Unit 12 the two cultures.docVIP

The Two Cultures C. P. Snow（查尔斯·珀西·斯诺 Charles Percy Snow） 作者：斯诺最值得人们注意的是他关于他“两种文化”这一概念的讲演与书籍。这一概念在他的《两种文化与科学变革》（The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution，1959年出版）。在这本书中，斯诺注意到科学与人文中联系的中断对解决世界上的问题是一个主要障碍。 斯诺特别提到如今世界上教育的质量正在逐步地降低。比如说，很多科学家从未读过查尔斯·狄更斯的作品，同样，艺术工作者对科学也同样的不熟悉。他写道： 斯诺的演讲在发表之时引起了很多的骚动，一部分原因是他在陈述观点时不愿妥协的态度。他被文学评论家F·R·利维斯（F. R. Leavis）强烈地抨击。这一激烈的争辩甚至使夫兰达斯与史旺创作了一首主题是热力学第一与第二定律的喜剧歌曲，并起名为《第一与第二定律》（First and Second Law）。斯诺写到： 斯诺同时注意到了另一个分化，即富国与穷国之间的分化。 1 “It’s rather odd,” said G. H. Hardy, one afternoon in the early Thirties, “but when we hear about intellectuals nowadays, it doesn’t include people like me and J. J. Thomson and Rutherford.” Hardy was the first mathematician of his generation, J. J. Thomson the first physicist of his; as for Rutherford, he was one of the greatest scientists who have ever lived. Some bright young literary person (I forget the exact context) putting them outside the enclosure reserved for intellectuals seemed to Hardy the best joke for some time. It does not seem quite such a good joke now. The separation between the two cultures has been getting deeper under our eyes; there is now precious little communication between them, little but different kinds of incomprehension1 and dislike. 2 The traditional culture, which is, of course, mainly literary, is behaving like a state whose power is rapidly declining—standing on its precarious2 dignity, spending far too much energy on Alexandrian intricacies, [1] occasionally letting fly in fits of aggressive pique3 quite beyond its means, [2] too much on the defensive4 to show any generous imagination to the forces, which must inevitably reshape it. Whereas the scientific culture is expansive, not restrictive, confident at the roots, the more confident after its bout5 of Oppenheimerian self-criticism, certain that history is on its side, impatient, intolerant, and creative rather than critical, good-natured and brash6. Neither culture knows the virtues of the other; often