Humanities and the Scientific Image of Man, Today (original) (raw)

Humanities and the scientific image of man, today 1. From an epistemological point of view 1.1. From "two cultures" to "two images": Snow and Sellars About 60 years ago, Charles Percy Snow (1905-1980) famously analysed the relationship between the so called «two cultures»: that of «literary intellectuals», on the one hand, and that of «scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists», on the other. 1 Snow was extremely worried about the existence of «two polar groups», separated by «a gulf of mutual incomprehension -sometimes (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding» and his concern mainly reflected his own personal history, because, as he himself declared: «by training I was a scientist: by vocation I was a writer». 2 While Snow's analysis was extremely successful and vivid in identifying a distinctive feature of our times, his explanation of it and his suggestions for overcoming the divide are widely regarded as somewhat unsatisfactory. I argue that one reason for this inadequacy is the fact that Snow's analysis essentially concentrates on sociological, historical and pedagogical factors, rather than on the epistemological ones. This produces a discourse which, while effectively (and ironically) describing some effects of the split at issue, leaves us, nevertheless, without much insight into his deep causes.