The Two Cultures

P R O G R A M S F O R T H E C O M I N G E R A The Two Cultures C.P. Snow A t is about three years since I made a sketch in print of a problem which had been on my mind for some time [11. It was a problem I could not avoidjust because of the circumstances of my life. The only credentials I had to ruminate on the subject at all came through those circumstances , through nothing more than a set of chances. Anyonewith similarexperiencewould have seen much the same things and I think made very much the same comments about them. Itjust happened to be an unusual experience. By training I was a scientist: by vocation I was a writer. That was all. It was a piece of luck, if you like, that arose through coming from a poor home. But my personal historyisn’tthe point now.All that I need say is that I came to Cambridge and did a bit of research here at a time of major scientific activity.I was privileged to have a ringside view of one of the most wonderful creative periods in all physics. And it happened through the flukes of war-including meeting W. L. Bragg in the buffet on Kettering station on avery cold morning in 1939,which had a determining influence on my practical life-that I was able, and indeed morally forced, to keep that ringside view ever since. So for thirty years I have had to be in touch with scientists not only out of curiosity, but as part of a working existence. During the same thirty years I was trying to shape the books I wanted to write, which in due course took me among writers. There have been plenty of days when I have spent the working hourswith scientistsand then gone off at nightwith some literary colleagues. I mean that literally.I have had, of course, intimate friends among both scientists and writers. It was through living among these groups and much more, I think, through moving regularlyfrom one to the other and back again that I got occupied with the problem of what, long before I put it on paper, I christened to myself as the ‘twocultures’.For constantly I felt I was moving among two groups-comparable in intelligence, identical in race, not grossly different in social origin, earning about the same incomes,who had almost ceased to communicate at all,who in intellectual, moral and psychologicalclimate had so little in common that instead of goingfrom Burlington House or South Kensington to Chelsea, one might have crossed an ocean. In fact, one had travelled much further than across an ocean-because after a few thousand Atlantic miles, one found Greenwich Village talking precisely the same language as Chelsea, and both having about as much communication with M.I.T. as though the scientists spoke nothing but Tibetan. For this is not just our problem; owing to some of our educational and social idiosyncrasies, it is slightly exaggerated here, owing to another English social peculiarity it is slightly minimised; by and large this is a problem of the entire West. B y this I intend something serious. I am not thinking of the pleasant story of how one of the more convivial Oxford great dons-I have heard the story attributed to A.L. Smith-came over to Cambridge to dine. The date is perhaps the 1890s. I think it must have been at St.John’s, or possiblyTrinity. Anyway, Smith was sitting at the right hand of the President-or Vice-Master-and he was a man who liked to includeall round him in the conversation, although he was not immediately encouraged by the expressions of his neighbours. He addressed some cheerful Oxonian chitchat at the one opposite to him, and got a grunt. He then tried the man on his own right hand and got another grunt. Then, rather to his surprise, one looked at the other and said, “Doyou know what he’s talking about?”“I haven’t the least idea.”At this, even Smith was getting out of his...