C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures and A Second Look (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1964).

C.P. Snow delivered his famous lecture, The Two Cultures, at Cambridge in 1959. Published as a small paper pamphlet, it triggered a lively debate on the relationship between science, literature, technology, and knowledge. Snow argued that a profound schism separated scientists—with English physicists as a model—and intellectuals—writers, poets, historians. Not only did these “scientists” and “literary intellectuals” know different things or worked separately: they could not understand each other. Each side had its own culture, in “the anthropological sense of the word,” its own forms of knowledge, norms, and particular methods and interests—which gives a novel character to the opposition between the two: an almost ethical, moral distinction. While the intellectuals represented the past, scientists lived in the future. They do not understand or speak to each other—each side despises the other, but one has the tools to solve the problems of the world. In his own words,

[T]he scientific culture really is a culture, not only in an intellectual but also in an anthropological sense. That is, its member need not, and of course often do not, always completely understand each other; biologists more often than not will have a pretty hazy idea of contemporary physics; but there are common attitudes, common standards and patterns of behavior, common approaches and assumptions. This goes surprisingly wide and deep. It cuts other mental patterns, such as those of religion, politics or class.

Perhaps one of the first noticeable things about Snow’s argument lies in its combative, personalistic, and provoking tone. The book moves from a cozy encounter in a small college in Cambridge to an apocalyptical appraisal of the world’s future, from the English educational style to the industrialization of India. It does not occur to Snow’s Eurocentric approach, of course, that some things happen and unravel in these foreign places that may also promote development.

In this edition, Snow addresses some criticisms to the earlier version and offers a few clarifications, but the main idea remains untouched. The mixture of anecdotes,, statistics, and other books creates the impression of an insider’s look—although the models he uses fall clearly into stereotypes. As someone who crossed the border between these two worlds during his lifetime, Snow writes with authority about the responsibility of the West to change the education system, to train its “young men” to become scientists, to bridge this gap between intellectuals and scientists for the sake of development: mobilize their practical knowledge and resources to industrialize the world.