At the Arts ⁄ Science Interface
- ENGINEERS’ CORNER
- CLOSE ENCOUNTERS of the TRIPLE KIND.
- OUT of AFRICA … THE STORY of YOU…
- ARTS/SCIENCE ‘ENCOUNTERS’: a Review
- ARTSCIENCE: first look-ahead to 2010
- Upon a Peak in Darien… New Vistas from Old Places
- CP Snow: Only Connect
- Whose Rise and Fall …?
- How Many Cultures? CP Snow and the Darwin Legacy
- Creative Break-Through at Sheffield University
The Ideas Exchange
What You've Been Saying
The Ideas Exchange
What Others Have Said
The PEST Anthology
- YET MORE PEST POEMS
- More ‘PEST’ Poems
- PEST Inaugural
- A Work in Progress: Poetry of Science and Technology
The CVN Archive
About This Blog
Whose Rise and Fall …?
Whose Rise and Fall ….? 3 May 2009
In the weeks since we first signalled the forthcoming 50th Anniversary of the ‘Rede’ Lecture (‘CP Snow and the Darwin Legacy’ - 7April 2009) the juggernaut of licensed condescension seems to have been slowly grinding into gear.
Now, with the occasion almost upon us, the same New Scientist which brought us’ Why Einstein was Wrong about Relativity’(1 November 2008); and ‘Darwin Was Wrong: Uprooting Darwin’s Tree’(24 January 2009); now brings us ‘The Rise and Fall of a Cultural Legend’ ( 2 May 2009) complete with dominant Humpty Dumpty caricature of a CP Snow egg-head, and a small selection of short vignettes by some current cognoscenti.
Luckily, the wisest of these (Mary Midgely and AC Grayling) seem uneasy with the journal’s neo-tabloid editorial style, and opt for the need to ‘continue Snow’s chasm-bridging’(Midgely) and ‘his point has only become more acute’(Grayling). Mary Midgely closely echoes the themes of the ‘Our Brother Darwin’( 4 February 2009) theme, commenting as we had done, that ‘this kind of narrowness had surely only recently crept into the tradition..’ Bravo!
The more ceremonial marking of the ‘Rede Lecture’ 50th birthday takes place (2 days early) on Tuesday 5th May at the Royal Society for the Arts ( why London?)with Melvyn Bragg officiating. We wish them well and hope that, with all its faults, the real significance of Snow’s message is recognised – which requires more than a cursory re-reading of the ‘lecture’ itself; it makes its real points only in the fuller context of the six/seven years of gestation of his theme between ‘Two Cultures’ (New Statesman October 1956), and ‘A Second Look’ (1963).
Which is why, as a number of you have suggested, I am also posting some of my more detailed notes on the events and ideas which seem to have contributed to the gestation of Snow’s concerns; and which place the ‘Two Cultures’ firmly within the ‘Darwin Legacy’.
On the day of the London ‘Rede’ retrospective I will be in Sheffield to hear Ruth Padel read from her ‘Darwin: A Life in Poems’ as part of the university’s ‘Arts/Science Encounters’. As my ‘post’ (‘CP Snow: Only Connect’) suggests, there are some special reasons why Snow might have preferred to be in Sheffield , rather than London, too!