The two cultures were coined by C.P. Snow as a signifier of his perspective between the separations of art and science. In 2009, New York Times wrote an article on C.P Snow stating, “Snow’s famous lament was that “the intellectual life of the whole of Western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups,” consisting of scientists on the one hand and literary scholars on the other. Snow largely blamed literary types for this “gulf of mutual incomprehension.” Snow believes that scientists do in fact have the answers to the entire future. People ignored science as a vocation, which prevents us from solving the world’s “main issue,” the wealth gap caused by industrialization, which threatens global stability.” I was born and raised in a small town and in 2014, I moved to the heart of entertainment, Los Angeles, California. Now, this may seem like an odd way to relate two cultures, but from my perspective, from a small town to an extremely overwhelming large city, I see two different worlds. I’m surrounded by different cultures everywhere I go, school, home, cities, church, even walking on the street. 
NY Times states, “Snow’s expression of this optimism is dated, yet his thoughts about progress are more relevant today than his cultural typologies.” This author in particular wants to see action done with C.P Snow’s work of the Two Cultures rather than just citing and referencing it.
 
UCLA’s campus is the perfect example to explain this concept of “two cultures. Initially, our campus is split into two, north campus and south campus. While it is a very well known fact, there is much distinction that goes with each side.North campus are humanity majors like sociology, history, etc and South campus consists of science majors in which creates classifications and distinctions that I mentioned earlier. One thing that I’ve noticed is the different feel that you get from your surroundings and environment. I can walk to South campus and feel like it’s another world, while science majors can feel the same when they walk over to North campus.
 
C.P. Snow remarks in his 1959 lecture, “Literature changes more slowly than science”. I guess I never really thought about the collision of art and science until this week started. However, Kevin Kelly says “For this current generation of Nintendo kids, their technology is their culture. When they reached the point (as every generation of youth does) of creating the current fads, the next funny thing happened: Nerds became cool.” This really made me think about how reared our generation is and how dependent and reliant we are on technology. I constantly hear my grandparents talk about how they remember when they were children how they didn’t even have TV’s and when they wanted to have fun they would play outside. Technology was basically non-existent during their time or at least it wasn’t as popular.
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http://www.stoa.org.uk/topics/two-cultures/index.html
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Works Cited:
"Devices for Inquiry." Devices for Inquiry. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2016.
<http://devices4inquiry.aisencc.com/category/uncategorized/page/4/>.
Dizikes, Peter. "Our Two Cultures." The New York Times. The New York Times, 21 Mar. 2009
Web. 03 Apr. 2016.
"Faversham Stoa." -- The Two Cultures Debate. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2016.
"LifeAbsorbed." LifeAbsorbed. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Apr. 2016.
<http://lifeabsorbed.com/tag/sculpture-garden/>.
N.p., n.d. Web. <http://taniaritchie.com/2013/08/03/c-p-snows-two-cultures>.
Snow, C. P. "The Rede Lecture (1959)." The Two Cultures and The Scientific Revolution
(1959): 1-52. Web.
"The Lovely South Campus." UCLA Life Blog. N.p., 16 Feb. 2012. Web. 03 Apr. 2016.
<http://blog.admissions.ucla.edu/2012/02/16/the-lovely-south-campus/>.
Vesna, Victoria. "Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between." Leonardo 34.2 (2001): 121-25.
Web.
Your comments to the NY Times article really got me thinking. I also lament the many instances where people cite and reference a thought and don't develop on it. They are comfortable with the status quo and offer just words not actions. Acknowledging the two cultures is a step but building the "bridge" itself I believe is what is more important. When you say technology was non existent and or not popular during your grandparents time, what do you mean by that? Do you think our generation's hands on approach to technology and our reliance on certain products is an observation that brought you to that conclusion?
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