OK 2b Luddite(3)

[Joseph Tracy]

What follows are some brief excerpted passages from the Snow 

lecture, which is the source document of the Pynchon essay Is it 

O.K. to be a Luddite?  tthat  we are scheduled to look into. The 

TP essay can be found here( 

www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_luddite.html  )

I am nervous about the copyright problems of OCRing the whole Snow 

lecture and putting it online, but may put up more to further the 

discussion. One thing you wouldn’t get without reading the whole 

thing is Snow’s blithe dismissal of any possibility that there was 

serious social resistance to industrialization. According to him 

tradesmen, craftspeople and farmers couldn’t wait to get off those 

boring, degrading farms and out of those gloomy cottages into a 

pleasant stimulating factory. This omission, joined with the fact 

that he never defines the term Luddite becomes the launching 

ground of TP’s essay. After dismissing the 2 cultures premise as 

no longer sustainable, Pynchon sets out to also question the 

pejorative and snootily dismissive use of the term Luddite. He 

begins to fill out the track of a far more complex and nuanced 

history particularly of the literary aspect of the conflict 

between true believers in science and technology and those who 

have serious questions.! 

I. THE REDE LECTURE, 1959, C.P. Snow

I

THE TWO CULTURES

IT is about three years since I made a sketch in print

of a problem which had been on my mind for some

time.' It was a problem I could not avoid just

because of the circumstances of my life. The only

credentials I had to ruminate on the subject at all came

through those circumstances, through nothing more

than a set of chances. Anyone with similar experience

would have seen much the same things and I think

made very much the same comments about them. It

just happened to be an unusual experience. By training

I was a scientist : by vocation I was a writer . That was

all. It was a piece of luck, if you like, that arose through

coming from a poor home .

But my personal history isn't the point now . All

that I need say is that I came to Cambridge and did a

bit of research here at a time of major scientific activity.

I was privileged to have a ringside view of one of the

most wonderful creative periods in all physics .... 

... So for thirty years I have had to be in touch with

scientists not only out of curiosity, but as part of a

working existence. During the same thirty years I was

trying to shape the books I wanted to write, which in

due course took me among writers. 

...two cultures'. For constantly I felt I was moving

among two groups-comparable in intelligence, identical 

in race, not grossly different in social origin,

earning about the same incomes, who had almost

ceased to communicate at all, who in intellectual,

moral and psychological climate had so little in

common that instead of going from Burlington

House or South Kensington to Chelsea, one might

have crossed an ocean.


...No, I intend something serious . I believe the intel-

lectual life of the whole of western society is increas-

ingly being split into two polar groups . 


...Two polar groups : at one pole we have the literary intel-

lectuals, who incidentally while no one. was looking

took to referring to themselves as `intellectuals' as

though there were no others .

INTELLECTUALS AS NATURAL LUDDITES

The reasons for the existence of the two cultures are

many, deep, and complex, some rooted in social

histories, some in personal histories, and some in the

inner dynamic of the different kinds of mental activity

themselves. But I want to isolate one which is not so

much a reason as a correlative, something which winds

in and out of any of these discussions . It can be said

simply, and it is this . If we forget the scientific culture,

then the rest of western intellectuals have never tried,

wanted, or been able to understand the industrial

revolution, much less accept it. Intellectuals, in parti-

cular literary intellectuals, are natural Luddites .

That is specially true of this country, where the

industrial revolution happened to us earlier than else-

where, during a long spell of absentmindedness. Per-

haps that helps explain our present degree of crystal-

lisation. But, with a little qualification, it is also true,

and surprisingly true, of the United States . 3


 
 
Joseph Tra


Joseph Tracy
brook7 at earthlink.net
Why Wait? Move to EarthLink.