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Liberal Arts & Sciences, Undergraduate

First-Year Research Seminar: The Arts and the Sciences: Divides and Intersections (FIRST-UG 827)

In 1959, the chemist-turned-novelist C.P. Snow delivered a lecture in which he decried a growing separation between the humanities and the sciences. In it, he argued that two intellectual “cultures” were developing, both of whose practitioners were increasingly incapable of engaging each other. Today, the notion of a divide between “the humanities” and “the sciences,” or, as some term them, “the arts” and “the sciences,” is rather commonplace. We often hear people self-identify as “more left brain,” for example, or “not a math person.” In this course, we will explore how and why different people have found it useful to distinguish the arts and the sciences. We will also consider why others have found it useful to blur the arts and the sciences. Participants will begin by reading and contextualizing Snow’s original lecture, after which we will trace both the historical origins of the key concepts involved as well as how their meanings have changed over time from early modernity to today. (Mathematics, for example, was deemed an “art” for much of European history.) Having done so, we will then consider contemporary assessments. All told, in their research and in their writing, participants will be asked to examine how different people have sought to distinguish, reconcile, or even move beyond the “two cultures.” Readings for the course may include works by: Francis Bacon, Lisa Jardine, Marwa Elshakry, Paul Kristeller, Yuval Levin, and Rueylin Chen.

First Year program (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2021)

FIRST-UG 827-000 (22605)
01/28/2021 – 05/10/2021 Mon,Wed
11:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)
at Washington Square
Instructed by O’’Neil, Sean Thomas

Texts and Ideas, Undergraduate

First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar: Science and Literature (FIRST-UG 85)

In a 1959 lecture titled “The Two Cultures,” C. P. Snow famously declared, “the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups,” with “literary intellectuals at one pole—at the other scientists.” Snow asserted that the two are separated by “a gulf of mutual incomprehension,” even “hostility and dislike.” Snow’s view of a fundamental antagonism between science and literature has its roots in the nineteenth-century; his concept of “two cultures” remains influential today. But was he right? This course addresses that question, seeking to deepen our understanding of the relationship between science and literature. Our readings will pair literary and scientific texts: we may consider Ted Chiang’s short fiction and the laws of thermodynamics; Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen and quantum physics; Amitav Ghosh’s novel The Calcutta Chromosome and sociological theories of scientific knowledge; and the poetry of ecologist Madhur Anand; and Robin Wall Kimmerer’s interdisciplinary meditations on the environment in Braiding Sweetgrass. The class is a discussion-based seminar; assignments will include short response papers, brief contributions to a class blog, and formal essays.

First Year program (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks