The Two Wilsons and The Two Cultures (1/6)
A Tale of Two Wilsons…and the Limits of Synthesis
In a series of six blogs, I describe the impressive achievements of two master synthesizers: the biologist E. O. Wilson (1929-2021) and the literary critic Edmund Wilson (1895- 1972). In comparing their works and the trajectories of their careers, I distinguish between routine syntheses of excellence and syntheses that are far more ambitious, even grandiose. In the concluding blogs, I consider the merits and risks of an education that focuses explicitly on the training of synthesizing skills.
In 1959, C. P. Snow, a British scientist, novelist, and public intellectual, published a book that was soon to become well known and highly controversial. In “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution,” Snow argued that among the intelligentsia in the UK, as well as in other contemporary societies, a sharp division had emerged. On the one hand, there were the traditional humanists: dating back (in Britain) to the time of John Locke, David Hume, and Samuel Johnson, their ranks included philosophers, philologists, historians, art critics; these individuals (and their respective fields) had hegemonic status for centuries in British intellectual, scholarly, and cultural circles. Aligned on the other side were the scientists: physicists, chemists, biologists. Especially in view of theoretical breakthroughs and practical discoveries (key for victory in World War II), the scientists were gaining steadily in influence and power.
With standing in each set of disciplines (he was after all both a physicist and a creative writer), Snow lamented this state of affairs. Scientists and humanists should study one another’s ideas and works and learn from one another. Then, in the most memorable statement in his book (which had originally been a set of Rede lectures delivered on radio BBC), Snow threw down the gauntlet:
“A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice, I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold; it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: “Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?” In short, humanists criticized scientists when they themselves did not try to learn the basic elements and discoveries of the sciences.”
Spanning the two cultures, Snow implicitly held himself as a model for the kinds of minds that should become—and indeed should constitute—the standard in our time. And many of us do look to those as versatile as Snow to display and to help nurture a synthesizing mind.
Recently we mourned the death of E. O. Wilson, considered by many (including himself!) to be an inveterate synthesizer. (His major volume Sociobiology is subtitled “The New Synthesis”). Well versed in the biological sciences, over the course of a long life, Wilson’s research encompassed the modeling of evolutionary processes as well as documenting thousands of insect species on the planet. In addition, he also engaged in what he termed consilience: an explicit effort to span the arts, sciences, and humanities. Not only did E. O. Wilson believe that these realms of knowledge could be connected; he also thought that he could provide the links, the glue—via his version of ‘consilience’.
Though I did not agree with all of his claims, I was an admirer and, to a modest extent, a colleague and friend of E.O. Wilson’s. Certainly, I would have wanted any student to be exposed to his ideas and the often elegant and sometime witty ways in which he presented them.
Yet, upon learning of his death, I made an association that I had never consciously made before—to another E. Wilson—in his case Edmund Wilson (called by his friends “Bunny”, even as E.O. Wilson’s friends called him “Ed”.) Dating back over sixty years, to my high school and college years, Edmund Wilson was one of the two writers whom I most admired (and, at least, unconsciously, sought to emulate). American historian Richard Hofstadter—incidentally (or perhaps not so incidentally) also an admirer of Edmund Wilson—was the other role model.
I am not certain of the reasons that I so admired Edmund Wilson—but clearly it included his breadth of interests, his wide and deep knowledge of so many topics, his seemingly effortless ability to link persons, ideas, periods, fields, and his elegant yet accessible writings—which I first encountered in The New Yorker, and then in a series of books, on subjects ranging from the history of the idea of socialism to the distinctive features of literary breakthroughs in the early decades of the 20th century. No reason whatsoever to assume that Edmund Wilson had any animus against science—but I cannot recall any writings that dealt with contemporary science in more than a cursory way; and his friends were overwhelmingly writers, artists, literary scholars. If he had ever heard of E. O. Wilson, I suspect that he would have admired his namesake’s work with ants but shaken his head about Wilson’s attempt to integrate scientific and humanistic capacities and works.
Two giants, two masterful synthesizers. If we look more closely at their works and at their lives, what can we learn?
In a series of blogs, I review, briefly, the lives and works of these two master synthesizers (here after Ed (for E. O. Wilson) and “Edmund” (for all except his close associates, who continued to call him “Bunny”); I will also describe their respective synthesizing efforts. I will then focus on an enigma—how broad are their respective remits for synthesizing, and what, if any, are the limits? On my analysis, Ed Wilson believes that he is able to bring together various areas of knowledge, in a way that C P Snow might well have endorsed. Edmund has no objection (in principle) to this goal, but it is not of significance for him.
With regret, I conclude that, however admirable, Ed’s efforts at the broadest synthesis are not convincing—and indeed, I am not certain that they help to bring the two cultures together. From this conclusion I draw a few implications, for what one teaches, how one teaches, and what a well-rounded higher education might be like.
References
Snow, C. P. (1959) The two cultures and the scientific revolution. London: Cambridge University Press.
Wilson, E. O. (1975) Sociobiology: The New Synthesis Cambridge: Harvard University Press.