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Since publishing The Two Cultures and the
Scientific Revolution, C. P. Snow has
been more renowned as a critic
of culture than as either scientist or writer.
The schism he found between the
"two cultures" is by now a well-reported
fact. Although irreverent Americans could
refer to his jeremiad as an
unconscionable snow-job, hardly anyone
dares push his irreverence so far as
to refer to the harried critic as a
beknighted snowman. F. R. Leavis, one of
the most outspoken of Snow's harriers, is
himself a reputable critic of English
letters; in his reading of Snow's essay
he found only ". . . a document for the
study of clich6." But that was
merely for openers. Speaking of the essay
itself, he cast the following pearls
before a bemused audience:
-  "Snow rides on an advancing
swell of clich6."
-  "The Two Cultures exhibits an utter
lack of intellectual distinction
and an embarrassing vulgarity of style."
-  "Snow's argument proceeds with
so extreme a naivete of unconsciousness
and irresponsibility that to call
it a movement of thought is to
flatter it."
And there was more. Moving onto the
author, Leavis tried to make his case by
doing away with his adversary;
and since vitriol is too slow, he used
poisoned darts and a blow-gun. Snow, he
claimed, was an "intellectual nullity."


And . . . "as a novelist he doesn't
exist; he doesn't even begin to exist. He
can't be said to know what a novel
is." Choicer yet, we read,
"Snow is, of course, a - no, I can't say
that; he isn't: Snow thinks of himself
as a novelist."'
In exchange for the "Neo-Wellsian"
scientistic culture Snow seemed
to be stumping for, Leavis proposed
this positive alternative:
What we need, and shall continue to need
not less, is something with the livingness of
the deepest vital instinct; as
intelligence, a power - rooted, strong
in experience, and supremely human -
of creative response to the new
challenges of time; something that is alien
to either of Snow's cultures.2
In a word, humankind must establish a
viable culture - one instead of two -, an
expression of the human spirit valid
for both scientist and humanist.
Why, by the efficacy of what secret
impulsion, does the power and the fertility
of the humanly creative mind split
into two and turn against itself?
Is the scientific revolution effect
or cause, or only symptom of some
subtly hidden cause of our
cultural malaise?


Answers to questions such as these, of


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