Heat won't pass from a cooler to a hotter ...

... you can try it if you like but you far better notta.

If you enjoy very old-fashioned humor, listen to the immortal Michael Flanders and Donald Swann explaining the Second Law of Thermodynamics (a few years after Snow's essay appeared). It's one of the best songs ever written about a fundamental physical law.

Science Majors

This reading at first was similarly disturbing for me. I discussed it with a few of my friends in Sorin who are science majors. Their response to Snow's argument was essentially, "So what?" I then started to question Snow's main point. Why does it matter whether the disciplines are increasingly divergent? Isn't the key to efficiency the specialization of labor as in an assembly line? Snow may be correct, but does it really matter if the academics of the country are not on the same page?

Also, I stumbled across this comic strip that may show the scientists' side of how literary academics appear: http://xkcd.com/451/

Snow's Problem with Educational Specialization

I very much agree with Snow's analysis of the two cultures. I think that his work implies that the value of any specific scientific concentration is fundamentally diminished without the application to the larger societal questions that are stressed by the liberal arts. What interests me most in Snow's discussion is its relevance to politics, government and moral decision-making today. Of the scientists he writes, "in the moral, they are the by and large the soundest group of intellectuals we have; there is a moral component right in the grain of science itself, and almost all scientists form their own judgments of the moral life" (13). With such a large interplay between scientists and those who participate in the liberal professions, what is a pragmatic solution to the bridge between the two cultures? It seems that both could make better decisions with the help of the other. But can they ever learn to work together? If not, is it feasible to provide every person with a thorough scientific and liberal arts education?

PLS and The Two Cultures

The goal with a PLS education is to go back to the type of education prior to the great divide between Snow's Two Cultures.  We are supposed to view everything under the title of a greater philosophy.  It still seems, however, that it becomes difficult for those of us with a PLS education to adequately communicate with the scientists of our time.  Does this mean PLS is not completing its job? Is there something we can do to remedy the situation?

Auschwitz and Hiroshima

On page 7 Snow describes "being cross-examined by a scientist of distinction" who asks, "'didn't the influence of all [that literary intellectuals] represent bring Auschwitz that much nearer?'" These two men share a belief that non-scientists glorify tragedy and are therefore partly responsible for the suffering that occurred during WWII at places like Auschwitz.

Yet, was it not the invention of the atomic bomb from within the scientific community that clinched the fates of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Even if Snow and this nameless scientist reconcile the decision to drop the bombs from the utilitarian point of view that by sacrificing the lives of the people within those cities they saved the lives that would have been lost in a continuing war, it remains that incalculable suffering occurred based on the success of a scientific discovery. How would Snow defend the fact that scientific discoveries can be and are used to create tragedy?

Two Cultures Reading 1

Snow laments on page 16 of our reading that "the clashing point of two subjects, two disciplines, two cultures- of two galaxies, so far as that goes- ought to produce creative changes." However, it seems as though communication between the two cultures is very limited, almost as though we lack a common language. Even the way we look at books is different: "Books? I prefer to use my books as tools" (13). Does Snow provide an educational plan to remedy this disparity? If not, what did he mean to convey with this speech and, particularly, its title?