The notion that our society, its education system and its intellectual life, is characterised by a split between two cultures – the arts or humanities on one hand and the sciences on the other – has a long history. But it was C. P. Snow's Rede lecture of 1959 that brought it to prominence and began a public debate that is still raging in the media today. This fiftieth anniversary printing of The Two Cultures and its successor piece, A (...) Second Look features an introduction by Stefan Collini, charting the history and context of the debate, its implications and its afterlife. The importance of science and technology in policy run largely by non-scientists, the future for education and research, and the problem of fragmentation threatening hopes for a common culture are just some of the subjects discussed. (shrink)

The notion that our society, its education system and its intellectual life, is characterised by a split between two cultures – the arts or humanities on one hand, and the sciences on the other – has a long history. But it was C. P. Snow's Rede lecture of 1959 that brought it to prominence and began a public debate that is still raging in the media today. This 50th anniversary printing of The Two Cultures and its successor piece, A (...) Second Look features an introduction by Stefan Collini, charting the history and context of the debate, its implications and its afterlife. The importance of science and technology in policy run largely by non-scientists, the future for education and research, and the problem of fragmentation threatening hopes for a common culture are just some of the subjects discussed. (shrink)

C. P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures” controversially contrasted science and literature, suggesting that neither scientists nor literary intellectuals have much in common with, and seldom bother speaking to, the other. Responding to Snow, Michael Polanyi argued that specialization has made modern culture, not twofold but manifold. In his major work, Personal Knowledge, Polanyi explained that branches of modern culture have personal knowing and knowledge in common, and there is extensive cross-pollination of ideas. He also, in this book, saw (...) the branches of culture as disparate intellectual frameworks that are divorced from one another. (shrink)

That C. P. Snow had first-hand experience both in science and writing was taken for granted in the years of controversy over ‘the two cultures’, but neither the quality of his experience nor the circumstances of his eventual adoption of a literary career was given close enough consideration. Snow's own statements on these two points are often misleading. Yet the autobiographical nature of his fiction throws significant light on the subject. An examination of the autobiographical elements in (...) class='Hi'>Snow's novels in the light of his conception of the novel raises the question of whether his shift from science to literature was exactly the result of a genuine choice and also reveals that the two cultures dichotomy is embedded in his personal experience. (shrink)

We present an experimental test of the validity of the Pauli Exclusion Principle for electrons based on the concept put forward a few years ago by Ramberg and Snow. In this experiment we perform a very accurate search of X-rays from the Pauli-forbidden atomic transitions of electrons in the already filled 1S shells of copper atoms. Although the experiment has a simple structure, it poses deep conceptual and interpretational problems. Here we describe the experimental method and recent experimental results, (...) which we interpret as an upper limit for the probability to violate the Pauli Exclusion Principle. We present also future plans to upgrade the experimental apparatus using Silicon Drift Detectors. (shrink)

In this paper we describe an experimental test of the validity of the Pauli Exclusion Principle (for electrons) which is based on a straightforward idea put forward a few years ago by Ramberg and Snow (Phys. Lett. B 238:438, 1990). We perform a very accurate search of X-rays from the Pauli-forbidden atomic transitions of electrons in the already filled 1S shells of copper atoms. Although the experiment has a very simple structure, it poses deep conceptual and interpretational problems. Here (...) we describe the experimental method and recent experimental results, which we interpret in the framework of quon theory. We also present future plans to upgrade the experimental apparatus using Silicon Drift Detectors. (shrink)

This paper explores the potential pedagogical benefits of philosophy for resolving conflicts in academia and for introducing students to other disciplines. Following C.P Snow's definition of academic disciplines as representing a culture, the author argues that philosophical study can provide a means to reduce strife between science and the humanities. Defining philosophy as self-reflection and prescribing pedagogical methods which open philosophical study onto cultural studies, the author offers the notion of philosophy as an introduction to a liberal arts education. (...) Such an approach to philosophy seeks to demonstrate the interdependence between philosophy and other disciplines and bears the additional benefit of emphasizing the application of philosophy to students’ lives. (shrink)

Understood as an analysis of clashing argument cultures, C. P. Snow’s “Two Cultures” illuminates challenges to interdisciplinarity. Argument cultures involve not only distinct styles of argumentation and background assumptions, but also emotional attitudes and prejudices, including disdain for other argument cultures, that rest on ideals of inquiry and society. Case studies suggest that fruitful interdisciplinary work across such cultures requires institutionalized boundary contexts in which heterogeneous solidarity can develop.

_Abstract_: The recent proliferation of the term “_Psychological Humanities_” (PH) raises many questions, not least of which is the wide variety of ways in which the term is employed. After noting some of this variety, we focus on a related question that has been insufficiently discussed: the extent to which PH represents a genuinely new contribution and approach, and to what extent it represents a renaming. To address this question, we examine examples of past efforts to theorize the relation between (...) psychology and the humanities. We explore Dilthey’s argument in favor of “two sciences” and C.S. Snow’s description of “two cultures”, which offer somewhat different models of the relations between science and the humanities. We then discuss the application of these models to the discipline of psychology, first by Dilthey himself and later by Sigmund Koch, noting similarities to descriptions of the project for PH as currently described. We question the need for a renaming of the project and call attention to the risk of PH exhibiting its own form of presentism while critiquing the presentism of (in) “mainstream” psychological science. _Keywords_: Psychological Humanities; Wilhelm Dilthey; C.P. Snow; Sigmund Koch; Philosophical and Theoretical Psychology _Cosa c’è in un nome? Le Psychological Humanities e la logica del presentismo_ _Riassunto_: L’uso crescente del lemma _Psychological Humanities_ solleva diversi problemi, non ultimo l’ampia varietà di modi in cui questo è impiegato. Dopo aver portato l’attenzione su alcuni usi di questo lemma, ci concentreremo su una questione collegata, fin qui trattata in maniera insoddisfacente: fino a che punto le _Psychological Humanities_ rappresentano un contributo e un approccio davvero innovativo e in che misura sono solo una nuova denominazione. Per affrontare questo problema, prenderemo in esame alcuni tentativi compiuti in passato per trattare il rapporto tra psicologia e discipline umanistiche. Prenderemo in considerazione l’argomento di Dilthey in favore delle “due scienze” e la posizione di C.S. Snow circa l’esistenza delle “due culture”, che offrono modelli leggermente diversi rispetto alla relazione tra scienza e discipline umanistiche. Discuteremo poi l’applicazione di questi modelli alla psicologia, seguendo dapprima lo stesso Dilthey per poi considerare il modello di Sigmund Koch, mettendo in risalto le loro affinità con le descrizioni correnti del progetto delle _Psychological Humanities_. Discuteremo poi la necessità di una nuova denominazione per questo progetto per richiamare l’attenzione sul rischio che le _Psychological Humanities_ possano esibire una propria forma di presentismo mentre criticano il presentismo della scienza psicologica “mainstream”. _Parole chiave_: Psychological Humanities; Wilhelm Dilthey; C.P. Snow; Sigmund Koch; Psicologia filosofica e teoretica. (shrink)

C.P. Snow observed that universities are largely made up of two broad types of people, literary intellectuals and scientists, yet a typical individual of each type is barely able, if able at all, to communicate with his counterpart. Snow's observation, popularized in his 1959 lecture Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (reissued by Cambridge 1993), goes some way to explaining the two distinct cultures one hears referred to as "the humanities" and "the sciences." Snow's lecture is a (...) study of these two cultures, their rules, hierarchies, and educational traditions, which raises the following question: to what degree are "the humanities" and "the sciences" a consequence of how we organize and fund modern universities? Rather than a happenstance of interests and temperament, perhaps "humanist" and "scientist" are largely bureaucratic categories. (shrink)

God’s providence appears to threaten the existence of human freedom. This paper examines why Descartes considered this threat merelyapparent. Section one argues that Descartes did not reconcile providence and freedom by adopting a compatibilist conception of freedom. Sections two and three argue that for Descartes, God’s superior knowledge allows God to providentially arrange free choices without causally determining them. Descartes’ position thus strongly resembles the “middle knowledge” solution of the Jesuits. Section four examines the problematic relationship between this solution and (...) the creation of the eternal truths, arguing that Descartes’ position depends on his unique understanding of divine simplicity. (shrink)

We offer a novel interpretation of the argumentative role that Meditation IV plays within the whole of the Meditations. This new interpretation clarifies several otherwise head-scratching claims that Descartes makes about Meditation IV, and it fully exonerates the Fourth Meditation from either raising or exacerbating Descartes’ circularity problems.

Hsiao has recently developed what he considers a ‘simple and straightforward’ argument for the moral permissibility of corporal punishment. In this article we argue that Hsiao's argument is seriously flawed for at least two reasons. Specifically, we argue that a key premise of Hsiao's argument is question-begging, and Hsiao's argument depends upon a pair of false underlying assumptions, namely, the assumption that children are moral agents, and the assumption that all forms of wrongdoing demand retribution.

C P Ormell; Ideology and the Reform of School Mathematics, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 3, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 37–54, https://doi.org/10.1.

: The principle of alternative possibilities (PAP) says that doing something freely implies being able to do otherwise. I show that Descartes consistently believed not only in PAP, but also in clear and distinct determinism (CDD), which claims that we sometimes cannot but judge true what we clearly perceive. Because Descartes thinks judgment is always a free act, PAP and CDD seem contradictory, but Descartes consistently resolved this apparent contradiction by distinguishing between two senses of 'could have done otherwise.' In (...) one sense alternative possibilities are necessary for freedom and in another they are not. I discuss three possible interpretations of the two senses. (shrink)

Offering an original perspective on the central project of Descartes' Meditations, this book argues that Descartes' free will theodicy is crucial to his refutation of skepticism. A common thread runs through Descartes' radical First Meditation doubts, his Fourth Meditation discussion of error, and his pious reconciliation of providence and freedom: each involves a clash of perspectives-thinking of God seems to force conclusions diametrically opposed to those we reach when thinking only of ourselves. Descartes fears that a skeptic could exploit this (...) clash of perspectives to argue that Reason is not trustworthy because self-contradictory. To refute the skeptic and vindicate the consistency of Reason, it is not enough for Descartes to demonstrate that our Creator is perfect; he must also show that our errors cannot prove God's imperfection. To do this, Descartes invokes the idea that we err freely. However, prospects initially seem dim for this free will theodicy, because Descartes appears to lack any consistent or coherent understanding of human freedom. In an extremely in-depth analysis spanning four chapters, Ragland argues that despite initial appearances, Descartes consistently offered a coherent understanding of human freedom: for Descartes, freedom is most fundamentally the ability to do the right thing. Since we often do wrong, actual humans must therefore be able to do otherwise-our actions cannot be causally determined by God or our psychology. But freedom is in principle compatible with determinism: while leaving us free, God could have determined us to always do the good. Though this conception of freedom is both consistent and suitable to Descartes' purposes, when he attempts to reconcile it with divine providence, Descartes's strategy fails, running afoul of his infamous doctrine that God created the eternal truths. (shrink)

In the Fourth Meditation, Descartes asks: 'If God is no deceiver, why do we sometimes err?' Descartes's answer (despite initial appearances) is both systematic and necessary for his epistemological project. Two atheistic arguments from error purport to show that reason both proves and disproves God's existence. Descartes must block them to escape scepticism. He offers a mixed theodicy: the value of free will justifies God in allowing our actual errors, and the perfection of the universe may justify God in making (...) us able to err. Though internally coherent, Descartes's theodicy conflicts with his view of divine providence. (shrink)

Dan Baras has recently argued for the claim that Theistic Mathematical Platonism fares no better than Mathematical Platonism with respect to explaining why our mathematical beliefs are correlated with mind-independent mathematical truths. In this paper I argue that, insofar as TMP provides a proximate or local explanation for this truth-tracking correlation whereas MP fails to offer any corresponding explanation, Baras’s claim that TMP fares no better than MP with respect to explaining this correlation is false.

In an influential article, Anthony Kenny charged that (a) the view of freedom in Descartes’ “1645 letter to Mesland” is incoherent, and (b) that this incoherence was present in Descartes’ thought from the beginning. Against (b), I argue that such incoherence would rather support Gilson’s suspicions that the 1645 letter is dishonest. Against (a), I offer a close reading of the letter, showing that Kenny’s objection seems plausible only if we misconstrue a key ambiguity in the text. I close by (...) defending Descartes against some related worries of my own about the degrees of Cartesian freedom. I conclude that there is really no good reason to deny that Descartes’ view in the 1645 letter is both internally coherent and a genuine explication of the Meditations’ account of freedom. (shrink)

In 1959 C. P. Snow delivered his now-famous Rede Lecture, 'The Two Cultures,' a reflection on the academy based on the premise that intellectual life was divided into two cultures: the arts and humanities on one side and science on the other. Since then, a third culture, generally termed 'social science' and comprised of fields such as sociology, political science, economics, and psychology, has emerged. Jerome Kagan's book describes the assumptions, vocabulary, and contributions of each of these cultures and (...) argues that the meanings of many of the concepts used by each culture are unique to it and do not apply to the others because the source of evidence for the term is special. The text summarizes the contributions of the social sciences and humanities to our understanding of human nature and questions the popular belief that biological processes are the main determinant of variation in human behavior. (shrink)

Between 1069, the year of his arrival at St. Martin in Mainz, where he spent the rest of his life in voluntary enclosure in a cell, and his death in 1082, the Irish monk Marianus Scottus dedicated countless hours to assembling the most sophisticated and comprehensive work on historical chronology that had ever been produced by a Latin writer up to that time. The fruits of his labors became a massive world chronicle, completed in 1076, whose most famous innovation consisted (...) in a far-reaching correction to the Christian, or “common,” era, which had been introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century. Having compared the data of the Easter computus with the chronological parameters traditionally associated with the passion of Christ—the fifteenth day of the moon on Friday, 25 March—Marianus found that the only year in which the numbers could be made to fit was AD 12 rather than the traditionally accepted AD 34. As a result, he decided to predate the life of Jesus by twenty-two years, assigning his birth to the year corresponding to 22 BC. This gave rise to a new “corrected” era , which he used alongside its Dionysiac equivalent. (shrink)