![[sex and science]](http://www.sunclipse.org/downloads/sexandscience3.png)
. . . or should that be, "Carnival of the Elitist Bastards VI", in proper carved-above-a-colonnade fashion? In any case, it's online at John Pieret's place. Insert your monocles and enjoy!
I do have to wonder, though, why these science people keep insisting on speaking in verse. It's a problem we've seen before, you know. If we don't watch out, somebody might get the idea that C. P. Snow's "two cultures" were a descriptive rather than a prescriptive distinction, and I blanch to think where that idea might lead.
Comments
Thanks for the generous description of my doggerel ... and the plug.
Posted by: John Pieret | October 26, 2008 2:18 PM
I think in a very real and dangerous sense there are two cultures.
However, it is not exactly in C.P. Snow's sense. While Snow's conception still has some force, rendered to the proper scale, it's a tiny sideshow.
The two cultures are those of learning and of ignorance, and the culture of ignorance is what we see played out on the political stage and in the media with that astounding combination of cynicism and gusto.
The culture of ignorance can, of course, be present among the supposedly learned, which may in large part be the source of Snow's thesis.
I doesn't particularly suprise me when a scientist writes poetry (since those of us in regular contact with them see literate, lyrical, musical, artistic, poetic scientists with some frequency. Nor does it particularly suprise when people in the humanities are scientifically literate - there are plenty of those about (though they occasionally have trouble being seen and heard). They're just the ones from the culture of learning; and you don't necessarily need a formal education to do it.
My (maternal) grandmother wasn't formally educated past about age 10 or 11. She collected (and read) classical literature (and, fortunately, had passed at least a few pieces of it on before her house burned down); she did only the most difficult crosswords (and watching her taught me a little of how to do them). She was very widely read, and had no time for nostalgia, which she thought was ridiculous - she was endlessly forward-looking, seeing the progress of knowledge as a thing that saved countless people from misery. She loved learning.
Posted by: efrique | October 26, 2008 8:37 PM