50 years on, have we missed the point of C.P. Snow’s “Two-cultures?”

50 years ago, long before Richard Dawkins coined the term “meme,” the British scientist, public figure and novelist Charles Percy Snow planted an idea into the collective consciousness that has since grown to have a profound influence on science and the arts in Western society. Sadly, it wasn’t the idea he necessarily wanted to plant. So while the relevance of Snow’s “two cultures”—representing the divide between the scientific and literary elite of the day—has been debated and deconstructed ad infinitum over the intervening decades, Snow’s real passion—tackling material poverty through science and technology—has largely been ignored…

In 1963, Snow wrote a follow-on piece to the 1959 lecture.  In “Two cultures: A second look” C.P. Snow addressed the concerns of his many critics.  But he also took the opportunity to clarify and expand on what he was trying to convey four years earlier.  Freed from the constraints of crafting a short and somewhat simple public lecture, he wrote compellingly on science’s place in society, and the absolute necessity of using it for the social good—something he only saw the cultural divides around him obstructing.

In the opening sections of the 1963 essay Snow addresses his critics directly, which he does with humility and wit.  But by section five he begins to get to the heart of his true passion for science and technology:

“We cannot know as much as we should about the social conditions all over the world.  But we can know, we do know, two most important things.  First we can meet the harsh facts of the flesh, on the level where all of us are, or should be, one.  We know that the vast majority, perhaps two-thirds, of our fellow men are living in the immediate presence of illness and premature death; their expectation of life is half of ours, most are under-nourished, many are near to starving, many starve.  Each of these lives is afflicted by suffering, different from that which is intrinsic in the individual condition.  But this suffering is unnecessary and can be lifted.  This is the second important thing which we know—or, if we don’t know it, there is no excuse or absolution for us.”

Snow acknowledged that there is more to the human condition than mere material needs.  But he argued that this does not release us from the obligation to address those needs—his “hard facts of the flesh”—nor the fact that science and technology provide the means to do this.  He pushes this point home:

“We cannot avoid the realization that applied science has made it possible to remove unnecessary suffering from a billion individual human lives—to remove suffering of a kind, which, in our own privileged society, we have largely forgotten, suffering so elementary that it is not genteel to mention it.”

This gets to the very heart of the essay, and the intended thrust of the 1959 lecture.  So much so that he admits “Before I wrote the [1959] lecture I thought of calling it “The Rich and the Poor”, and I rather wish that I hadn’t changed my mind.”

From here, Snow begins to tackle the myth of the “ennobling” nature of suffering—the idea that suffering strengthens a person, and to interfere in the “natural order” of “master and man” is to do those who suffer a disservice.  Snow is ruthless in his attack on those supporting this position—many of them, in his eyes, amongst the comfortably off cultural elite “who have climbed one step up and are hanging on by their fingernails.”

Just as ruthlessly, he exposes the romantic myth of life being better before science and technology shook things up. Quoting J.H. Plumb he writes:

“No one in his sense would choose to have been born in a previous age unless he could be certain that he would have been born into a prosperous family, that he would have enjoyed extremely good health, and that he could have accepted stoically the death of the majority of his children.”

Rather, he writes

“It seems to me better that people should live rather than die: that they shouldn’t be hungry: that they shouldn’t have to watch their children die.”

From Snow’s perspective, attempts to justify the status quo and look back at “better times” were misguided and divisive, often reflecting the attitudes of the wealthy who could afford to romanticize suffering.  Rather, the solution he saw to satisfying society’s material needs was—and had to be in his eyes—science.  Without the scientific revolution, the only alternative was a divided society where a suffering majority supported an affluent minority—a concept Snow clearly found abhorrent.

And as a consequence, anything which impeded the successful development and implementation of science in society needed to be addressed head-on.

In 1959, Snow saw the chasm between the scientific and intellectual elite as one such impediment.  It was a problem unique (from his perspective) to the British establishment, and arose from an education system that inhibited understanding between these worlds and, as a consequence, weakened the ability of science to be used for the social good. This was the thinking behind the public lecture he delivered on May 7 1959 in Cambridge England.

Fifty years on, a lot has changed.  Approaches to education are different.  There is extensive and productive cross-talk between the science and the arts.  And national and global cultures have evolved.  Yet the central problem Snow faced remains: we live in a world divided into the rich and the poor; where the majority of people don’t have access to necessary material needs—food, water, shelter, medical treatment; where science and technology are increasingly able to bridge this divide, if only they were used effectively.  The unfortunate irony is that, by using the two cultures as a light to illuminate the problems facing society, Snow ended up creating a smokescreen that has, if anything, helped to obscure them.

The reality is that Snow’s 1959 lecture and 1963 essay are even more relevant now than they were 50 years ago—not because of the culture issues they address, but because in a society that is increasingly dependent on science and technology, we still haven’t got a good grasp on how to use them to make life better for the poor as well as the rich.

Sadly, the two cultures meme is a powerful one—witness the editorials, publications and events surrounding this 50th anniversary of the 1959 lecture.  But perhaps now’s time to put it aside and start talking about what’s really important, not just what we think is important.  Because if you look forward through the next 50 years, we have some pretty large global challenges rolling our way that aren’t going to be solved by talking about cultural differences alone.

Last week I asked a rather trivial (did someone say trite?) question (the 2-second Two-Cultures poll) about perpetual motion machines – as a gentle lead-up to this week’s 50th anniversary of CP Snow’s Two Cultures lecture.  So what were the results and what can be learned, if  anything, from them?

First, here are the data in all their glory:

Next, the lessons learned:

1.  Don’t trust a physicist to carry out a meaningful poll! OK so I have to admit it, from a scientific perspective the poll was meaningless – the people who took it didn’t represent a cross-section of society (I assume), the questions and their framing revealed more about my biases than other people’s opinions, and the ability to see other people’s votes before casting your own threw any validity the poll might have had right out of the window!

2.  If you genuinely want to know someone’s opinion, don’t intimidate them! This was completely unintentional, but I got the distinct impression that many people saw this as a test rather than a poll and were fearful of getting the answer wrong.   Another humiliating blow to my already-battered credentials as a social scientist.  Scientifically there was a correct answer, but I was more interested in what people thought than what they knew.  With this in mind, there are probably 101 ways in which the poll could have been framed better.

3.  Don’t try and be clever with a one-question poll. As any self-respecting pollster will tell you, asking a single question tells you more about the person setting the poll that the people answering it.  To make any sense of these data, information would be needed on all sorts of other stuff.  Its abscence is another nail in the coffin of this as a serious exploration of people’s perspectives.  But…  if you want to have a bit of no-too-meaningful fun, one-question-polls are great!

Having got some of the negatives out of the way, there are some interesting things to come out of this exercise – flawed as it is:

4.  The 360 people who took the poll were a pretty knowledgeable crowd. The “scientifically correct” answer (and I just know I will get flak for that phrase) was that perpetual motion machines defy the laws of physics – or the second law of thermodynamics to be precise.  They are an impossibility.  And most people taking the poll realized this.  Of course, this probably means that folks reading 2020 science have an above average grasp of physics (give yourselves a pat on the back).  But I was impressed, nevertheless!

5.  There were a fair number of people who took the poll who could be classed as science-engaged. These were the folks who didn’t hit the scientifically correct answer, but were nevertheless interested enough in the question to have a stab at an answer.  This is a crowd that really interests me – people who don’t necessarily have all the answers (and probably realize it), but are are willing to engage. Probably because on 99.99% of all subjects, this is where I sit.  Folks – you are my true peer group!

6.  A small number of people weren’t interested in the science, but interestingly were engaged enough indicate their lack of interest. This is where the poll really fell apart – if you weren’t interested in science in general or perpetual motion machines in particular, why on earth would you bother taking the poll in the first place!  The really interesting question here is whether the people who just “don’t care” really were a minority, or whether they simply weren’t engaged in this poll.  I suspect the latter, but I would love to test this in a better thought-out study.

7.  Public understanding of science probably exceeds public knowledge of science. This actually isn’t supported by the data here, but the poll does suggest it is a reasonable hypothesis for further testing (it probably has been already.  What do I know – I’m just a physicist!).  Let me explain:  The original idea behind the poll was C.P. Snow’s question about the second law of thermodynamics, and whether people could describe it.  My guess is that most people – including a fair chunk of the scientific community – couldn’t provide a good description of the law if asked out of the blue.  That’s because the questions tests knowledge rather than understanding.  Part of the thinking behind this poll was to see how people responded to a question that revealed how much they understood about a physical phenomenon, rather than how much they could recite.  Of course it fails because of all the problems highlighted above.  Nevertheless, it does suggest – however tentatively – that people might understand more about how the world works than questions probing their level of knowledge might suggest.

This is extremely important when it comes to science communication, education and engagement.  Scientists love to despair at how little “the public” knows.  But I suspect that this knowledge-based perspective suggests cultural divides that are less apparent from an understanding perspective.  And if divides – cultural or otherwise – are to be bridged, it helps to first understand where the real divides are before developing appropriate approaches to crossing them.

8.  The “Two Cultures” is a myth – at least within the readers of 2020 science. Actually, this would be a nonsensical thing to conclude, were it not for the 2020 science readers qualifier!  The data from this poll show a single science-aware culture with a long-tail extending into “don’t care” attitudes.  There is no indication of a strong counter-culture – which is a pity because I would really enjoy having a more diverse readership.  But the poll did not test a representative cross section of the community, and so has no relevance to the universe outside this website.

At the end of the day, this was – as I noted earlier -  just a teaser to get people engaged leading up to the 50th anniversary of C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures lecture.  It doesn’t tell you a lot about whether science-related cultural divides continue to hinder social progress.  But at the least it hopefully gets people thinking, and eager to participate in more robust discussions on science and cultural divides.

Finally, as a bonus I thought I would slip in the results of a counter-poll posted by Ruth Seeley:

Concerned that my poll was unduly biased towards science-types, she [rather tongue in cheek] posted a set of questions crafted to test the literary accumen of readers.  And I’m pleased to note that, just as most people taking the 2-second Two-Cultures poll were science-savvy, most people taking Ruth’s counter-poll had a pretty good idea what a semicolon is for.

What a smart bunch we are!

(And a final-final word: Dave Ferguson also posted a counter-poll that perhaps better expressed Snow’s contrast between science and the humanities.  I haven’t shown the data here as they are more complex to represent than those from mine and Ruth’s.  But if you want to see how readers coped with a question on Shakespeare’s works, check out the results here.  Im ashamed to say, I showed myself up as NOT being eligible for the humanities counter-culture!)

A 2-second distraction in the run-up to the 50th anniversary of CP Snow’s Two Cultures lecture:  Take the two-cultures poll (below), and see how your answer aligns with those from others:

Take Our Poll

(If you can’t see the poll, click here)

Now you’ve pressed the button and seen the results, here’s the background:

On May 7th 1959, the scientist, politician and novelist CP Snow highlighted a destructive gulf between the literary intellectuals of the day and scientists – his “two cultures.”  Fifty years on, the cultures have changed, but possibly not as much as we would like to believe…

So where are we now?  Do most people respect and understand science?  Have the cultures of science and the humanities reconciled their differences?  Or are there new cultures and divides emerging that are just as divisive now as Snow’s two cultures were 50 years ago?

These are issues that are going to aired far and wide around next week’s 50th anniversary of Snow’s Two Cultures lecture.  As a precursor to these discussions though I wanted to start the ball rolling by posing a question that Snow famously asked of his literary friends.

But I wanted to pose the question with a twist.

Snow asked his colleagues to describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics as a way of revealing their disregard for scientific understanding. I’ve long felt the question was unfair, and Snow himself acknowledged its limitations in a follow-on to his 1959 lecture.

But a little bit of me has been dying to ask the question anyway – just to see what sort of responses I got.

Here’s the twist though: Rather than ask for a formal definition of a formal Law, the question above tests people’s grasp of the underlying science, and how they judge its importance.  The possibility (or not) of perpetual motion – pendulums and other devices that go for ever and continue to work without additional fuel or maintenance – is deeply embedded in the Second Law of Thermodynamics

I have a sneaky suspicion that the results will reveal a greater appreciation for science than Snow found amongst his literary colleagues 50 years ago.  But we’ll see – I’ll be blogging on what the poll does (and doesn’t) reveal next week.

And before I’m deluged with comments and criticisms, let me be clear – this isn’t a scientific poll.   It is however a great teaser to the he myriad commentaries and seminars that will undoubtedly be appearing on CP Snow and the Two Cultures over the next few weeks.  And it might just reveal something interesting – stay tuned.

And finally, please pass this link on – the more people take the 2-second poll, the more interesting the data will be

Thanks!

Update 4/28/09:  As a “humanities counterbalance,” PLEASE check Ruth Seeley’s alternative poll out – another short one, so go for it!