The Two Cultures and a Second Look: An Expanded Version of the Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution: Amazon.ca: C. P. Snow: Books

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It is about three years since I made a sketch in print of a problem which had been on my mind for some time. Read the first page

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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover

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9 Reviews

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2.7 out of 5 stars (9 customer reviews)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Far better than I thought, Mar 12 2004

By	wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Two Cultures (Paperback)

Every representation I've seen of this work was wrong, or so incomplete as to be gravely misleading. As usual, the glib sound-biters omit not only the interesting parts of the points they quote, they omit the real point of the essay.

If anyone reads the second half of this essay, they see that it writes about the widening gap between rich countries and poor - the technologically trained and untrained. Yes, Snow writes about the schism and even mutual suspicion between the communities of liberal arts and hard sciences. That's just a fact, at least as true now as it was 45 years ago. That is not what's interesting.

The consequence is what matters. Overpopulation, mass starvation, and destruction by war or disease are political problems. The solutions must involve tools provided by technology. The tragedy of "the two cultures" is the breakdown between the politicians who must wield the tools and the technologists who must create them. This is not about technology controlling the world, it is about creating a generation of thinkers who can reason about both social and technical problems. It is about education that allows people to examine the physical facts of the physical world that underly so many curable causes of human misery. It is about understanding the technology of possible solutions well enough to weigh the costs and rewards in a rational way.

As I write this, the 2000-era Bush administration is busy firing science advisors who don't give the "right" answer, is cancelling the space research programs that have given the largest volume of new knowledge, and creating new scorched-earth policies for environmental management. It's a problem not just in the US, but worldwide. This is exactly the failure that Snow hoped so fervently that educated men and women would have the wisdom to prevent.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It isn't as bad as the reviewers below would have you think., Aug 11 2002

By	"the_nonexistent" (Chandler, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Two Cultures (Paperback)

C.P. Snow was primarily known as a novelist, but his training was in science. In his now-famous (in the intellectual community, at least) Rede Lecture, Snow examined first the seeming unbridgable gap between the literary intellectuals and the scientific intellectuals. The literary intellectuals, Snow says, do not understand even the basics of science, which is particularly dangerous in a postindustrial society; and conversely, that the scientific community does not appreciate the insights of literature, philosophy, and the like. This was written in 1959, yet it is more or less still true today. Snow addresses a very real concern about the future of a society where 99% of the people are dependent on technologies that only a bare fraction of the people - four or five percent at best - understand even the basic mechanisms behind. This is the same problem Sagan addressed nearly 40 years later in _The Demon-Haunted World_. Sagan, however, did a much better job of arguing this, providing evidence and statistics where Snow provides merely rhetoric. Read this book, and then read Sagan's, and you'll see exactly what I mean.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Only Essential Reading, Dec 16 2001

By	Robert Carrington (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Two Cultures (Paperback)

This book defines the irrational and dangerous gulf that divides our artistic-intellectual community from our scientific. Its first publication was explosive, its effect historic. Written with the grace of a major novelist and the elegance of pure scientist, it was, and is, an original. A true original. Of how many books can one say, "It changed the way we think?" This single, short book did exactly that. It does that still.

Let's call it a must read.

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Most recent customer reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars A College Outlook on Snow's Lecture
I am a college student and was forced to read this book by my literature professor, who for some reason adores writers who seem to use big words and horribly complicated sentences... Read more

Published on Sep 15 2002 by Kelli Taylor

1.0 out of 5 stars No, it's WORSE.
AGAIN, you really, really, do need to read more than the first few pages of this essay in order to evaluate it properly; its first few pages are there only to bait you. Read more

Published on Aug 18 2002

1.0 out of 5 stars corporate-controlled public policy
Not only does this glib, simplistic political tract dis 150 years of literature; it also grotesquely misrepresents science itself. Read more

Published on Jul 15 2002

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't be deceived.
Those who call this a "book [that] defines the irrational and dangerous gulf that divides our artistic-intellectual community from our scientific" or a "classic book [that] talks... Read more