About Two Cultures a Hundred Years Ago

Abstract

Jan Janek's essay commemorates the 50th anniversary of the famous "Rede Lecture" by C. P. Snow's "Two Cultures" - the lecture was subsequently published under the title Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959) and the author revisited it and revised some of its theses in Two Cultures and a Second Look: an Expanded Version of Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963). As much as Snow's thesis on the gap between art, literature, and humanities education on the one hand and the natural sciences on the other has been questioned and criticized by many, it was and still is (especially in the Anglo-Saxon world) one of the most significant stimuli for reflection on the social status and functions of science and the relations between the various disciplines.