Introduction: The Snow of Yesteryear

This Focus presents a bouquet of personal essays written in response to re-reading C.P. Snow’s historic formulation of ‘The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution’. Each of the authors, in person and in writing, stands in the vanguard of contemporary science and/or the liberal arts. Their essays, based on Snow’s description of a cultural gap between scientists and the ‘literary intellectuals’, will explore the state of the two cultures today and probe whether the digital age has put our humanist heritage at risk. Six decades after Snow’s presentation, we’ll ask if the cultural split he defined remains pertinent in the age of Twitter – and if our common culture faces greater threats today.