C.P Snow's "Two Cultures", Then and Now
In thier 1956 report the American Society for Engineering Education delivered this doozy:
"Sitting on one side of the battle line was a 'rough, uncouth fellow wearing boots and an open flannel shirt'—the Engineer. Having no manners nor wanting any, his fleeting familiarity with the arts and literature was 'limited to cheap movies' and 'comic books.' Defiantly 'crass, materialistic, insensitive,' the only intellectual tools he allegedly needed were 'a transit and a slide rule.' Career victories usually happened when he 'pushes jobs through by beating up his men with his bare fists.' Staring at him from across the divide was the Artist. A 'pale, ascetic dreamer,' the 'arts man' was devoted to modern art, music, and literature, talking 'incomprehensibly about all three' while nursing a crippling addiction to books. Possessing 'pinkish' politics and 'forever in need of a haircut,' neither practical skills nor scientific knowledge were a burden to bear. What professional accolades he received came primarily via his considerable 'gift of gab'" (McCray - Making Art Work).
While hilariously on-the-nose, the report seriously surveyed 60 schools across the country and goes on to critique the siloed divides to make important distinctions to how the humanies are important in the engineering curriculum.
"What we object to is an essentially frivolous definition of practicality that limits it's attention to the development of a few surface skills, while failing to recognize that literature and philosophy and social organization are, like science itself, basic aspects of human activity in which depth of understanding provides the only sound foundation for the student's further growth. The emphasis upon immediately useful techniques [such as taking writing, speech, psychology, business administration to speak better, influence people and understand management and operations respectively] narrows the scope of the humanities and social sciences and seriously diminishes thier educational value".
The report believes the culture graduating with humanities "general education" requirements "makes them look positively ridiculous" and simply "conversation pieces, aids to smoother family and social relations", or the possesion of "good manners".
It also warns of the pitfalls of "a too narrow, a too superficial, or a too unrealistic" definition of the humanities and social sciences and recognizes the challenges of prioritizing and arranging chosen content in a crowded engineering curriculum. Suggestions include the modern concept of true integration of humanities into engineering courses whereby the history and social organization bring alive the science class or moral, ethical, and social concepts are discussed by engineering professors assigning projects.Aerospace in particular was an emerging feild that reinvigorated the engineering profession at time when workers on "gritty job sites" were struggling to define themselves as equals to scientists in clean and tidy labs. Education systems recognized these shifts and wondered how to adapt the curriculum to widen the specialized silos of the times. "'The hope was that the arts and humanities could provide more than just a 'cultural veneer' and actually serve a utilitarian purpose by enhancing engineers’ creativity."
Enter C.P. Snow, who's "Two Cultures" rhetoric served as the springboard for most continuing discussions of art and technology in education and industry. In 1959 the novelist-turned-scientist gave the annual Rede lecture at Cambridge titled "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution", he injected a broad urgency by claiming the inability of literary scholars & scientists to understand and communicate with one another was "not just an intellectual loss but something that threatened the ability of modern states to address the world’s problems"
C.P Snow thought back to his time spent in different social circles and how he felt he was in two distinctly different worlds with friends that studies the humanities or the sciences. He laments that humanistic professions call themselves "intellectuals" as if they were the only ones who deserved that title; while scientists turn thier nose at complex literary thought. He claimed non-scientists generally held the opinion that scientists are "brash and boastful, shallowly optimistic, unaware of man's condition" dismissing them as "ignorant specialists", on the other side scientists consider literary intellectuals as "totally lacking in foresight, peculiarly unconcerned with their brother men, in a deep sense anti-intellectual, anxious to restrict both art and thought to the existential moment."
C.P Snow acknowledges that the divide is "not only that the young scientists now feel that they are part of a culture on the rise while the other is in retreat. It is also, to be brutal, that the young scientists know that with an indifferent degree they'll get a comfortable job, while their contemporaries and counterparts in English or History will be lucky to earn 60 percent as much." He goes on to connect the failure to bridge the two as a thread to industrialization and innovation progress in the U.S and abroad."The clashing point of two subjects, two disciplines, two cultures—of two galaxies, so far as that goes— ought to produce creative chances. In the history of mental activity that has been where some of the break-throughs came. The chances are there now. But they are there, as it were, in a vacuum, because those in the two cultures can't talk to each other." (C.P Snow - Rede Lecture)
C.P Snow's rhetoric had huge ripple over the next decades as everyone latched onto the easy to understand, if not too simplistic, formulation of "Two Cultures." His thoughts directly spawned inquiry into education systems and the work of the E.A.T - Experiment in Arts and Technology movement.
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Today, many believe C.P Snows vision still remains unrealized as 2009 article by the Scientific American claims. However, there has been the emergence of a third, similarly but differently siloed type of scientist.
There are many reasons for the continuation of the divide. Middle school science teachers still don't need a degree in science to teach it. And at university, the attitude of have art or science as "merely to fill a requirement and be dispensed with", as warned by the 1956 report, remains on both sides. Anecdotally there has been many a time where humanities majors groaned or took "the easiest" science GE, and engineers begrudgedly feigned "not being able to even draw a stick figure". Both sides sometimes wear as a badge of honor their "I can't stand science mumbo jumbo" or the "I'm not much of an artist.""Literary agent John Brockman has posited a “third culture,” of scientists who communicate directly with the public about their work in media such as books without the intervening assistance of literary types.
There is some good news. I think the emergence of STEM to STEAM movements and the novel design thinking framework Steve Jobs brought to Apple are building bridges across the divide. I feel like if C.P Snow were to see us now he would at least be intigued by organizations like Industrial Light and Magic, Disney Imagineering, Pixar's formation out of Apple, Google, IDEO, JPL's Creative Studio who are integrating interdisciplinary approaches in running thier businesses and making Art & Engineering collaborations a part of thier identity.
