New 3QD-column:
“For many years now a division has been established in our universities between the sciences and the humanities. This division is probably more absolute now than it has ever been before.” Thus complains, in 1946, the British Marxist scientist John Desmond Bernal.
It is a worry that seems to anticipate C.P. Snow’s later famous cri de coeur about the ‘two cultures’. Indeed, the two scientists knew and respected each other; Snow called Bernal “quite obviously and with no fuss about it, a great man”. More interesting than the question of priority, however, is the question why Bernal made this observation when he did, and with this sense of urgency.
More here.