ABSTRACT

It is close to half a century since C. P. Snow introduced his notion of the “two cultures,” and many commentators now see his argument as outdated and redundant. However, the above quotation from an article by novelist Lucy Ellmann, published in the London Guardian newspaper in mid-1998, suggests otherwise. Snow argued that literary intellectuals “like to pretend that the traditional culture is the whole of ‘culture’” (14); Ellmann is alarmed that science books vie with fiction on the bestseller lists, and defensively downgrades science’s popularity as a “strange little comeback.” Snow claimed that the “total incomprehension” of science gave “an unscientific flavour to the whole ‘traditional’ culture,” a flavour often “on the point of turning anti-scientific” (11); Ellmann dismisses Stephen Hawking’s bestseller as an “incomprehensible tome,” and her assertion that scientists have a “tradition of nerdiness and relish for vivisection” is blatantly hostile. There is one aspect of Ellmann’s attack, however, which Snow did not anticipate: her hostility towards science is focused directly on science popularizations, which she believes are enjoying unprecedented success.