A Psychoanalytic Inquiry into the “Two Cultures” Dilemma

Tension between the sciences and the humanities, which C. P. Snow revived in his 1959 Rede Lecture as the “Two Cultures” debate, is chronic and virulent.1^,2 The problem's persistence over the past several hundred years and its predictable capacity to engage and agitate disputants (4) lead me to suspect that part of it is located in the personality as well as the social system. The tension lies deeper than a cultural conflict, deeper and more complicated than interdisciplinary warfare and jurisdictional disputes.

Snow (37) said, “The number two is a very dangerous number: that is why the dialectic is a dangerous process. Attempts to divide anything into two ought to be regarded with much suspicion.” Though recognizing the coarseness and imperfect reflection of reality in this distinction, Snow held to it in a “second look” (39) four years later, as I will hold reluctantly to it now—with the added realization that the fragmentation of science today makes for many, many cultures and that the process of differentiation and new fusions in science—the new hierarchies and specialities—creates a special problem.

I will argue that there are temperamental correlates of the Two Cultures debate which intensify the warfare beyond immediate comprehension.

Since it will be useful for what follows to review some of the explanations and analyses of the Two Cultures conflict, let us sample some of the current thinking: