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The 'Two Cultures' in Australia

Authors :
Joel Barnes
Source :
History of Education. 2023 52(6):849-867.
Publication Year :
2023

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.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
0046-760X and 1464-5130
Volume :
52
Issue :
6
Database :
ERIC
Journal :
History of Education
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
EJ1404855
Document Type :
Journal Articles<br />Reports - Descriptive
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1080/0046760X.2022.2097742