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TWOCULT

                                            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 professors pains     annoyed to
   be provided                       to avoid troubling us     realize that
   (e.g. "Physics for                with "hard" math,         his Philosophy
   Poets").                          like calculus was         class in
                                     always 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
really there aren't two                                        fine print.
cultures, but maybe
their should be.  Really
there are around 1.5
cultures: When the                    Myself, I often find I'm
humanities get sick, the              looking for artists with
sciences start to sneeze.             some knowledge of what's
                                      on the other side of that
   His complaint is that              cultural barrier.            (barriers?)
   the pessimism about
   the future of the                     I look at the vast array
   human race had                        of small press zines full
   leaked from the                       of random musings and
   humanities to the                     poetry, and my sense of
   sciences, even when                   excitement fades quickly
   you might think that                  as I think "What are the
   they would know better.               odds that any of these
                                         people really *know*
                                         something?"


                                             KNOWS_SOMETHING



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