In his landmark lecture “The Two Cultures,” British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow argues that “the intellectual life of the whole of western society” is split into two cultures – the sciences and the humanities. According to Snow, this division has had an enormously detrimental impact on the development of society. Using Snow’s lecture as a frame of reference, we will analyze a variety of texts from the nineteenth century—some literary and some scientific—when this division was perhaps not so clear. We will discuss what it meant in nineteenth-century America and Great Britain to be “scientific” and “humanistic,” as well as spaces in which the two overlapped.
This theme will serve as an entry point for students to develop their analytic thinking and writing skills. Good arguments stem from good questions. Academic essays allow writers to write their way toward answers, toward figuring out what they think. In this writing-intensive course, students focus on the creation of analytic and well-supported arguments that address questions which matter in academic contexts. Working closely with their peers and the instructor, students develop their essays through workshops and extensive revision and editing.
As students in this course may pursue majors in the sciences, social sciences, or humanities, we will examine the relationship between the sciences and the humanities as we strive to become strong writers regardless of academic discipline.