The Two Cultures (1959) [pdf]

It's right there in Yeats, which the author also references:

> "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold /"

Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot image (14 February 1990) is rather deceptive when it comes to understanding the story of life on earth in the context of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics, but here it is:

https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot

Let's say we took that planet and dropped it out to the orbit of Pluto, which we also now have some great imagery of. Pluto is indeed chemically active, it turns out, in the subzero real of nitrogen ices and so on. Hence a better picture would be a transit of Earth across the Sun from say, the perspective of Mars:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transit_of_Earth_from_Mars

> "No one has ever seen a transit of Earth from Mars, but the next transit will take place on November 10, 2084. The last such transit took place on May 11, 1984."

The only reason life developed on the 'pale blue dot' was that it was at a fairly optimal distance from our local star, which is pouring energy out into space at a ridiculous level relative to the amount captured by this tiny planet. That huge flood of energy is what allows life to swim upstream against the tide of entropy, aka the Second Law, by using that energy to create complex structures of only fleeting permanence, but eventually humans learned to use excess plant production to feed the literary geniuses who created the great works of imagination. Genetic information transfer was the imperfect mechanism (note all species go extinct over time) behind this story.

In literary-vs-science 'two-culture' terms, a return to sun-worship is a nice way of closing the gap. The Egyptians seem to have adopted the concept for ~150 human generations, maybe they were smarter than we are?

Most recently, I was watching an interview with Iain McGilchrist. His thesis in "The Master and His Emissary" is that our society has veered too far towards the intellectual. According to his thesis, scientific concerns are dominating our decision making processes. The ills in society are caused by the exclusion of "right brain" or intuitive thinking in modern governance and in the general culture of modern society.

I don't really have an opinion on who is right or wrong. I can't really say if scientists lack sufficient knowledge about humanities subjects or visa versa. But it does feel like each side is pointing the finger at the other side.

It doesn't even matter what side you support, e.g. if you think McGilchrist is a crank or an apologist for a particular kind of reactionary element that is taking over populist rhetoric. There can be no movement towards a middle-ground when both sides insist that they are the ones being misunderstood and oppressed.

1. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/spider-man-pointing-at-spider...

I don't think it's objectively harder - at the very least, [citation needed]. It might be subjectively harder for you. But one is a random factoid, the other one is a story. Humans are, in general, exceedingly good at stories. Facts, we tend to focus on the areas we know. You and I might be good at physics facts, or software facts. Somebody else might be good at agriculture facts, or knitting facts, or what-have-you.

But stories are universal. They connect. It's how most of humanity learns and shares knowledge. (See e.g. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-02036-8)

There's a pretty good likelihood that stories are ultimately easier to remember for a larger number of people than facts.

>>> Then, as citizens, they make obvious mistakes about the relative costs and effects of things they advocate for

I'll note that you're possibly wrong about relative costs of learning, too. What matters isn't only what you learn (though teaching stats would sure be a good thing), but also a willingness to approach issues with a bit of humility, and not claiming something as absolute fact until it provably is.

Snow had a PhD in chemistry, but dropped out of science early on to write popular novels and to become a very successful bureaucrat. He had originally intended to call this lecture "The Rich and the Poor", because he was arguing about who was best qualified to govern society and solve the problems of the Third World.

The gist of the speech is that the traditional elites of society are not competent to govern because all they know about is the classics. He thinks only a scientific background can create a wise leader. If only a large enough percentage of the population would get a technical education, then society would become rational.

His position was extremely naive and never seriously accepted as he put it. The subsequent use of the term "two cultures" to mean a disjunction of the humanistic and scientific approaches to knowledge is not quite what he meant. He was railing against traditionalism and venting a deep animosity toward England's literary society.

A quote from William James:

Of all the insufficient authorities as to the total nature of reality, give me the "scientists" . . . Their interests are most incomplete and their professional conceit and bigotry immense. I know of no narrower sect or club, in spite of their excellent authority in the line of fact they have explored, and their splendid achievements there.