the ways in which science itself is culturally informed. "We need a little humility and a little self-knowledge if we're going to be effective in communicating with other people," he concluded.

A vision of the future

Is there hope for eliminating the divide between the two cultures? Will this seemingly intractable lack of mutual understanding continue to hinder human progress? What would a resolution between science and its other look like?

Returning more specifically to the themes Snow talked about 50 years ago, E.O. Wilson argued in his keynote address that his predecessor's dichotomy is actually a false one. "The nub of the problems facing us in scholarship and education... is a general belief that a fault line exists between the natural sciences on one side and the humanities on the other," he suggested. "This line does not exist at all. It is, instead, a broad domain of poorly understood material phenomena awaiting cooperative exploration from both sides." Given the new tools and discoveries in interdisciplinary fields like cognitive neuroscience, behavioral genetics, environmental science, evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, and biological anthropology—fields that bridge the traditional two cultures gap—Wilson forecasts an approaching "consilience" that would fulfill the Enlightenment's promise of unifying knowledge into a picture much broader and more comprehensive than was possible in the past.

E.O. Wilson during his keynote address to the Academy. Click on the Media tab above to see video.

Such new interdisciplinary fields are significant, Wilson suggested, because for the first time they offer "the prospect of characterizing human nature with the greater objectivity, precision, and exactitude that is the key to human self-understanding." Although explaining human nature has traditionally been the domain of philosophy or theology, he recited a number of recent scientific findings that have the potential to reveal the material causes behind why humans do the things we do. In particular, he cited neuroscience and the new science of epigenetics—which seeks to explain how environmental factors affect gene expression—as possible keys to explaining such questions as why we find particular objects, people, or environments aesthetically pleasing. "The theory of the art awaits its Mendeleev," he mused, "a theorist who can combine a theory of the arts with biology, as our knowledge of the mind and our perceptions increases."

If reduction of human behavior to genes and molecules seems too difficult or mechanistic, Wilson recalled that past biological problems, like resolving the physical structure of heredity in DNA, were once believed to be too complex, but were solved. More recently, doubts about the possibility of understanding the physical basis of the mind are fading, he said, as more sophisticated imaging tools become available. Wilson closed optimistically, predicting that a consilience of human knowledge is coming soon: "The great branches of learning seem destined to meet. If so, it will be an historic event that happens only once."

Whether or not Wilson's vision ultimately comes to fruition, his look into the future suggests that the concept of the two cultures will continue to evolve. As new scientific discoveries and technological innovations continue to force human beings to reevaluate who we are and what we're capable of, there will always be some who will be intimately involved in these pursuits, and others who play different roles within society. Scientists spending the time and the energy to communicate across that divide will be an essential part of ensuring that decisions are made with the best possible understanding of the problems we face.

Meeting organizer Chris Mooney remarked that if in 1959 Snow was exhorting literary intellectuals to learn more about science, participants in the Academy's 2009 symposium seemed to suggest that the reverse may now be the case. "What I'm hearing," he observed, "is that we've got to get the science community to engage, to do more, because if they don't, nobody else will." Indeed, the event offered a wealth of insight into ways for scientists to do so.