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Title: The Two Cultures by C. P. Snow, Stefan Collini ISBN: 0-521-45730-0 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 30 July, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 2.38 (8 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: A College Outlook on Snow's Lecture
Comment: I am a college student and was forced to read this book by my literature professor, who for some reason adores writers who seem to use big words and horribly complicated sentences to explain the simplest ideas.
The Two Cultures is hard to focus on, but the idea is simple. We in fact are, at the very simplest degree, divided into 2 cultures. One made up of the traditional or humanistic culture, which includes politics, arts, etc. , and also into the scientific culture. Snow basically states throughout his lecture that these 2 cultures do not communicate with one another well if much at all, and that this poses a serious problem to society.
Snow's opinion in his lecture is that instead of educating as England does, with a small elitist system being educated highly in one broad area of study, that all should be educated in both the arts and sciences in order for our society to be able to function to its fullest.
Another of Snow's beliefs is that technology is a must for all people, and perhaps the countries who have not been able to become as advanced as America and England for example, should be given aid by other countries to come into the modern age. Not necessarily should we give them weapons and things such as this, but the ability to communicate, grow better crops through our knowledge of farming methods, and teaching them perhaps how to become a democracy.
In Snow's response to criticisms of his lecture, he further explains his opinions and what he wanted people to get from his lecture, and responds to critics and their opinions of his lecture.
This book/lecture, is not really a thrill to read, but it does make sense and is slightly interesting if you like that sort of thing. Good luck.
Rating: 1
Summary: No, it's WORSE.
Comment: AGAIN, you really, really, do need to read more than the first few pages of this essay in order to evaluate it properly; its first few pages are there only to bait you.
Yes, it does seem that few of us understand how the machines to which we entrust ourselves daily work (or, very often, fail to work), and this is a matter of concern -- because to the extent we don't understand them, we don't control them, they control us. But THAT is NOT what this essay is about. This essay is about, this essay propagandizes on behalf of, the proliferation of industrialization.
Let's backtrack, however. It is NECESSARY to know how the machines work, but it not SUFFICIENT to know how they work. We must also consider their side effects and consequences, and here we come roundabout to the point: C. P. Snow attacks Thoreau and other classic writers for pondering the human consequences of rapid technological change, in other words, for doing precisely what it is their job -- and duty -- to do. On the other hand, Mr. Snow never ACKNOWLEDGES, even to scoff at, the physical and environmental consequences of industrial and military and technologies, and in the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this is quite a remarkable omission.
Note: C. P. Snow is remembered approximately as well as a politician as he is remembered as a novelist. (Most of his novels, all but one part of his "Brothers and Strangers" series, are out of print.)
Note also: Carl Sagan's "The Demon-Haunted World" is a fine book, but it has to do with superstition; it has nothing to do either with what this essay purports to be about or with what it really is about. On the other hand, various chapters of his "Pale Blue Dot" and his posthumous "Billions and Billions" do show how opposed Professor Sagan was to what Mr. Snow advocates here, and I recommend both.
Rating: 3
Summary: It isn't as bad as the reviewers below would have you think.
Comment: C.P. Snow was primarily known as a novelist, but his training was in science. In his now-famous (in the intellectual community, at least) Rede Lecture, Snow examined first the seeming unbridgable gap between the literary intellectuals and the scientific intellectuals. The literary intellectuals, Snow says, do not understand even the basics of science, which is particularly dangerous in a postindustrial society; and conversely, that the scientific community does not appreciate the insights of literature, philosophy, and the like. This was written in 1959, yet it is more or less still true today. Snow addresses a very real concern about the future of a society where 99% of the people are dependent on technologies that only a bare fraction of the people - four or five percent at best - understand even the basic mechanisms behind. This is the same problem Sagan addressed nearly 40 years later in _The Demon-Haunted World_. Sagan, however, did a much better job of arguing this, providing evidence and statistics where Snow provides merely rhetoric. Read this book, and then read Sagan's, and you'll see exactly what I mean.
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Title: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn ISBN: 0226458083 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America by Daniel J. Kevles ISBN: 0674666569 Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1995 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Living With the Genie: Essays on Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery by Alan Lightman, Daniel R. Sarewitz, Christina Desser, Christiana Desser ISBN: 1559634197 Publisher: Island Press Pub. Date: November, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: I, Pierre Riviere, Having Slaughtered My Mother, My Sister, and My Brother ...: A Case of Parricide in the Nineteenth Century by Michel Foucault, Frank Jellinek ISBN: 0803268572 Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr Pub. Date: December, 1982 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Consilience : The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson, Edward Osborne Wilson ISBN: 067976867X Publisher: Random House Pub. Date: 30 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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