Week 1: Two Cultures

Ever since I was a young student, I faced the dilemma between what C.P. Snow had described as the Two Cultures, even when I was not aware of it then. As a young secondary school student in Singapore (this is equivalent to high school in the US), I had to choose between subject combinations that weighed heavily on science or the humanities. Again in junior college, I had to choose between what was called the “Science stream” and the “Humanities stream”. I avoided making that choice by choosing to do an unconventional hybrid stream. Up till today in UCLA, I have difficulty choosing one and abandoning the other – this explains why I am currently pursuing a Sociology and Statistics double major.

At the crossroads between sciences and humanities

(Image from https://paigekisling.wordpress.com/2014/09/21/the-perfect-balance/)

Like most thinkers we read about this week, I believe that the separation between Science and Humanities is socially constructed. We are taught to believe that they are two distinct and independent spheres of knowledge which have little relevance to each other. This separation is reinforced in our education system, in mass media and in the news, and in our everyday lives. 

Fortunately, the gap between the humanities and the sciences has been narrowing in recent decades (McNamee), due to advancements in technology and the incorporation of digital tools into both fields. I agree wholeheartedly with Snow’s views that Science and Humanities should go hand-in-hand when trying to understand the world and build knowledge. “At their core, art and science are both about observation and interpretation” (Zhu and Yogesh). By bringing these two cultures together, we would be able to harness the collective minds of scientists and artists, and gain a deeper understanding of the world through connections drawn between both cultures.

Humans don’t only have a left or right brain – both sides work together to make sense of the world. (Image from https://www.re-thinkingthefuture.com/fresh-perspectives/a3212-how-architecture-can-influence-people-and-in-turn-save-the-world/)

What science and humanities do respectively and why we need them both. 

(Image from http://www.indianahumanities.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/SCIENCE-FINAL-10.15.jpg)

References 

Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 1959. 

Vesna, Victoria. “Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between.” Leonardo, vol. 34, no. 2, 2001, pp. 121-125. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1577014. 

Kelly, Kevin. “The Third Culture.” Science, vol. 279, issue 5353, pp. 992-993, doi:10.1126/science.279.5353.992. 

McNamee, Gregory. “Erasing the Gap Between Art and Science.” Science, 11 May 2001, https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2001/05/erasing-gap-between-art-and-science. 

Lian, Zhu, and Goyal Yogesh. “Art and science: Intersections of art and science through time and paths forward.” EMBO Rep, vol. 20, issue 2, Dec. 2018, doi:10.15252/embr.201847061.