Two cultures of snow. Ch.P. Snow. Two cultures. Anthology for the course

It has been a long time since Charles Snow published his famous manifesto "The Two Cultures". "Two Cultures" was published as an article in 1956, and then as a separate publication in 1963. Snow's work has had strong resonance—both critical and sympathetic. And so far, researchers - both humanities and scientists working in the natural sciences - return to the ideas expressed by Snow more than 50 years ago.

Two cultures-1

Charles Snow described the paradoxical situation that had developed by the middle of the 20th century as follows: “I am a scientist by education, a writer by vocation.<...>Very often - not figuratively, but literally - I spent the afternoons with scientists, and the evenings with my literary friends. It goes without saying that I had close friends among both scientists and writers. Due to the fact that I was in close contact with both, and probably even more due to the fact that I was constantly moving from one to the other, I began to be interested in the problem that I called for myself "two cultures" even before how he tried to put it on paper. This name arose from the feeling that I was constantly in contact with two different groups, quite comparable in intelligence, belonging to the same race, not too different in social origin, having about the same livelihood and at the same time almost lost the ability to communicate. with each other, living with such different interests, in such a different psychological and moral atmosphere, that it seems easier to cross the ocean than to travel from Burlington House or South Kensington to Chelsea.

Snow writes that if "physicists" are still able to perceive humanitarian knowledge (not knowing Hamlet is still considered indecent among physicists), then humanists are not embarrassed at all that they have not heard anything about the Second Law of Thermodynamics. From Snow's point of view, the situation is even worse: this is not just a misunderstanding, but an aggressive misunderstanding - he calls the artistic intelligentsia "new Luddites" who are ready to destroy science, in fact, for the sole reason that they do not understand it.

Snow's article is rather openly alarmist. He tried to pose the problem as sharply as possible, rather than solve it.

Lyric physics

I feel quite acutely the problem of two cultures, because I received a scientific (mathematical) education, but throughout my life I was engaged in literature. There are enough scientists and writers among my acquaintances. But the following should be noted. Among the writers I know, there are people who are not only not afraid of the words "second law", but there are also those who are quite familiar with such non-trivial scientific fields as quantum mechanics or general relativity. I can name two laureates of the "Russian Booker" - Mikhail Butov, who graduated from the MEIS (Institute of Communications), and Alexander Ilichevsky, a graduate of the Phystech.

Probably, this situation arose as a result of the total mixing that took place over the past ten to twenty years in the USSR and Russia: many people abandoned their professions (including scientists) due to external circumstances.

Nevertheless, the problem of two cultures remains, and how to solve it is not clear.

Crisis of confidence

In recent decades, another problem has emerged that has exacerbated the traditional misunderstanding of naturalists and humanities - a crisis of confidence in science in general, a crisis that has led to an avalanche-like growth of pseudoscientific and pseudoscientific theories. It makes no sense to analyze the reasons for this crisis of confidence here, but it is necessary to state it.

The vast majority of people today know very little about science and are doomed to take the word of the first charlatan they meet. And these charlatans use the still high (despite everything) authority of scientific knowledge, and often use it for their own selfish purposes, which inflicts heavy damage on science.

This kind of pseudoscientific projects, of course, should include the "new chronology" of Fomenko and his followers. Here we are faced with the other side of the same problem: the complete ignorance of scientists (in this case, mathematicians) of the basic principles of humanities research. To trust the "new chronology" one simply needs to know nothing about history, linguistics, or scientific methodology. Andrey Zaliznyak, in his article devoted to the linguistic analysis of the arguments given by the supporters of the "new chronology", seems to have quite convincingly demonstrated its complete inconsistency, but his arguments were not heard by either the authors or the readers. Such is the state of mutual deafness.

Math withoutformulas

And now, against the backdrop of misunderstanding and a crisis of confidence, Vladimir Uspensky’s work, remarkable both in its task and in execution, appears, dedicated to an attempt to demonstrate to modern humanists and just curious people (engineers, programmers, businessmen) what modern mathematics is.

If we look into school textbooks on mathematics, we will see that the knowledge discussed in the school course was the cutting edge of science at the turn of the 17th-18th centuries. Has nothing changed since then? Almost everything has changed. This state of affairs led Alexander Kharshiladze to the idea of ​​the need for a complete revision of the school mathematical course: he proposed to exclude mathematics from the school course for ten years in order to completely reform it.

Ouspensky is not so radical. He writes: “So, there is a certain amount of non-practical knowledge that is obligatory for any cultured person.<...>We believe that this scope also includes some of those mathematical representations that are not related to the utilitarian use of mathematics. These representations consist not only of facts, but also of concepts and methods of operating with these concepts.<...>In this essay, we are going to talk about mathematics as a part of spiritual culture.

Such statements are still only a "protocol of intent". But then the most interesting begins. Ouspensky takes mathematical problems one by one and shows what they really mean for human culture. And the first thing to do is to describe the problem, almost without using any formulas or terms. How to do it? There is no general solution here. Each time, considering a mathematical problem or introducing a new concept, one has to look for the necessary visual material, look for metaphors to make the presentation visual and clear. But at the same time, you still need to somehow not lose either in depth or in content, and still not make mistakes.

One of the difficulties in writing this kind of article is the utmost attention to the correctness of the presentation. If in an article published in a mathematical journal, an error (for example, a typo) is clear to any reader, then a typo in a popular science article can be accepted by the reader as true: he simply does not have enough qualifications to notice this typo. At the cost of serious efforts, Vladimir Uspensky managed to cope with this problem.

"Royal Way in Mathematics"

Ouspensky starts with the natural row. It shows that such a seemingly familiar object is actually not at all simple, but full of mysteries and is itself a high-level abstraction. Uspensky writes about the geometry of Lobachevsky and the quadrature of the circle, about unsolvable mass problems and actual infinity, about topology, about the Poincare conjecture, which Grigory Perelman managed to prove.

What Uspensky is groping for in this article can be called the "royal way in mathematics", which, as we know, does not exist. Ouspensky makes an attempt to show the non-mathematician the depth of modern scientific activity, without burdening him with the rigid need to move step by step along the steep steps of abstraction, that is, along the path that any normal mathematician follows. The most amazing thing is that Ouspensky succeeds a lot. His work is perhaps the first coherent attempt to really break through the wall between the two cultures. It shows that there is no impassable boundary between them, if the reader has enough attention and patience, if the author is inventive and subtle.

This gives hope that the two cultures, if they do not merge into one, then, in any case, will cease to frighten and avoid each other. And if the reader understands at least part of what Ouspensky writes about, he will not only enjoy the contemplation of high abstractions, but will also be armed to resist pseudoscience.

13. The work of Ch. P. Snow. Lecture "Two Cultures".

In this lecture on two cultures, delivered at the University of Cambridge in 1959, Snow speaks of the dramatic divisions of the contemporary Western intelligentsia. According to him, the split occurred into two subcultures: scientific and artistic intelligentsia. Between these worlds there is an almost insurmountable abyss caused by the polar relations of the representatives of the two cultures to the industrial and scientific revolutions, society and even the human person itself. This difference in worldview, according to the author, is based on the flawed nature of the education received by young people in Europe and, in particular, in Snow's homeland, England. The result of this gap, according to Snow, may be a civilizational catastrophe, since neither the scientific nor the humanitarian intelligentsia has the full knowledge that humanity needs in an increasingly complex world.

It is impossible not to pay tribute to Snow in the mere fact that he so clearly saw the problem of a break in the environment of the intellectual elite into almost incompatible parts and understood the full extent of the danger to civilization emanating from this break. But it is impossible not to think here that it is the scientists, the proud heirs of Faust, confident in their power, who are primarily responsible for the loss of ties with their fellow humanities. Exactly so, and not vice versa, as Snow is probably inclined to believe. The humanitarian intelligentsia, which is concerned with universal human values, is, by its nature, much less prone to self-isolation than its natural-scientific part. But her rejection of the industrial revolution, which Snow complains about, was also largely due to the ability of humanitarians to see the consequences of phenomena from the point of view of the universal and universal. As the protracted civilizational crisis in which we now find ourselves shows, their fears were largely justified.

With the accumulation and complication of our knowledge about the world, the advent of specialization is inevitable, just as it is inevitable in any biological system of any complexity. One mortal cannot contain in his head the idea of ​​elementary particle physics, knowledge of the structure of a computer, the structural features of microscopic fungi, the specifics of modern textile production, knowledge of the poetry of Keats and Shelley, the philosophy of Hegel, and at the same time remember all the Egyptian pharaohs and the Old Testament history. Hence the temptation to divide into isolated interest groups, ultimately leading to the emergence of numerous subcultures within a once single culture. Snow wrote so brilliantly about two of them.

The same almost inconsistent worlds - the "working masses" and the intellectual elite, military and civil servants, scientists and artists (although I have a feeling that there is still more in common between them than between other categories of modern society). The list can be continued for a long time. And this dramatic fragmentation takes place within just one Western culture! If people within their native culture have forgotten how to hear each other, understand each other, moreover, they have lost all interest in communicating with each other, then what can we say about dialogue with other cultures that originally have different spiritual roots and norms of behavior?

The trouble of modern humanity is precisely in the absence of dialogue between its parts. Snow laments the fact that few of the "humanists" have even a remote idea about the production of buttons, just as they have no understanding of the meaning of the industry in general. But it's not so bad that the poet doesn't know how buttons are made (to my shame, I don't know either, although I'm not a poet). God be with them, with buttons! And it’s not even a problem that scientists are not interested in the practical application of their theories. The trouble is that a holistic knowledge of the world has been lost, an idea of ​​how the world works as a whole and according to what laws it lives has been lost.

The fact that the world today is on the verge of destruction is a direct consequence of the disappearance of this integral knowledge and the inability to have a fruitful dialogue between the bearers of different subcultures. The future of the world, as never before, depends on whether its management will be in the hands of people who are comprehensively educated, tolerant and dialogic. Not narrow specialists, but erudite revivalists, even if they do not know the details of industrial production, but understand its meaning and role in history, as well as the value of poetry and philosophy - these are the people who are the key to overcoming the crisis of civilization.

Snow, in the middle of the 20th century, had not yet posed the question with such acuteness and definiteness, but his merit was already in the fact that he pointed to it, as well as indicated the way to resolve it. He will not seem original to you with his recipe for a massive change in worldview. All of us have already come to the conclusion that there can be no other way to effectively change the minds of millions, except through a deep reform of the education system, in modern society. And Snow, in his lecture, said exactly this: change your education if you want there to be a rapprochement between the disintegrated parts of the culture, if you want your civilization to survive.

English physicist (trained) and writer.

Worked at the Cavendish Laboratory Ernst Rutherford. During the war years, he was an official of the Committee for Scientific Assistance to the Front.

international fame Charles Snow brought the article: Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution / The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, written on the basis of the lecture of the same name, read by him in 1959 at the University of Cambridge. Here he wrote: “Very often - not figuratively, but literally, I spent the daytime with scientists, and the evenings with my literary friends ... They are separated by a wall of misunderstanding, and sometimes - especially among young people - even antipathy and enmity. But the main thing, of course, misunderstanding ».

"Writer and scientist Charles P. Snow drew special attention to the fact that between the traditional humanitarian culture and the new culture of scientific and technological progress, a catastrophic demarcation is taking place and their direct hostility is growing more and more. Among the artistic and philosophical intelligentsia, there was a belief that scientists are far from the realities of life, that they are characterized by superficial optimism. On the other hand, scientists are sure that representatives of creative professions do not have the gift of providence, that everything related to reason and knowledge is alien to them, and that, in extreme cases, the art and thinking of writers, artists, and philosophers is limited to today. Therefore, we are all alone. “Love, strong attachments, creative impulses sometimes allow us to forget about loneliness, but these triumphs are only bright oases created by our own hands, the end of the path always ends in darkness: everyone meets death one on one.” But is there any reason to consider the existence of a person tragic only because the life of a person ends with death? Yes, we are alone, everyone meets death one on one. What of it? This is our destiny, it cannot be changed. “But our life depends on many circumstances that have nothing to do with fate,” Snow concludes, “and we must resist them if we want to remain human.” First of all, such a circumstance that should unite us, make us solidary, is a common, interdisciplinary, integral culture, self-knowledge, self-organization, substantiating and ensuring our future. Human culture may be on the verge of death if radical measures are not taken to make it possible for the “two cultures” to come closer and reconcile. " Two cultures” is a conditional gradation. There could be more of them: three, four. It's not important. We have been brought to the edge of the abyss by contradictions and conflicts between freedom and necessity, consciousness and the unconscious, science and art, the humanities and natural sciences, philosophy and politics, philosophy and economics, and so on. Two cultures are opposite to the wisdom of man, they cause perversion and tragedy of freedom and creativity.

Borushko A.P., Choice of the future: Quo vadis, Minsk, "Design PRO", 2004, p.12.

To describe the effect of the humanists' fear of technology, Charles Snow used the term: "Intellectual Luddism".

From an interview with Charles Snow:« I wonder what kind of working conditions you prefer?

Answer: Perhaps I prefer silence, peace, loneliness, but in fact, a rare professional receives such conditions. One of the indispensable properties of a professional is the ability to succumb as little as possible to any external stimuli in the process of work. If you do not develop this property in yourself, you will never achieve the necessary working conditions. If you can only write in a satin robe, in a room facing northeast, at a comfortable temperature, then your chances of success are slim.”

Charles Snow, Telling the Truth / Portraits and Reflections, M., Progress, 1985, p. 320.

I read a very interesting article by the English writer and physicist Charles Snow "Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution". The author, having extensive experience of communicating both with representatives of the artistic intelligentsia and with people of science, expresses his sadness about the huge gulf that lies between the bearers of the "two cultures". The education system of England in the early to mid-twentieth century led to the fact that the humanities and techies lost a common language of communication, and meetings in the student canteen in Oxford forced them to exchange barbs at each other. “They have such different attitudes to the same things that they cannot find a common language even in terms of emotions.” As for life and its perception, “among the artistic intelligentsia there is a strong opinion that scientists do not imagine real life and therefore they are characterized by superficial optimism. Scientists, for their part, believe that the artistic intelligentsia is devoid of the gift of providence, that it shows a strange indifference to the fate of mankind, that everything related to the mind is alien to it, that it tries to limit art and thinking only to today's concerns, and so on. Snow considers in detail the reasons for these reproaches, describes the nature of both one and the other, explains the way of thinking of physicists and the artistic intelligentsia. "The desire to find some way out" of the situation, the belief in the possibility of this enterprise - "this is ... the real optimism [scientists] - the optimism that we all urgently need." The author accuses writers and artists of worshiping "traditional culture" and completely ignoring the real world and its processes. This way of thinking gives rise to a certain set of values ​​and behavior that is contrary to physicists. Nevertheless, by denying the "traditional culture", literature, scientists harm themselves by considering it "irrelevant", as a result of which their "figurative thinking" suffers. They are stealing from themselves." The intellectuals are also suffering. Pretending that “the status quo does not really exist,” they refuse to understand the current situation, and thereby do not think about the consequences that this situation can bring. They, for the most part, have no idea about the modern scientific model of the physical world, “as if the modern scientific model of the physical world, in its intellectual depth, complexity and harmony, is not the most beautiful and amazing creation created by the collective efforts of the human mind!”

Snow concludes his article with the pessimistic thought that "trying to bridge" between the two cultures is next to impossible. Cultures have lost the ability to communicate, novice scientists are aware of their relevance and the opportunity to make good money, while people of art often “suffer from the consciousness of their own uselessness or from the meaninglessness of their work.”

C. P. Snow (1905-1980 actively worked in the literary and political field, glorified English prose with the multi-volume epic Strangers and Brothers. Snow began writing in 1932, when his detective story Death Under Sailing appeared, and continued his literary career the life of Lewis Eliot, a lawyer by profession (Snow's autobiographical character), in a narrative spanning nearly half a century of British history.

C. P. Snow turned to literature, having already passed the test of science in Cambridge. The logical, impartial type of scientific thinking left its mark on Snow's artistic style, which cannot be confused with the creative style of his other compatriots. The epic "Strangers and Brothers", conceived as a chronicle of individual life, projected onto the history of Great Britain, is being deployed as a well-thought-out scientific project supported by a large number of facts and observations. Lewis Eliot is not just an alter ego of the writer himself, a hero who, like Snow, went from a modest provincial intellectual to big politics in Westminster. A Time of Hope (1949) tells of Eliot's childhood and youth, The Mentors (1951) tells of his time in Cambridge, and Corridors of Power (1963) is devoted to parliamentary life, presented through the eyes of a subtle, intelligent observer, a highly qualified lawyer, evaluating the events of the internal and external life of the country, being at the epicenter of events. Snow's hero thinks forward, he knows that he will have to write about politics and science, about the academic environment and London salons where politics is being done, about student moods (The Dream of Reason, 1968), about sensational criminal trials, he will have to cover a huge period of time and tell about the formation of a representative of the generation, which fell to the implementation of those plans and plans that were not conceived by his predecessors. At times, the narrative resembles a diary, memoirs, fixing the smallest details of life, conversations, sometimes the narrative line disappears altogether, a third person appears, not the author and not the narrator, but, as it were, a witness of events, well-read, insightful.

Snow's experience is specific and seems to be limited to two spheres of activity - scientific and political, the relationship of people is also very limited to the professional circle, but it does not seem that the author gives one-linear characteristics to his characters, adjusted by his dispassionateness and restraint. Roger Quaif and Francis Ratcliffe, Lady Caroline and Crawford, Jego and Lewis Eliot, who appear in different novels, constitute a certain living environment, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, but they are all mysteriously subordinate to the main narrator, not only because they turn to him for help and advice, count on his participation, but also because Eliot gathered, as if in focus, the author's observational and analytical abilities, which significantly expand the novel's space, make it voluminous and significant. In The Mentors, Snow gives a sketch of the London sky at night - "a diffuse reflection of the lives that fill the great city". Similarly, Snow's characters, scattered throughout his works, projected onto the panorama of life in modern Britain, create an epic world of the private, individual and "big", formed in the conditions of the Cold War, the constant confrontation between the two systems, the restless and unstable world, in which many private questions are raised. to the level of the public, and the public are viewed through the prism of the private.

"Two Cultures" In this lecture on two cultures, delivered at the University of Cambridge in 1959, Snow speaks of the dramatic divisions of the contemporary Western intelligentsia. According to him, the split occurred into two subcultures: scientific and artistic intelligentsia. Between these worlds there is an almost insurmountable abyss caused by the polar relations of the representatives of the two cultures to the industrial and scientific revolutions, society and even the human person itself. This difference in worldview, according to the author, is based on the flawed nature of the education received by young people in Europe and, in particular, in Snow's homeland, England. The result of this gap, according to Snow, may be a civilizational catastrophe, since neither the scientific nor the humanitarian intelligentsia has the full knowledge that humanity needs in an increasingly complex world.

It is impossible not to pay tribute to Snow in the mere fact that he so clearly saw the problem of a break in the environment of the intellectual elite into almost incompatible parts and understood the full extent of the danger to civilization emanating from this break. But it is impossible not to think here that it is the scientists, the proud heirs of Faust, confident in their power, who are primarily responsible for the loss of ties with their fellow humanities. Exactly so, and not vice versa, as Snow is probably inclined to believe. The humanitarian intelligentsia, which is concerned with universal human values, is, by its nature, much less prone to self-isolation than its natural-scientific part. But her rejection of the industrial revolution, which Snow complains about, was also largely due to the ability of humanitarians to see the consequences of phenomena from the point of view of the universal and universal. As the protracted civilizational crisis in which we now find ourselves shows, their fears were largely justified.

With the accumulation and complication of our knowledge about the world, the advent of specialization is inevitable, just as it is inevitable in any biological system of any complexity. One mortal cannot contain in his head the idea of ​​elementary particle physics, knowledge of the structure of a computer, the structural features of microscopic fungi, the specifics of modern textile production, knowledge of the poetry of Keats and Shelley, the philosophy of Hegel, and at the same time remember all the Egyptian pharaohs and the Old Testament history. Hence the temptation to divide into isolated interest groups, ultimately leading to the emergence of numerous subcultures within a once single culture. Snow wrote so brilliantly about two of them.

The same almost inconsistent worlds - the "working masses" and the intellectual elite, military and civil servants, scientists and artists (although I have a feeling that there is still more in common between them than between other categories of modern society). The list can be continued for a long time. And this dramatic fragmentation takes place within just one Western culture! If people within their native culture have forgotten how to hear each other, understand each other, moreover, they have lost all interest in communicating with each other, then what can we say about dialogue with other cultures that have initially different spiritual roots and norms of behavior?

The trouble of modern humanity is precisely in the absence of dialogue between its parts. Snow laments the fact that few of the "humanists" have even a remote idea about the production of buttons, just as they have no understanding of the meaning of the industry in general. But it's not so bad that the poet doesn't know how buttons are made (to my shame, I don't know either, although I'm not a poet). God be with them, with buttons! And it’s not even a problem that scientists are not interested in the practical application of their theories. The trouble is that a holistic knowledge of the world has been lost, an idea of ​​how the world works as a whole and according to what laws it lives has been lost.

The fact that the world today is on the verge of destruction is a direct consequence of the disappearance of this integral knowledge and the inability to have a fruitful dialogue between the bearers of different subcultures. The future of the world, as never before, depends on whether its management will be in the hands of people who are comprehensively educated, tolerant and dialogic. Not narrow specialists, but erudite scholars of the Renaissance type, even if they do not know the details of industrial production, but understand its meaning and role in history, as well as the value of poetry and philosophy - these are the people who are the key to overcoming the crisis of civilization.

Snow, in the middle of the 20th century, had not yet posed the question with such acuteness and definiteness, but his merit was already in the fact that he pointed to it, as well as indicated the way to resolve it. He will not seem original to you with his recipe for a massive change in worldview. All of us have already come to the conclusion that there can be no other way to effectively change the minds of millions, except through a deep reform of the education system, in modern society. And Snow, in his lecture, said exactly this: change your education if you want there to be a rapprochement between the disintegrated parts of the culture, if you want your civilization to survive.