ABSTRACT
In the light of these developments, Snow’s “two cultures” lecture, once the “missionary document of a new age of cross-disciplinary communication” (Bensaude-Vincent, “In the Name of Science” 332), is now seen as redundant by many critics: his concern is considered “misplaced,” his model “notorious,” “by now not a very helpful cliché,” “an intellectual convenience-at best a paradigm whose time has passed, at worst little more than a political slogan, but at heart an inadequate image” (McRae 1; J. Black 133; Levine, “One Culture” 3; Lee 77). Current critics stress, “The distinction is one of degree, not of kind: science is no more exempt from the constraints of nonspecialist culture than literature is” (Levine, “One Culture” 3). They emphasize the extent to which criticism has moved beyond Snow’s well-worn formulation-witness the titles of recent anthologies of “literature and science” criticism: One Culture (1987), Beyond the Two Cultures (1990) and The Third Culture (1998).
