Luddites revisited 2

[Joseph Tracy]

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 indue 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 increasingly being split into two polar groups . ..Two polar groups : at one pole we 

have the literary intellectuals, 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 particular literary intellectuals, are natural Luddites .

That is specially true of this country, where the industrial revolution happened to us earlier than elsewhere, during a

 long spell of absentmindedness. Perhaps that helps explain our present degree of crystallisation. But, with a little 

qualification, it is also true, and surprisingly true, of the United States . 3

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