On From “The Two Cultures”

Abstract

How do we establish cross links between the cultures of science and the humanities in the world of learning and the professions? Why did the “Two Cultures” division, as identified by C.P. Snow in his Rede Lecture, play an unusually large part in English society? Why is English higher education unusually elitist and exclusive? The chapter argues that European culture had two separate and distinct origins, and our two sets of contemporary disciplines (humanistic and scientific) derive from, and look back to either the sixteenth century Renaissance Humanists or the seventeenth century Natural Philosophers. Today, however, with all of industry and engineering open to environmental criticism and control, and all of medicine to a parallel critique in ethical terms, humanist and scientific disciplines will start to enjoy equal status. Matters of theory can no longer be wholly self-justifying. Theoretical explanations and concepts (episteme) will increasingly be exposed to a wider analysis, in terms of their general practical efficacy (techne) and the prudence (phronesis) of putting them to use in particular real life situations. It is one task of the Diderot Project to characterize the confluence, or union, of the two branches of Modern European culture, the “reasonable” Humanities and the “rational” Sciences. The author questions the viability of pursuing the “Encyclopaedia” project within the context of the university, as advocated in the preceding chapter. It is suggested that the greatest power of the Encyclopaedia might lie in its ability to work outside specific academic institutions, its potential to form “invisible” patterns of learning by means of electronic information networks. An Encyclopaedia for the third millennium, the chapter concludes, may well become a major intellectual force, but only if it circumvents the orthodox academic world, instead of trying to work within it.