What if the compass is broken?

A couple posts below Quoc interprets Snow to the effect that science is a ship, taking us to the future, and Quoc asks without a compass [from the literary/traditional culture] how will the ship know where to go. In defense of Snow, I would ask what happens if the compass is broken? Or perhaps a better way to phrase it, what happens when the compass tells you not to go anywhere, because this is exactly the attack that Snow makes on the literary culture and the turning point for why he places our future in the sciences. It is the literary tradition that contains a moral trap that leads man to do nothing. Snow says on page seven, " There is a moral trap which comes through the insight into man's loneliness: it tempts one to sit back, complacent in one's unique tragedy, and let the others go without a meal. As a group, the scientists fall into that trap less than others. They are inclined to be impatient to see if something can be done: and inclined to think that it can be done, until it's proved otherwise."

This is the difference between the two cultures. Quoc asks how the second law of thermodynamics will show you how to treat others. It won't. But there's no guarantee that the literary tradition will either, which is why Snow pointed to the cultural consequences of Keats, Pound, etc. What the second law of thermodynamics will do, however, is help you to create infrastructure in the developing world that will make people's lives better.

Now, as a PLS major, I am not going to abandon the literary tradition. If I did I would have some real problems on my hands. But I think that we should give Snow's claim some serious consideration and think about whether the literary tradition really is helping us to improve the human condition or not. And if it isn't whether that is something we should be worried about.