Fifty years ago, CP Snow posited that there are two cultures in modern society, the sciences and the humanities, and that the difference between the two worldviews acted like a wall blocking not only collaboration, but even conversation. Eventually, Snow talked about a "third culture" that bridged the two. Literary agent provocateur John Brockman drew out this idea in his groundbreaking 1995 book The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution. Yesterday's issue of the Guardian has a long article and panel discussion asking "is the old divide between arts and sciences deeper than ever?" The article profiles Brockman, whose online publication and community Edge embodies this third culture through essays, interviews, and books by some of the world's greatest thinkers living at the intersection of science, art, and philosophy. The Guardian piece also reviews New York Times science writer Natalie Angier's new science primer The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science. The article's sidebar is a panel where three writers, three scientists, and two broadcasters were asked to answer six scientific questions that the paper calls "basic." I was surprised how off I was on a couple. From the main story:
'Science is rather a state of mind,' Angier argues and, as such, it should inform everything. 'It is a way of viewing the world, of facing reality square on but taking nothing for granted.' It would be hard to argue that this state of mind was advancing across the globe. We no longer make and mend, so we no longer know how anything works…."
Though Brockman borrowed Snow's phrase ("the third culture"), he did not employ it in the same way: Snow had hoped for a kind of detente between the rival mindsets; Brockman perceived a third way. 'Literary intellectuals are not communicating with scientists,' he suggested. 'Scientists are communicating directly with the general public. Traditional intellectual media played a vertical game; journalists wrote up and professors wrote down. Today, Third Culture thinkers tend to avoid the middleman and endeavour to express their deepest thoughts in a manner accessible to the intelligent reading public.'
Link to The Guardian,
Link to buy The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science, Link to buy The Third Culture, Link to buy The Two Cultures
Previously on BB:
• John Brockman: 40 years of "intermedia kinetic environments" Link
• Brockman on "The New Humanists" Link
UPDATE: Kevin Kelly points us to this great essay he wrote about The Third Culture for a 1998 issue of the journal Science. Link
