Luddites revisited 2

[Otto]

Die zwei Kulturen: Literarische und naturwissenschaftliche Intelligenz.
C.P.Snows These in der Diskussion. / hrsg. von Helmut Kreuzer. München: dtv,
1987. ISBN 3-423-04454-3
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._P._Snow

"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the
standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who
have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the
illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked
the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was
asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: 'Have you read
a work of Shakespeare's?'
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question -- such as, What
do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of
saying, 'Can you read?' -- not more than one in ten of the highly educated
would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice
of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the
western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic
ancestors would have had."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.P._Snow
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures_and_the_Scientific_Revolution