Cross-posted at Nature Network.

Its attack on poverty and arrogance is what makes C. P. Snow’s ‘two cultures’ lecture relevant 50 years on, according to a Nature Editorial published today (Nature 459, 10; 2009). Three Essays in the same issue of the journal look back on the lecture and its effects. In Dissecting The Two Cultures (Nature 459, 32; 2009), Martin Kemp contends that the real enemy of understanding is not the ‘two cultures’ identified by Snow, but specialization in all disciplines. Georgina Ferry (Nature 459, 34; 2009) suggests that today’s division lies between optimists and pessimists rather than between scientific and literary intellectuals. And Nature’s Books and Arts Editor, Joanne Baker, introduces a passage from Extract from Science and Government by C. P. Snow (Nature 459, 36; 2009). This month’s Editorial in Nature Physics (5, 309; 2009) also discusses the impact of the ‘two cultures’ concept.

The boundaries between the arts and the sciences — and between the sciences themselves — that Snow identified have long since been removed. But other challenges remain. Snow would not have approved of the narrow-mindedness of some researchers who consider the significant costs of their work to be no more than their due from society, nor of their blind resentment when its value is questioned. What Snow urged in particular was an awareness of the problems of poor countries — and of putting scientists at the disposal of solving those problems, for reasons both moral and strategic. The disparities between rich and poor countries may have shrunk since Snow’s time, but are still unacceptably large. Snow’s overriding message — whether about awareness of artistic and scientific experience, or about the applied sciences, or about ‘remediable suffering’ — was that the best and the brightest should not be blinkered. That message still has resonance.

All three C. P. Snow articles in this issue of Nature and linked here are free to access online until Thursday 14 May (the Editorial is permanently free access), so let us know your views on the opinions expressed in them. As usual, contributions to the Nature Network online forum will be considered for publication in Nature as Correspondence contributions.