Talk:The Two Cultures

Comment

I changed the qualatative/quantatative comment, the meaning of which in terms of this discussion was left unexplained (i.e., it's jargon), to something with more precision.

Sciences and Humanities

The article Sciences and Humanities has been redirected to here. Should this be so? I don't think such a broad topic should be coming to here (though it is relevant to here) and maybe a disambiguation page at "Sciences and Humanities" should be better. Witty lama 00:52, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

That redirect seems wrong, but on the other hand, I don't know should be at sciences and humanities - it's such a broad, yet vague, title. A list of all science and humanities articles? - that would be ridiculously long and unnecessary. An essay? Not encyclopediac. ??? - DavidWBrooks 13:57, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Seeing the red link I just created due to an error in capitalization, which I hadn't noticed, I'd say the existing article should be deleted, since it reads like the title of something with that capital "H". Nothing links to it (it was only created yesterday), so I may delete it unless anybody objects. - DavidWBrooks 13:58, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Sure. Go ahead. I think "science and humaities" should go to humanities (which by the way is this weeks collaboration). Witty lama 12:52, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

It's pfffft. - DavidWBrooks 14:35, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that such a broad topic should not be redirecting to any specific work. However, saying that "science and humanities" should redirect to "humanities" is absurd. I really don't mean to offend anyone or to sound overly strident, but such a POV seems obviously biased in favor of the humanities. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Farlsbarkley (talk • contribs) 03:43, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

You do realize that you're responding to a discussion which is almost four years old? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 04:03, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Shakespeare Link

I concur with the recent reversions. The linked page has a tenuous connection to the article. JJL 03:09, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

"Coleridgeans"

"In Mill's terms, the division is between Benthamites and Coleridgeans." -- There are various references for "Coleridge". For "Coleridgean", http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Coleridgean gives "of or relating to Samuel Taylor Coleridge or his writings". If this is incorrect in this context, please fix. -- 201.50.248.179 13:43, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

does the book "Consilience" try to "bridge the gap"?

Currently the page says:

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, a 1998 book written by biologist Edward Osborne Wilson, as an attempt to bridge the gap between "the two cultures"

I realize that this is the pose that the book takes, but I think if you actually read the book you'll find that it's not really what it's about. Wilson is arguing that some day the humanities will be grounded in biology... which is perhaps another way of arguing that the humanities will some day cease to exist.

Or at least, that was my take on the book: CONSILIENCE_PRIZE -- Doom 02:27, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

abstract missing

This article seems mainly concerned with criticism of the book / book-series, but omits to summarise the book(s) properly first - the article does not in fact tell you much about its title subject, rather concentrating on reactions to it Can someone add something here? frustrated reader —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.136.59.40 (talk) 16:42, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree with this statement. I came to this article looking for a brief overview of the main points of Snow's lecture/essay, and instead I found a list of criticisms of it. So much for a neutral point of view. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Farlsbarkley (talk • contribs) 03:35, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

POV

The Kimball article repeatedly cited is strongly anti-Snow (Kimball himself being a literary publisher!) - so this is hardly NPOV. Ben Finn (talk) 13:10, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Transferred to article talk page

Erm, regarding your reverting my edit at The Two Cultures, care to explain why you "don't think this is an improvement"? (See WP:REVEXP.) joe•roe^t•c 10:15, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest. I though the previous version read a bit jejeune. A matter of style. Xxanthippe (talk) 10:36, 7 September 2011 (UTC).

Okay, but since my edit was a factual correction I think I'll go ahead and restore it – accuracy takes precedence over style. By all means make it less "jejeune" (but still accurate) if you can. joe•roe^t•c 11:07, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

The difficulty with your addition of the word "intellectuals" to the lede is that it begs a lot of questions. One of the themes of Snow's essay is the meaning and usage of the term "intellectual". Snow argues that people on the humanities side declined to apply the term to those on the science side. See G H Hardy's quote in the article. Debate about Snow's essay has involved many people who were not considered then, or perhaps even now, to be "intellectuals". So your implication that the debate referred to and involved only "intellectuals" does not reflect reality. Having said that, the article is in a very unsatisfactory state for the reasons given in the threads above: namely it does not discuss in much detail exactly what Snow did say. If you were to revise the article to examine in more detail the themes discussed by Snow this would be very valuable. Next to reading Snow's essay itself, the essay by Jardine gives some useful ideas. Xxanthippe (talk) 02:41, 9 September 2011 (UTC).

Sorry, didn't see this discussion until after I reverted the edit. The book and discussion is not merely about intellectuals, it's about society's viewpoint. (And I say that as somebody who isn't quite sure what jejeune means!) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 11:50, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I take your point about the word "intellectuals" not fitting completely due to its appearance in Snow's argument (it's quite a trivial mention though, IIRC). I cycled through a few in my head and it was the best I could come up with – "academia" wouldn't include artists, "scholars" has the same problem, "intelligensia" is too Marxian, and so on. But I refuse to accept that Snow was suggesting there were pubs in northern mining towns passing the night in tense silence because one half hadn't read Newton and the other half hadn't read Shakespeare, as implied by the division extending to "all of society". Snow was talking about the intellectual classes (and by extension the education system), as is quite clear when he sums up his thesis at the beginning of the book (p. 3 of the 2nd edition):

I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups.

And at multiple points later on he compares either scientists or artists to "the rest of the intellectual world"; speaks of moving "through intellectual society from the physicists to the literary intellectuals"; and so on. In fact, wouldn't a direct quote be a good compromise?

... Its thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups"—the titular 'two cultures' of the sciences and the humanities—and that this was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems.

Can't argue with the accuracy of that. joe•roe^t•c 13:29, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

One can argue with that because Snow goes on to say "When I say intellectual life, I mean to include also a large part of our practical life, because I should be the last person to suggest the two can at the deepest level be distinguished." Misleading emphasis in article reverted. Xxanthippe (talk) 11:10, 2 October 2011 (UTC).

This is unbelievable, a direct quote is "misleading"? Yes Snow has that caveat (IIRC he's referring to education and things that flow from it - that's already discussed in the article), but there's a limit to how much detail can be included in the lead. As I have argued above, it is obvious that Snow's thesis can't apply to the whole of society, and he consistently refers to intellectual life, intellectual society, the intellectual world, etc. I had assumed that since nearly a month had gone by with no response that there were no objections. Are you at all interested in reaching a compromise here, or just defending "your" article? joe•roe^t•c 15:08, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Careful, folks - this debate is veering into the personal (as it, alas, so often does). My opinion, for what it's worth, has changed. Last month I thought "intellectual" was too narrow a term for the introduction, but re-reading my battered paperback makes me realize that Snow did, indeed, limit himself to the parts of society best described by the term "intellectual life". I think the current sentence ("Its thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into the titular two cultures[1]—namely the sciences and the humanities—and that this was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems.") is fine, although the word "titular" seems unnecessary, IMHO. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:39, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

You're right, I apologise for slipping into ad hominem there. It's just frustrating for the discussion to go silent for weeks, and yet still be reverted within the hour. joe•roe^t•c 16:14, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Kagan's The Three Cultures

I was surprised to find no reference to Jerome Kagan's The Three Cultures here, which builds on Snow's lecture/essay. I'm in the process of reading it (but it could take months) and when I'm done I may come back and propose/add something, but I figured I'd put this note here in case someone who has read it (or is interested and is a faster reader than I) gets to it first. Rbgorbet (talk) 20:16, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Loose Link

There is a loose link in the reference list which was affecting the wiki parser, I corrected that aspect but don't know where the reference should fit KhoikhoiPossum (talk) 15:11, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

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I may be "off base" here....

Re the passage:

"...ues on the other one is believed to have had enduring effects in the separation of the two cultures in Italy and to the predominance of the views of (objective) idealism over those of (logical) positivism. In the social sciences it is also commonly proposed as the quarrel of positivism versus interpretivism.[12]"

I may merely be briefly confused here, in which case I may (or not) come back here and try to comment more clearly abt its concerns.
--JerzyA (talk) 14:54, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

It certainly is obscure. Xxanthippe (talk) 23:04, 17 June 2019 (UTC).

Categories explanation

As the original lecture was delivered on 7 May 1959, I have included this article in Category:May 1959 events in the United Kingdom. Dunarc (talk) 23:44, 3 February 2022 (UTC)

Explaining my objection to the Cropley edit

A recent edit added the following to the article:

The notion of Two Cultures is commonly echoed in the modern debate with authors and researchers advocating for the need to develop complementary soft skills next to the scientific and engineering curriculum. In his publication, David H. Cropley highlights the need of fostering creativity in the engineering sciences.

There is nothing in that source related to the Rede Lecture, Snow, or the Two Cultures, and it is WP:OR to connect the two or to say that Cropley's paper is related to the topic of the article. Including this opens the door for editors to add anything related to science+humanities to a topic specifically about the lecture.

I reverted the edit, saying we need a source that specifically draws a connection between Cropley's paper and the Two Cultures. Note how the preceding paragraph is directly related: in the Estonian president's remarks, he says Personally, I think much of the problem we face today represents the culmination of a problem diagnosed 55 years ago by C.P. Snow in his essay "The Two Cultures"

Ping Thehumanities and Xxanthippe, Schazjmd (talk) 21:49, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I have to agree that the publication[1] (with 17 self-citations) is not that impressive. Let's see if other editors comment. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:07, 9 March 2022 (UTC).

My objection isn't to the status of the paper, but to its relevance in this article. Schazjmd (talk) 22:10, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

I have to agree that the publication[2] (inserted by a one-edit spa with 17 self-citations) is not that impressive. Xxanthippe (talk) 22:07, 9 March 2022 (UTC).

I'm confused, Xxanthippe, you simply repeated your statement but didn't address the WP:OR issue. Could you explain why you don't think the content isn't WP:OR? Or why you think it's relevant to this article? Schazjmd (talk) 22:27, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for this point. It's right that in referred publication Cropley does not quote the Two Cultures in a comparable way to the preceding paragraph. However, the way the article appeals to the education system bears a lot of resemblance with Rede Lecture, thus the edit was proposed in "Implications and influence" section. On the same note, there are publications with contribution of this author, bringing a direct reference to Two Cultures, such as Differences in creativity across Art and STEM students: We are more alike than unalike, December 2020; there also seem to exist external content in other sources which makes a correlation between the topics. In every case, I may be wrong here and I'll trust your experience and judgement on relevance. Thehumanities (talk) 23:49, 9 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for responding, Thehumanities, I appreciate your explanation. The problem is that this article is about Snow's lecture/essay. We need reliable sources to form the conclusion that something is related to the Two Cultures or was influenced by Snow's thesis. The source you provided does neither.

Of your new sources, the journal article only supports that the General Thematic Areas of Baer and Kaufman's Amusement Park Theoretical model is similar to Snow's two cultures of art and science, and the other is to a marketing website (not a reliable source).

If you read WP:OR and the WP:SYNTH section in particular, it may make my objection clearer. If we had a source that said something like "Cropley's work on science and creativity continues the thesis proposed by Snow in The Two Cultures" (or something like that), we'd cite that source and mention Cropley. But the mere fact of someone writing a paper about science and creativity isn't relevant to this article, unless we have a reliable source that makes that connection.

I know this was your first edit, and I genuinely hope my objections don't put you off from continuing to edit Wikipedia. It can really be a lot of fun once you get through the steep learning curve. Schazjmd (talk) 00:09, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Schazjmd, I understand your reservations and will review again the links. It's not discouraging at all - you've been amazingly helpful and thorough with explaining the point. It's a heartening first experience 😊 All the best. Thehumanities (talk) 14:05, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

After reviewing the discussion I have come to the conclusion that none of the sources suggested are suitable for inclusion in the article. @User:Thehumanities: do you have any connection with Cropley that should be revealed under WP:COI? Xxanthippe (talk) 21:36, 10 March 2022 (UTC).

Thank you, Xxanthippe. There's no connection - I found the work of his when researching the subject. Thehumanities (talk) 08:09, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. Xxanthippe (talk) 21:26, 12 March 2022 (UTC).

References