Melvyn Bragg has launched a new BBC Radio 4 series that re-examines the fracture between the arts and sciences first diagnosed by C P Snow in the pages of this magazine more than seven decades ago. The Value of Culture airs twice daily through Friday, with each episode built around a historic clash over the meaning of culture.
Snow's original diagnosis
Monday's opener pitted Matthew Arnold against Thomas Huxley. Tuesday turned to Snow himself, whose 1956 essay "The Two Cultures" argued that the scientific and "traditional" (mainly literary) cultures had fallen into "mutual incomprehension." Snow, a chemist and novelist, wrote that ignorance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics was the scientific equivalent of never having read Shakespeare.
The essay described the literary culture as "behaving like a state whose power is rapidly declining" while the scientific culture was "expansive, not restrictive, confident at the roots." Snow warned that the separation impoverished both sides intellectually and morally, leaving the traditional culture prone to using tragic visions of the human condition to justify social inertia.
Bragg's contemporary assessment
Bragg, 73, told The Telegraph that the contrast between Arnold's narrow definition and the anthropological view, culture as "the way a tribe interacts, culture is habits, traditions, ways of believing and ways of dressing up", remains fascinating. Asked how far Britain has moved since Snow, he pointed to a young cellist on Radio 3 who also played in a heavy metal band. "She wasn't showing off," he said. "I think we've liberated an awful lot of talent."
The series concludes Friday with a live debate at the Lit and Phil in Newcastle, a venue that embodies the longevity of the question. Bragg's own career, spanning The South Bank Show and In Our Time, has attempted to bridge the divide he is now dissecting.
Snow's essay noted a telling Canadian detail: the frontier spirit of Chalk River alongside Harwell, Winscale and Los Alamos as symbols of the new scientific culture. The observation resonates in a country where research funding and university structures still reflect the arts-science split Snow described.
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