ABSTRACT
The constrained vision views human activities as constrained by a self-centered and largely unalterable human nature. The unconstrained vision views human nature as formed exclusively by culture and posits that it is perfectible. The two main divisions were the humanities and the sciences, inhabited by smart and soft-hearted romantic Platonists in the first case and by the really smart and hard-headed Aristotelians in the second. With so many fundamental differences between Platonists and Aristotelians, it is clear that the prospect of a happy peace between the two positions faces formidable ideological barriers. Secular knowledge was acceptable as long as it was supportive, or at least not contradictive, of church doctrine. There were no "wars" between C. P. Snow's two cultures in the middle of the 20th century, usually just indifference. The scientific and humanities communities were too far apart to declare war and shared no common ground on which they could engage one another.
