Sunday, June 26,
2016
Week 1:
Two Cultures
Hello, my name is Jake Perlstein
and I am a Sophomore from Northern California. I come from a very math/science
oriented family. My father is a Trauma Surgeon, and My Grandfather and Great Grandfather
were both Engineers. C.P. Snow’s “Two Cultures” essay exemplifies the
intellectual and scientific culture. He strongly believes that our society
needs to bridge the gap between the two through our educational system, the
third culture.
http://literaryecology.com/tag/science/
It appears to me that after
reading “The Two Cultures”, Snow’s reason for writing it was to prove that we
needed a change in our educational system sothat there is improved
communication between scientists and humanists. His perspective is that there
is a separation between science and the arts. He remarked that “literary
intellectuals” who can’t define what are considered basic terms in
Physics—”mass,” “acceleration,” I feel
that as a student at U.C.L.A. I can
relate to his comment because I not only enjoyed, but have done well
academically in my Calculus, Life Science and Astronomy courses. However, my
English class was a different story. U.C.L.A. segregates the arts and sciences
geographically on their campus, the north vs. the south and students will earn
either a Bachelor of Arts or a Bachelor of Science degree. I am more
comfortable in classrooms on the south end of U.C.L.A. However, reading the
material this week has made me realize that I need to engage more in the Arts to
gain a better understanding and broaden my educational experience at U.C.L.A.
After reading Vesna’s article, “Third Culture: Being in Between,” it
made me think, have we reached our breaking point? But, I believe that as long
as we have people that keep challenging, asking questions, and doing research
the end of science is not on the horizon. Science and the arts cannot exist
without one another. Kevin Kelley points this out when he says “while science sat in the cultural backseat, its steady output
of wonderful products—radio, TV, and computer chips—furiously bred a pop
culture based on the arts.”
At the 50-year anniversary mark of C.P. Snow’s essay
about the two cultures, it could not go unnoticed that a big gap still existed
between the rich and the poor. Snow believed that by the year 2000 there would
no longer be poor people because they would know the secret to getting rich.
But the reality today is that there is a huge gap and the rich keep getting
richer and the poor keep getting poorer.
Works
Cited
Kelly, Kevin. “The Third
Culture.” Science 279.5353 (1998): 992-993. Print.
“Our Two Cultures.” Web. 23 June 2016.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/books/review/Dizikes-t.html?_r=0
Snow,
C.P. “Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.” Reading. 1959. New York:
Cambridge UP, 1961. Print.
"The Two Cultures." Wikipedia. Wikimedia
Foundation, n.d. Web. 23 June. 2016.
Vesna,
Victoria. “Toward a Third Culture Being in Between.” Leonardo 34.2 (2001)
121-25. Print
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