ABSTRACT
The chapter re-examines the “two cultures” debate against the background of a more global and complex (hi)story of knowledge migration and change. It analyzes Snow’s lecture as a product of nationalism and of the tensions and historical interactions between these two networks of knowledge from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Focusing on the process that led to the “nationalization” of the humanities, it questions the role played by nationalism in the enlarging of the gap, which, according to Snow, exists between an “international, universal and progressive” endeavor like science, and a “national, parochial and conservative” culture.
