There a nice piece over that the New Scientist (hat tip to Rebecca), that gathers a number of comments from academics in philosophy, sociology, education, law, and literature into how relevant C.P. Snow's seminal essay is today. Here's a sampling from A.C. Grayling:
One of the major problems identified by C. P. Snow in lamenting the gulf between science and literary culture was that almost everyone in a position of power in society was a product of literary culture, with too little understanding of or sympathy for science. That remains a problem, one exacerbated, if anything, by the rapid progress of science in the past half-century. But the issue Snow raised is merely a special instance of a much wider problem: the lack of scientific literacy in society generally.This matters because it is not only desirable but necessary that we should all be party to the conversation about the place of science in society. This does not require high levels of expertise, just enough to permit intelligent citizens to engage in the wider discussion and decision-making that determine which roads we take in research and in applications, and which ethical considerations should inform them. Despite efforts to address the issue - in the 1960s, some new universities made science compulsory for humanities majors, and vice versa - his point has only become more acute. (link
Humanities & Social Science
Education & Careers
Comments
No. Though it wasn't relevant in 1956 or 1959 either, as cast by Snow.
Posted by: brc | May 6, 2009 1:23 PM
It has gotten to the point that now most people don't know what questions to ask about a grade school physics problem.
Gravitational Collapse
How do you build a 1360 foot skyscraper without figuring out how much steel and concrete to put on every level? Why do people expect it to be possible to figure out whether or not a NORMAL airliner can destroy it in less than 2 hours without that information?
And now we can buy NETBOOK computers more powerful than mainframes from the 1980s for less than $300.
psik
Posted by: psikeyhackr | May 28, 2009 2:51 PM
I think that people reading Snow's essay neglect the university culture in which he worked. Oxbridge continued to favor the model in which the university developed cultured (literary) generalists to assume positions of power, even after WWII. It was a different approach even from the civic universities of England and Scotland, and much more so from the American 'multiversities'. The fact that, in America, we still observe a literary culture that lacks scientific understanding is probably rooted in different problems.
Posted by: Lee J Rickard | June 25, 2009 11:46 AM