The two cultures, or the end of the world as we know it

Abstract

This essay examines the 'war' of science and culture in the twentieth century – its terms in part fixed by C. P. Snow's influential polemic on 'The two cultures' in the 1950s – which continued into the 1990s with a series of intellectual skirmishes sometimes referred to as the 'science wars'. Military metaphors can quickly become apocalyptic on both sides. Rather than contributing to this overheated rhetoric, I suggest instead that we need to acknowledge the interdependencies of scientific and cultural discourse. To that end, a reading of science fiction and fictions in science is sketched out using models of networks and hybrid assemblages developed by French science theorist Bruno Latour.