The Two Cultures is a text written in 1959. It aroused debates that were sometmes violent.
Snow underlined the existence of a conflict between Scientists and Humanists, that represented one of the biggest damages of Western (in the specific because of industrial developmen produced by the scientific revolution considered like a hope for the poor).
He said that he was “moving among two groups-comparable in intelligence, identical in race, not grossly different in social origin who had almost ceased to communicate at all”. He explained how they show to have so little in common in intellectual, moral and psychological climate. Moreover Humanists consider Scientists optimist (in other words they have a positive view of the future) therefore they are unaware of the real situation of human condition. Instead Scientists criticize Humanists because of their conception of “existence”.
Can man establish which is the best?
Science is considered something that speaks about the “truth”. The origin of this idea comes from the conception of method, born with Galileo. The aim of each method was to use the correct steps to find “ the truth” eliminating mistakes.
Can man establish the correct procedure to avoid mistakes?
Science is a whole word. Symbols created by men are constituted by a objective component and by a subjective one. Therefore an other question may regard the nature of Sciences: is it really objective?
Literature is defined more slowly than science. What does it mean?
Science is submitted to a severe judgment with the use of a rigorous method.
Literature is universal: the values it conveys are linked to a peculiar culture or tradition, but after a certain amount of time, it maintains its own personality. ON the contrary, science changes, develops. In a few centuries it has been changing its position in front of different questions more times. Therefore does a subject, that finds the “truth”, really exist? However to consider its role in human life is fundamental. As a matter of fact, today science has the potential to combat illnesses protecting human life. At the same time this development may itself produce dangerous factors for men.
Scientists and Humanists live in two worlds totally separated, one despising the other.
This attitude, born during the Romanticism and kept during the XXI century, denounces their ignorance. And this irresponsibility may have caused the separation between the North and the South of the world, between the rich and the poor.
The principal thesis seems to underline that opposing two culture is dangerous “in a time when the science decides a lot about our destiny, if we have to live or to die. Scientists may give bad advices and who has to decide can’t know if they are good or bad.”
The collaboration between them may create one of the grea6est result for the world. However Sciences and Humanities don’t appear separated, but men do: Scientists and Humanists, not idea theymay therefore create wars and clashes.