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TWO_CULTS

                                            January   21, 2003
                                  Finished: September 15, 2004
                          
                          
Of late I find myself making        GENTLY_SNORING_SNOW
frequent reference to "The Two
Cultures", a phrase       
introduced by C.P.Snow, in
his essay lamenting the split
between the sciences and the
humanities.               
                          
This was a common thread  
among intellectuals of    
the fifties and sixties.  
I see it in Koestler's    
"Sleepwalkers" (1959),    
for example.              
                          
It's to this that we owe  
the "interdisciplinary"   
hacks in the modern       
educational system.       
                          
   Universities have      
   distribution                      And conversely:
   requirements to force  
   undergrads to take                Like many engineering
   some classes in                   students, I took
   subjects they're not              economics classes to
   really interested in,             satisfy my "Social        My roommate
   and puffed up/dumbed              Science" requirement.     was really
   down classes have to              (The professor's pains    annoyed to
   be provided                       to avoid troubling us     realize that
   (e.g. "Physics for                with "hard" math, like    his Philosophy
   Poets").                          calculus was always       class in
                                     amusing.)                 Logic wasn't
                                                               going to count
                                                               toward his
The general thesis can be         AGAINST_STUPIDITY            Humanities
argued with.                                                   score.
                            
John McCarthy has remarked                                     Gotta read the
something like:                                                fine print.
"really there aren't two         
cultures, but maybe              
their should be.  Really         
there are around 1.5                  Myself, I often find I'm
cultures: When the                    looking for artists with
humanities get sick, the              some knowledge of what's
sciences start to sneeze."            on the other side of that
                                      cultural barrier.            (barriers?)
   His complaint was that      
   the pessimism about                   I look at the vast array
   the future of the                     of small press zines full
   human race had                        of random musings and
   leaked from the                       poetry, and my sense of
   humanities to the                     excitement fades quickly
   sciences, even when                   as I think "What are the
   you might think that                  odds that any of these
   they would know better.               people really *know*
                                         something?"
                              
                              
                                             KNOWS_SOMETHING



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