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Stefan Collini, The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature, and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain. By Guy Ortolano., Twentieth Century British History, Volume 20, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 252–254, https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwp012
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When C.P. Snow delivered the Rede Lecture at Cambridge University in May 1959 on ‘The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution’, he launched a phrase, and perhaps even a concept, on what has proved to be a global career. Half a century later, the notion of ‘the two cultures’ is still regularly invoked to focus a variety of concerns about disciplinary specialization and the relations between the sciences and the humanities. But Snow's original lecture actually addressed a much wider range of issues—questions about the benefits or otherwise of industrialization, about the role of expertise in the formulation and execution of political policies, about the relations of ‘advanced’ to ‘developing’ countries, and about the nature of ‘progress’ and ‘modernity’. In the years immediately following its publication, the lecture attracted a vast quantity of comment from around the world, and its success propelled Snow—former scientist, influential scientific administrator, prolific and increasingly successful novelist—to a new level of intellectual celebrity.
