Old Email Archive

digest 1997-01-09 #001

11:28 PM 1/8/97 -0800

From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
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Date: 8 Jan 1997 11:56:21 -0800
From: phoebe@cs.cmu.edu
Subject: Re: So how was the SLS conference?
Hello lit-sci-ers,
At 11:04 AM 12/31/96 -0800, Gilbert J. Brown wrote:
>I have been a curious reader of the recent conversation presumably
alluding
>to a two
>cultures clas[h] at the last SLS meeting.
I defer to the previous, extremely well-written posts on how to resolve
two-cultures clashes.  I would, however, like to point out that the two
cultures clash can be overstated.  I was quite amused in one SLS
session
to hear the English professor on the panel deride attempts to 'turn
everything into politics' and then hear the physicist reply "but
all
knowledge is social, and therefore political!"  As a number of
people at
SLS and after have pointed out, neither academic 'culture' can be seen
in any sense to be homogeneous, and continuing to assume that they are
-
and that therefore a clash is more or less inevitable - seems to me
only
to crystallize divisions instead of opening grounds for dialogue
between
and among members of each community, as well as those who see
themselves
as members of both.
To put it a little more simply: we are not all either scientists or
humanists; and being either a scientist or a humanist does not
necessarily imply a particular agenda.  Understanding that these things
are more complicated, that the communities as well as their concerns
overlap, could be a step towards not just solving two-culture clashes
but towards preventing them in the first place.
Phoebe Sengers
Computer Science / Literary and Cultural Theory
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA USA
phoebe@cs.cmu.edu