Desma 9 Week 1 Bolg

Two Cultures

In the lecture this week regarding two cultures, Professor Vesna introduced a famous British philosopher and novelist C.P.Snow and his statements. C.P.Snow was famous for his thoughts on two cultures. In his famous book, the Two Cultures and the scientific Revolution, he argued that the divergence between Science and art has been a major roadblock in the development of human civilization, including both art and science.

C.P.Snow and two cultures, photo credit to Matt Collins (citation2)

C.P.Snow (citation3)

He stated that because both science and art requires hard working in a specific field, they merely had time to explore the materials and thoughts in the other area. So after years of separation, both science and art will be limited in a narrow field of study without the panoramic view of the future of the human being as a specie.

I agreed with C.P.Snow's point of view and also believe that no matter whether you are a scientist or an artist, only knowing or at least superficially understanding the ideas in other field will lead you to real success and real achievements on exploration valuable to human beings.

I also have personal experience on this, in China, students are being divided to "letters" and "science" since high school and are divided since then, they merely study knowledge from the other side. And there are currently more and more examples of student who is focused in one field showing inability even in his specialized field due to knowing nothing in the other field.

In China, students will be divided to letters and science or art and science since high school with minimal knowledge in other field, this has been proven to be a bad policy(citation1)

Citations and Bibliography

1 Gu, Steven. "A World Outside the SATs: Meet the Gaokao from China." The Prospect. 28 Mar. 2013. Web. 11 May 2015. .

2  Krauss, Lawrence. "An Update on C. P. Snow's "Two Cultures"" Scientific American Global RSS. Web. 11 May 2015. . 

3  Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Cambridge UP, 1959. Print. 

4  Thorpe, Vanessa. "A New Discovery for Science and Art: The Cultural Divide Is All in the Mind." The Guardian. Web. 11 May 2015. . 

5  Wu, Jenny. "The Art and Science Of..." Yale Scientific Magazine. Web. 11 May 2015.