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As Dr. Bennis says, divisions in two are dangerous.
I think the “two cultures” Snow talked about might be exemplified by two professors—one of physics and one of literature. It is quite usual for physics professors to read novels, but very few professors of literature understand any science. The point Snow made is that to be genuinely educated, indeed to be a genuine humanist, the professor of literature should learn some science.
The gap between these realms is no longer as great as it was—and attitudes between the fields were never as bitter as Bennis makes them out to be.
What troubles me most in his essay is that much of what Bennis says about humanists might be alleged of artists—novelists, composers, painters—but not generally of professors of literature, history of music, or history of art. The latter group, however, are more readily comparable with professors of the history, philosophy or sociology of science, who again are rather different from scientists.
This is where Bennis' dichotomy breaks down. Scientists tend to be unique in the university in being the primary sources of their subjects: whereas all the other kinds of scholars are engaged in contemplating, recording and analyzing the activities of others—of politicians, artists, sometimes even scientists—scientists are mainly concerned with and teach the products of their own activities. Laboratory scientists are unique also in the interplay of head and hand in what they do. Others in the university are involved mainly with words; the scientists with things, with matter and its interactions.
So, particularly for such purposes as Dr. Bennis', I would divide my characters differently. There are otherwise-educated men who know very little science and still less mathematics. Should one call them “humanists?”
There are other “humanists” who do know science: historians, philosophers and perhaps even an occasional sociologist of science.
There are creative artists: Is a poet or a painter a “humanist?” Bennis seems