Two Cultures

I’m a third-year Cognitive Science student at UCLA, and because it is such an interdisciplinary major I’ve been able to take classes on both sides of the campus. My first two years were more rooted in South Campus – with computer science, math, and psychology classes – but more recently, especially since I’ve added two humanities-related minors, I’ve found myself in North Campus more. 

Fig. 2. Nitya Tak and Noah Danesh, “A Campus Divided”, Daily Bruin, 2021, https://prime.dailybruin.com/justinnorth&southcampus.

This shift shows how education systems, even at UCLA, often reflect C.P. Snow’s concept of two “two cultures” – science and the humanities – and how they rarely interact with one another. 

Fig. 2. Jane Brown, “Cultural authority … CP Snow in 1970”, The Guardian, 16 Aug. 2013, www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/16/leavis-snow-two-cultures-bust.

On the first page of Snow’s The Two Cultures, he reflects on how “by training, I was a scientist: by vocation, I was a writer” (Snow 1). This sentence highlights the pull between more data-driven thinking and creative exploration – a pull that I have also very much felt. One of this week’s materials was how education historically tends to dismiss students’ interests and talents (Robinson 0:59 - 1:35). One of my close friends is an incredibly talented illustrator, but because of societal and parental pressures has put aside their passion to pursue something more narrow, even when their interests span both logic and imagination. 

Victoria Vesna provides a hopeful counterpoint by offering the idea of a “Third Culture.” She argues that artists and scientists working collaboratively can help bridge this gap between art and science (Vesna 122). In Steven Pinker’s interview, he talks about how important it is to bridge this gap because science and art can work in ways that can “illuminate” or inform each other (beautyandtruth09). 

Fig. 3. MIT Media Lab, “Speculative machines produce existential wonder,” MIT News, 12 Mar. 2020, https://news.mit.edu/2020/orbiting-floating-sculpture-mit-kubli-ishii-0312.

But this divide is still very apparent because there are more “artists looking to understand science than there are scientists trying to understand art” (McNamee). I think this quote really stood out to me because it emphasizes the importance of mutual and proactive collaboration from both ends. 

Works Cited

beautyandtruth09. “SEEDMAGAZINE.COM Two Cultures Steven Pinker.” YouTube, 18 May 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BUbVc7qVpg. Accessed 1 Apr. 2025.

Brown, Jane. “Cultural authority … CP Snow in 1970.” The Guardian, 16 Aug. 2013, www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/16/leavis-snow-two-cultures-bust.

McNamee, Gregory. “Erasing the Gap between Art and Science.” Science.org, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1126/article.65284.

MIT Media Lab. “Speculative machines produce existential wonder.” MIT News, 12 Mar. 2020, https://news.mit.edu/2020/orbiting-floating-sculpture-mit-kubli-ishii-0312.

Robinson, Ken. “Changing Education Paradigms.” YouTube, 14 Oct. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U.

Snow, C. P. Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. 2018.

Tak, Nitya, and Noah Danesh. “A Campus Divided.” Daily Bruin, 2021, https://prime.dailybruin.com/justinnorth&southcampus.

Vesna, Victoria. “Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between.” Leonardo, vol. 34, no. 2, The MIT Press, 2001, pp. 121–25, https://doi.org/10.2307/1577014. JSTOR.