Two Culture Idea Rejected at Forum; Jones, Wald, Gold Trample on Snow

Howard Mumford Jones, George Wald, and Thomas Gold graphically demonstrated the gap between the sciences and the humanities in last night's Law School Forum Lowell lecture hall.

Nominally they addressed the problem of the two cultures: how true is it in America that two monolithic cultures--one scientific, one humane--face each other across an impassable chasm of no communication? Actually, they suggested three men in a revolving door; they were all rotating about a common axis, but none got through to the others.

The panelists regularly revived the spectre of C.P. Snow in order to lay it to rest again. Jones, professor emeritus at Harvard and professor of English at MIT, refined Snow's analysis of the sciences and humanities. The humanities extend far beyond the creative arts, to such organizations as the American Council of Learned Societies, while under the rubric of science fall basic philosophy of science, and science as organized knowledge.

Estinguishable from the scientific and humane cultures, Jones said, are the religious, the middle-brow (more accurately known as Philistine), the administrative power-elite, and the artistic and intellectual. These cultures complicate the American picture so much as to make Snow's picture of the great divide inapplicable.

Wald, professor of Biology, dismissed Snow as obsessed with the struggle for administrative power, and instead established his own dichotomy between creation and production. Science, creative, "represents an attempt to understand reality. This is all good--socially good." By man a view of place in the history of the universe, Wald said, science helps a culture determine its goals aims. But it is by these goals and that the applications of science--production--must be judged.

The gap between sciences and humanities in the U.S. struck Thomas Gold, professor of Astrophysics at Cornell University and former professor of Astronomy at Harvard, as less dangerous than the opposition between those who embrace the ideals of education, culture, and intellect, and those who denigrate these ideals. Indeed, he said, "we should diversify the branches of human endeavor, and if someone in one branch can't communicate with somebody in another, that's tough."

But since "an educated person must have an understanding of the forces changing the present, of the historical perspective, and of human sensibilities," Gold proposed intensive and universal education in the subject of evidence and in the logics used when evidence is diverse, manifold, and imprecise.

The scientific methods of evaluating evidence, known as statistics, provide "the biggest barrier against falling back to the Middle Ages," Gold said. He also proposed that people who know science must learn to write about it better if the public is to be adequately prepared for the revolutions science will effect.