Conference to assess the two cultures – 50 years on

Entitled “Changing Humanities / The Humanities Changing”, the conference – much of which is open to the public – will bring together leading scholars from a wide range of universities and disciplines to examine the humanities’ standing, their achievements, and their relationship with other subjects.

The event is being convened by the University’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (CRASSH). It marks both the 800th anniversary of the University of Cambridge, and the 50th anniversary of CP Snow’s famous “Two Cultures” lecture, in which the scientist and novelist (pictured) suggested that society was being hindered by a breakdown of communication between the sciences and the humanities.

Fifty years after he gave the lecture in Cambridge, academics will ask if the position has changed, or whether the gulf between the humanities and sciences still applies.

Alongside that debate, a variety of other discussions and presentations will look at the nature of the humanities, both now and in the past, and ask why, at a time when research funding is limited, these subjects deserve to be investigated at all?

A major theme during the conference will be the interdependence of the humanities and sciences, explaining how even the purest and most theoretical scientific disciplines rely on essential ideas, imaginative leaps and creative thinking which emanate from scholarship in the humanities.

At its climax, a round table event will bring together the President of the British Academy, Onora O’Neill, the President of the Royal Society, Martin Rees, and the Sociologist Richard Sennett, to examine the state of the two cultures half a century after Snow put forward his controversial thesis.

Participants will attempt to describe the reasons for the artificial divide between the arts and sciences at the start of the 21st century, and also ask whether a new two-culture divide is now opening up. Professor Sennett argues that those who fund social research are increasingly demanding that it produces applicable results. This, he argues, is leading to a gulf between applied and basic research, or utility on the one hand, and creative academic freedom on the other.

Other panels over the three days will cover Victorian and contemporary debates on maths and classics, the impact of new technologies on the development of the humanities, the emergence or transformation of disciplines such as English and the study of Government, the Cambridge School of intellectual history, and the implications that research in the humanities has for policy.

The conference is co-sponsored by the Mellon Foundation and the Cambridge University 800 Fund. It is taking place as part of a Mellon-funded Consortium of Centres of Disciplinary Innovation at CRASSH.

More information about the conference, including a complete programme and details of some key events, can be found using the links to the right of this page.