The ‘two cultures’ in Australia

ABSTRACT

This article considers Australian receptions of C. P. Snow’s The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959), and of the controversy over the literary critic F. R. Leavis’s combative 1962 response to it. Taking a lead from conceptual insights in global histories of science and the history of knowledge, the paper considers the ways knowledge claims iterate differently in different geographic and cultural contexts. Elements of the Snow–Leavis dispute resonated among Australian scientists, cultural critics, journalists and poets, while others did not. Snow’s diagnosis of a disciplinary antagonism between the humanities and the sciences was central to Australian receptions of the controversy, but wider political issues, emphasised in much of the more sophisticated historiography of the ‘two cultures’ as a British-American controversy, were largely ignored. This reception reflected the post-war expansion of Australian higher education, and the shifting relations within it between the humanities and the sciences.

KEYWORDS:

• Two cultures
• C. P. Snow
• humanities
• science
• higher education

Acknowledgements

This article arises from the Institutions of the Humanities project at the University of Technology Sydney, funded by the Australian Research Council (DP170103252). Thanks are offered to Lesley Johnson and two anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback on earlier versions, and to the trustees of the Aileen Palmer estate and the editors of Overland for permission to reproduce Palmer’s poem.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures, with an Introduction by Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 53–6. This edition includes Snow’s 1959 lecture originally published as The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, and the 1963 retrospect in The Two Cultures: And a Second Look. All citations of both are to this edition, except where reference is made to the first editions of each. Similar comments also appear in C. P. Snow, ‘The “Two-Cultures” Controversy: Afterthoughts’, Encounter (February 1960): 64–5.

² James A. Secord, ‘Knowledge in Transit’, Isis 95, no. 4 (2004): 654–72; David N. Livingstone, ‘Science, Site and Speech: Scientific Knowledge and the Spaces of Rhetoric’, History of the Human Sciences 20, no. 2 (2007): 71–98; Johan Östling, Erling Sandmo, David Larsson Heidenblad, Anna Nilsson Hammar and Kari Nordberg, eds., Circulation of Knowledge: Explorations in the History of Knowledge (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2018).

³ Livingstone, ‘Science, Site and Speech’, 75.

⁴ Lionel Trilling, ‘Science, Literature & Culture: A Comment on the Leavis–Snow Controversy’, Commentary (June 1962): 462.

⁵ Guy Ortolano, The Two Cultures Controversy: Science, Literature and Cultural Politics in Postwar Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 1.

⁶ Guy Ortolano, ‘The Literature and the Science of “Two Cultures” Historiography’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 39 (2008): 144.

⁷ Guy Ortolano, ‘F. R. Leavis, Science, and the Abiding Crisis of Modern Civilization’, History of Science 43 (2005): 161–85; Ortolano, Two Cultures Controversy; Guy Ortolano, ‘Breaking Ranks: C. P. Snow and the Crisis of Mid-Century Liberalism, 1930–1980’, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 41, no. 2–3 (2016): 118–32; David Edgerton, ‘C. P. Snow as Anti-Historian of British Science: Revisiting the Technocratic Moment, 1959–1964’, History of Science 43 (2005): 187–208; Collini, ‘Introduction’, in Snow, Two Cultures, vii–lxxi; David Cannadine, ‘C. P. Snow: “The Two Cultures” and the “Corridors of Power” Revisited’, in Yet More Adventures with Britannia: Personalities, Politics and Culture in Britain, ed. William Roger Louis (London: I. B. Taurus, 2005), 101–18; David A. Hollinger, ‘Science as a Weapon in Kulturkämpfe in the United States during and after World War II’, Isis 86, no. 3 (1995): 440–54; Ian MacKillop, F. R. Leavis: A Life in Criticism (London: Allen Lane, 1995), 311–25. For an overview, see Ortolano, ‘The Literature and the Science’.

⁸ Respectively, Ortolano, ‘Breaking Ranks’; Edgerton, ‘C. P. Snow’; MacKillop, F. R. Leavis, 311–25; Ortolano, ‘F. R. Leavis’.

⁹ Emma Eldelin, ‘The Cultural Transfer of a Concept: C. P. Snow’s “Two Cultures” and the Swedish Debate’, in Inter: A European Cultural Studies Conference in Sweden, 11–13 June 2007, ed. Johan Fornäs and Martin Fredriksson (Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press: 2007), 185–203.

¹⁰ Cf. the controversy’s British higher education context in Guy Ortolano, ‘Two Cultures, One University: The Institutional Origins of the “Two Cultures” Controversy’, Albion 34, no. 4 (2002): 606–24.

¹¹ Philipp Sarasin, ‘Was ist Wissensgeschichte?’, Internationales Archiv für Sozialgeschichte der deutschen Literatur 36, no. 1 (2011): 167–9; Östling et al., Circulation of Knowledge, 18.

¹² C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1959).

¹³ C. P. Snow, ‘The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution’, Encounter (June and July 1959): 17–24 (June), 22–7 (July); Walter Allen et al., ‘“The Two Cultures”: A Discussion of C. P. Snow’s Views’, Encounter (August 1959): 67–73; Michael Polanyi, ‘“The Two Cultures”’, Encounter (September 1959): 61–4; Julian Symons, ‘“Two Cultures”, One Missing’, Encounter (September 1959): 83–4; Snow, ‘“Two-Cultures” Controversy’.

¹⁴ This vast literature is catalogued and summarised in Paul W. Boytinck, C. P. Snow: A Reference Guide (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980), 99–183. Of the Australian responses to the ‘two cultures’ identified below, only that by Vincent Buckley is included in Boytinck’s guide. Essays on Snow’s novels by Ian Turner and Derek Stanford, both cited below, are also listed. The remaining Australian sources are absent.

¹⁵ Snow, Two Cultures, 10–11.

¹⁶ Ibid., 25–6, 44, 50.

¹⁷ F. R. Leavis, ‘The Significance of C. P. Snow’, Spectator, March 9, 1962, 297–303.

¹⁸ William Gerhardi et al., ‘Sir Charles Snow, Dr F. R. Leavis, and the Two Cultures’, Spectator, March 16, 1962, 329–33; J. D. Bernal et al., ‘The Two Cultures’, Spectator, March 23, 1962, 365–67; Lord Boothby et al., ‘The Two Cultures’, Spectator, March 30, 1962, 395–6; S. W. Roskill et al., ‘The Two Cultures’, Spectator, April 6, 1962, 442.

¹⁹ F. R. Leavis, Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow; with an Essay on Sir Charles Snow’s Rede Lecture by Michael Yudkin (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962); F. R. Leavis, Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow (New York: Pantheon Books, 1963).

²⁰ Trilling, ‘Science, Literature & Culture’, 466. Cf. responses in Martin Green, ‘Lionel Trilling and the Two Cultures’, Essays in Criticism 13, no. 4 (1963): 375–85; Snow, Two Cultures, 107.

²¹ C. P. Snow, ‘The Two Cultures: A Second Look,’ Times Literary Supplement, October 25, 1963, 839–44; C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures: And a Second Look (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963; New York: New American Library, 1963).

²² Clement Semmler, ‘The Cultures of Australia’, Australian Quarterly 32, no. 1 (1960): 83–92.

²³ R. S. Parker, ‘Technology and Administration: A Summing Up’, Australian Journal of Public Administration 22, no. 1 (1963): 99–104. See also A. J. A. Gardner, ‘Specialists and the Administrative Career’, Australian Journal of Public Administration 22, no. 1 (1963): 38.

²⁴ Sir Mark Oliphant, ‘The Dichotomy in Our Culture and Its Effects upon Education’, Australian Journal of Education 4, no. 3 (1960): 155–64. Oliphant had previously made similar arguments, in less developed form, in ‘Science and Mankind’, Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand 82, no. 4 (1955): 842, 849–50, and ‘Man and Knowledge’, Meanjin 15, no. 4 (1956): 327, 331.

²⁵ Sir Mark Oliphant, ‘Two Cultures or One?’, University of Melbourne Gazette 26, no. 4 (1970): 1–7. This lecture is interpreted as a critique of Snow in Stewart Cockburn and David Ellyard, Oliphant: The Life and Times of Sir Mark Oliphant (Adelaide: Axiom, 1981), 266–7, and in Stephen Foster and Margaret Varghese, The Making of the Australian National University, 1946–1996 (Canberra: ANU Press, 2009), 140–43.

²⁶ Oliphant, ‘Dichotomy in Our Culture’; Sir Mark Oliphant, ‘Science and Ethics – Today’, Overland 18 (1960): 25–35.

²⁷ Aileen Palmer, ‘The Two Cultures’, Overland 18 (1960): 35. Reproduced with the permission of the Estate of Aileen Palmer and the editors of Overland.

²⁸ Cockburn and Ellyard, Oliphant, 95–136, 176–7; Foster and Varghese, Making of the Australian National University, 93–6.

²⁹ D. B. Williams, ‘The Status of Social Science’, Australian Journal of Agricultural Economics 4, no. 1 (1960): 27–35.

³⁰ Vincent Buckley, ‘The Two Cultures’, Prospect 3, no. 3 (1960): 27–8.

³¹ Vincent Buckley, ‘C. P. Snow: How Many Cultures?’, Prospect 4, no. 1 (1961): 9–12; Michael Deakin, ‘C. P. Snow: Scientific “Culture”’, Prospect 4, no. 1 (1961): 12–13, 22.

³² Symons, ‘“Two Cultures”’; Trilling, ‘Science, Literature & Culture’, 469–70; ‘The Two Cultures’ (editorial), Spectator, March 30, 1962, 387–8. Snow responded to these points in ‘“Two-Cultures” Controversy’, 64–5, and Two Cultures, 61–5.

³³ John Douglas Pringle, ‘Literary Lions at War: Or, the Two Vultures?’, Bulletin (Sydney), March 31, 1962, 18–9.

³⁴ F. R. Leavis, ‘Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow’, Melbourne Critical Review 5 (1962): 90–101; Vincent Buckley, ‘C. P. Snow: How Many Cultures?’, Melbourne Critical Review 5 (1962): 102–7.

³⁵ Alexander Porteous, ‘House Journal of Critics’, Bulletin, September 1, 1962, 39–40. For other brief mentions of the controversy in The Bulletin, see James McAuley, ‘Tainted Meat’, Bulletin, May 19, 1962, 60; Peter Coleman, ‘Brief “Encounter”?’, Bulletin, March 21, 1964, 46.

³⁶ J. D. H. [John Dyson Heydon], ‘The Snow–Leavis Controversy’, Pauline 60 (1962): 21–3.

³⁷ Snow, Two Cultures, 10, 101.

³⁸ J. D. B. Miller, ‘Arts and Sciences’, Meanjin 23, no. 4 (1964): 424–7. This was a response to Snow’s A Second Look, and J. Bronowski, ‘The Abacus and the Rose: A Dialogue after Galileo’, Nation, January 4, 1964, 4–17.

³⁹ Joel Barnes, ‘Collegial Governance in Postwar Australian Universities’, History of Education Review 49, no. 2 (2020): 149–64.

⁴⁰ Snow, Two Cultures, 8–9, 69–71.

⁴¹ On the social sciences in Australia, see Stuart Macintyre, The Poor Relation: A History of the Social Sciences in Australia (Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2010).

⁴² Stephen Jay Gould, The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister’s Pox (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 90–1.

⁴³ Miller, ‘Arts and Sciences’, 424. See also Pringle, ‘Literary Lions’, 18. Cf. Snow, Two Cultures, 16–17, 68–9.

⁴⁴ Edgerton, ‘C. P. Snow’, argues that Snow’s ‘anti-historical’ reading of the power structures of the British state erased the significant role of science within it. This is a warning to distinguish carefully between empirical reality and interested fiction. Even so, what was imaginary in Snow’s account had a degree of plausibility in Britain that it lacked in Australia and, as Gould indicates, elsewhere.

⁴⁵ Bruce Smith, ‘Crime and the Classics: The Humanities and Government in the Nineteenth-Century Australian University’, History of Education Review 20, no. 2 (1991): 9–35.

⁴⁶ Bob Bessant, ‘Robert Gordon Menzies and Education in Australia’, Melbourne Studies in Education 19, no. 1 (1977): 75–101.

⁴⁷ Polanyi, ‘“Two Cultures”’; Plumb responded to Snow in Allen et al., ‘“Two Cultures”’, 68–70, and to Leavis in Boothby et al., ‘Two Cultures’, 396.

⁴⁸ C. P. Snow, Public Affairs (London: Macmillan, 1971), 11, 93, 207. See also Snow, Two Cultures, 53, 63–4, 77–89, 100.

⁴⁹ But see passing references in Peter Coleman, ‘The New Nepotism?’, Observer (Sydney), August 22, 1959, 521; Marie C. McNally, ‘The Leavis Ambit’, Nation (Sydney), January 25, 1964, 21–2.

⁵⁰ The Two Cultures was also mentioned in passing in Meanjin in Derek Stanford, ‘C. P. Snow: The Novelist as Fox’, Meanjin 19, no. 3 (1960): 238.

⁵¹ For other items on Snow in the same issue, see ‘Hands across the Freeze’ (editorial), ‘Swag’, and Ian Turner, ‘Above the Snow-Line: The Sociology of C. P. Snow’, Overland 18 (1960): 8, 10, 37–43.

⁵² George Seddon, ‘Overland and Southerly’, Westerly no. 2 (1961): 45–6; Julius Kovesi, ‘The Hoop-La Theory of Language’, Westerly no. 1 (1963): 76–7; Peter Lavan, review of Higher Education in Australia, ed. E. L. Wheelwright, Westerly nos. 3–4 (1965): 90–1; H. W. Wardman, ‘The Future of the Humanities’, Westerly no. 1 (1966): 52. See also Times Literary Supplement advertisement, Westerly no. 4 (1963): 24.

⁵³ For this context, see Hannah Forsyth, A History of the Modern Australian University (Sydney: NewSouth, 2014), 22–40; Graeme Davison and Kate Murphy, University Unlimited: The Monash Story (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2012), 1–3.

⁵⁴ Susan Davies, The Martin Committee and the Binary Policy of Higher Education in Australia (Melbourne: Ashwood House, 1989), 9–12.

⁵⁵ Keith A. H. Murray (chairman), Report of the Committee on Australian Universities (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 1957).

⁵⁶ L. H. Martin (chairman), Tertiary Education in Australia, 3 vols (Melbourne: Commonwealth of Australia, 1964–1965).

⁵⁷ Barnes, ‘Collegial Governance’, 152.

⁵⁸ R. M. Crawford, ‘Arts Degree in 20th Century’, September 7, 1964, Crawford papers, 1991.0113, 8/174, 3–5, University of Melbourne Archives (UMA). Cf. J. H. Plumb, ed., Crisis in the Humanities (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1964).

⁵⁹ Bessant, ‘Robert Gordon Menzies’, 92–7; Gwilym Croucher and James Waghorne, Australian Universities: A History of Common Cause (Sydney: NewSouth, 2020), 101–12, 123–9.

⁶⁰ Committee on Australian Universities, ‘Figure 3. Percentages of Bachelor Degree Enrolments in Various Faculties in Australian Universities, 1939–55’ [1957], A10663, CAU/ALL UNIV/5, National Archives of Australia (NAA); Martin, Tertiary Education in Australia, vol. 1, 59. For comparable British figures, see Peter Mandler, ‘The Two Cultures Revisited: The Humanities in British Universities since 1945’, Twentieth Century British History 26, no. 3 (2015): 405, 411, 419–21.

⁶¹ Croucher and Waghorne, Australian Universities, 71–3.

⁶² Buckley, ‘Two Cultures’, 28.

⁶³ Fred Alexander, ‘Australians and Academic Apartheid in South Africa’, Australian Quarterly 29, no. 4 (1957): 50.

⁶⁴ ‘Scientists: What They Do, and What They Want’, Sydney Morning Herald, January 10, 1958, 2.

⁶⁵ C. B. O. Mohr, A. S. Buchanan and D. R. Stranks, ‘University on Science Exams’, Age (Melbourne), January 9, 1964, 2; ‘Keeping up Standards in Science Exams’ (editorial), Age, January 10, 1964, 2.

⁶⁶ A. G. Mitchell, A. P. Treweek and A. J. Dunston, ‘Humanities not a Cult’, Sydney Morning Herald, January 13, 1958, 2; Faculty of Arts minutes, April 15, 1958, fragment headed ‘General Faculty of Arts Policy Structure’, 3, Registrar’s Correspondence Series, 1999.0014, UM312, 1959/113, UMA; R. M. Crawford, ‘The Future Development of the Humanities and the Social Sciences in the Australian Universities’, February 1964, Crawford papers, 1991.0113, 8/174, i–ii, UMA.

⁶⁷ ‘Differing Opinions about the New University’, Sydney Morning Herald, May 2, 1949, 2; Keith Sutton in Victoria, Parliamentary Debates, vol. 254, 3935 (Legislative Assembly, April 1, 1958); A. G. Mitchell and J. A. Passmore, ‘The Nature of the Humanities’, in The Humanities in Australia, ed. A. Grenfell Price (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1959), 10–11; ‘Comment: More than a Question of Degree’, Prospect 2, no. 2 (1959): 8–9. Coleman, ‘New Nepotism?’, 521, rejected these beliefs as ‘absurd’.

⁶⁸ Australian Broadcasting Commission, ‘That Science Has Done More Harm Than Good?’, The Nation’s Forum of the Air 5, no. 1 (5 January 1949): 10–11; J. A. Passmore, ‘Scientific Thinking, the Humanities and Education’, n.d., Passmore papers, MS 7613/6/6, National Library of Australia.

⁶⁹ Martin, Tertiary Education in Australia, vol. 3, 1.

⁷⁰ ‘Teaching and Research in the Humanities’, amended typescript draft [1964–1965], AUC records, A3289, 19/4/19, Part 2, 1, NAA.

⁷¹ Crawford, ‘Future Development’; Crawford, ‘Arts Degree’; various correspondence between Crawford and Martin, 1963–1964, AUC records, A3289, 19/4/19, Part 1, NAA.

⁷² Richard Heywood, ‘The College and the Community’, Wyvern 22 (1944): 26–8; C. G. Lambie, ‘Culture and the Medical Profession’, Sydney University Medical Journal (1954): 19–28; P. H. Partridge, ‘The Growth of Universities’, Australian Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1959): 27–8; Harry Messel, ‘Scientific and Technological Manpower in Australia’, Newman 39 (1957): 15–18; Harry Messel, ‘Close-Up on a Scientific Mind’, Hermes (1959): 6–13.

⁷³ Correspondence and papers collected by A. L. Moore, Secretary of the Committee on Australian Universities, 1957, A10663, NAA; Papers concerning the Committee on the Future of Tertiary Education (Martin Committee), part 2, 1961–1965, NRS 3879, 8/2274.1, New South Wales State Archives (NSWSA).

⁷⁴ Marcus Oliphant, ‘The Nature and Functions of a University’, in Universities of New South Wales: Proceedings of a Convention on the Present Pattern and Future Trends (Hamilton: Workers’ Educational Association of New South Wales, 1954), 14–15.

⁷⁵ Partridge, ‘Growth of Universities’, 35, 37. See also Partridge quoted in Davies, Martin Committee, 69.

⁷⁶ Semmler, ‘Cultures of Australia’, 85.

⁷⁷ Crawford, ‘Future Development’, 10.

⁷⁸ Murray, Report, 8–9. See also Bessant, ‘Robert Gordon Menzies’, 93.

⁷⁹ Martin, Tertiary Education in Australia, vol. 1, 3–4.

⁸⁰ R. M. Hartwell, ‘The New South Wales University of Technology’, report attached to New South Wales University of Technology Council minutes, March 12, 1951, S24/003, UNSW Archives.

⁸¹ A. G. Mitchell in Universities of New South Wales, 51.

⁸² J. B. Thornton, ‘A Science Course for Arts Students’, Vestes 4, no. 4 (1961): 44–9.

⁸³ R. W. Home, ‘Guest Editorial: History of Science in Australia’, Isis 73, no. 3 (1982): 336–42. See also A. D. Trendall, ‘Introduction’, in Price, Humanities in Australia, xvii–xviii.

⁸⁴ Davison and Murphy, University Unlimited, 63–4.

⁸⁵ Sir Eric Ashby, Technology and the Academics, rev. ed. (London: Macmillan, 1963), 79; Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Melbourne, ‘History’, https://electrical.eng.unimelb.edu.au/about/history (accessed October 7, 2021).

⁸⁶ On the failure rate and problems of transition, see Murray, Report, 35–7.

⁸⁷ Sir Leslie Martin (chairman), Report of the Australian Universities Commission on Australian Universities, 1958–1963 (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 1960), 74; Catholic Schools Association of Hobart submission to the Murray Committee [1957], A10663, CAU/GEN/33, NAA; summaries of submissions by B. Wells, the Mathematical Association of Victoria, Sir John Medley, and Malcolm Fraser to the Martin Committee, all n.d., CF/155/S, CF/249/S, CF/396/S, and CF/443/S, NRS 3879, 8/2274.1, NSWSA. Medley’s submission partially reprised a proposal he had made in 1943 as Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University for a ‘Junior division’ of the university, for similar purposes: John Poynter and Caroline Rasmussen, A Place Apart: The University of Melbourne: Decades of Challenge (Carlton South: Melbourne University Press, 1996), 73–6. See also K. G. Armstrong, ‘Senior Colleges: A New Scheme for Tertiary Education’, Prospect 5, no. 2 (1962): 5–9.

⁸⁸ Crawford, ‘Future Development’, x, 48–9; Ashby, Technology and the Academics, 80–1; Ralph W. V. Elliot, ‘English Courses at Bedford Park: A Comparative Approach’, Australian University 4, no. 1 (1966): 17–18.

⁸⁹ [R. J. South], ‘Editorial’, Wyvern 21 (1943): 5–7; Davies, Martin Committee, 68–9.

⁹⁰ C. G. Lambie, ‘A Liberal Education and the Qualifications for Entrance to the University’, Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy 11, no. 3 (1933): 171–92; Lambie, ‘Culture and the Medical Profession’, 26; C. G. Lambie, Undergraduate Medical Education, pamphlet (Sydney: [c.1955?]), 1–2, [Lambie], ‘Requirements for Matriculation’, n.d., and Lambie to Stephen Henry Roberts, March 16, 1955, with attached syllabus, all in Lambie papers, 802/1/3, University of Sydney Archives.

⁹¹ Sir Eric Ashby, ‘Technological Humanism’, Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 4, no. 45 (1958): 478–84; Ashby, Technology and the Academics, 75–88. For an Australian appraisal, see Mitchell and Passmore, ‘Nature of the Humanities’, 12–13. Similarly, see W. J. Ginnane, ‘The Murray Report: What Has Been Solved?’, Prospect 1 (1958): 13–14.

Additional information

Funding

This work forms part of the Institutions of the Humanities project at the University of Technology Sydney, supported by the Australian Research Council [DP170103252].

Notes on contributors

Joel Barnes

Joel Barnes is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, Australia. Previously he was Research Associate on the Institutions of the Humanities project at the Australian Centre for Public History, University of Technology Sydney, from which this paper arises.