[rec] The Two Cultures -- C. P. Snow
Apr. 6th, 2013 08:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaberettThis is a forty-page lecture, delivered in 1959 by an apparently cis straight white man, and blow me down if Snow isn't better at social justice than a significant proportion of the Internet (and I include the feminist blogsophere) in 2013.
Seriously. Tears. Tears everywhere, at several points. On effecting change:
And this is indeed what I do, in my small ways. He does use the masculine throughout - but he states explicitly that this is because, in 1959, the UK as a whole was terrible at supporting girls and women in choosing to study sciences.
If only more of the UK establishment had listened to - and acted on - this in the last fifty years.
He isn't perfect; and the academic landscape has changed so much since he wrote this that it's laughable, in places. For example: the claim that scientists are by-and-large more liberal, more left-leaning, than their counterparts in the arts.
Nonetheless. Thank you, dead white guy; and now I'm going to go and read something by someone who is none of the above.
Seriously. Tears. Tears everywhere, at several points. On effecting change:
I can't see the political techniques through which the good human capabilities of the West can get into action. The best one can do, and it is a poor best, is to nag away.
And this is indeed what I do, in my small ways. He does use the masculine throughout - but he states explicitly that this is because, in 1959, the UK as a whole was terrible at supporting girls and women in choosing to study sciences.
These men, whom we don't yet possess, need to be trained not only in scientific but in human terms. They could not do their job if they did not shrug off trace of paternalism. Plenty of Europeans, from St Francis Xavier to Schweitzer, have devoted their lives to Asians and Africans, nobly but paternally. These are not the Europeans whom Asians and Africans are going to welcome now. They want men who will muck in as colleagues, who will pas on what they know, do an honest technical job, and get out.
If only more of the UK establishment had listened to - and acted on - this in the last fifty years.
He isn't perfect; and the academic landscape has changed so much since he wrote this that it's laughable, in places. For example: the claim that scientists are by-and-large more liberal, more left-leaning, than their counterparts in the arts.
Nonetheless. Thank you, dead white guy; and now I'm going to go and read something by someone who is none of the above.