EDITORIAL
C.P. Snow, a long time ago, wrote of "two cultures"--science and the humanities. Seemingly united as the focus of "learning", he claimed they in fact inhabited two almost separate universes and spoke two almost mutually unintelligible languages. Surely by now that ought not to be so. Indeed, many claim it is not the way of things today. But such a judgment is over hasty.

During the year 1992-93 there was an exchange between two Duke University faculty members, Professors Matt Cartmill, Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy and Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Department of English, which demonstrated that the two cultures still inhabit separate universes. Professor Cartmill published in the DUKE DIALOGUE a talk which he had given the previous year at a conference on "Science and Technology and Liberal Education". His talk was titled, "Knowing How and Knowing That: Why Science and Technology Matter in Liberal Education".

Cartmill began by describing what he believed to be the humanist's perspective on the natural sciences in the post-modern worldview perspective. He buttressed his analysis with an example from the French writer, Jean Baudrillard, who has been described as "France's leading philosopher of post modernism" wherein Baudrillard ends up wondering if DNA is not also a myth. Cartmill then noted the work of Professor Donna Haraway of the UC Santa Cruz, who also attacks the 'objectivity myth' which science seems to rest upon. Cartmill listed a long record of humanists who decry science or picture it in Frankensteinian terms. This then led him to suggest what he thinks is the appropriate place of science in liberal education.

He believes that we have focused too much on science as knowing how rather than knowing that. By knowing that he means technology and his interesting suggestion is that what liberal arts students ought to study in meeting their science requirements is technology. In particular he would like to see "a compulsory course, entitled something like, 'the machineries of the body,' which would give students a working knowledge of the elements of medicine and furnish them with a sort of operating manual for the human body."

Dr. Herrnstein Smith, in her reply in a later issue of the DUKE DIALOGUE, believes that the humanist/scientist dichotomy is obsolete but that Cartmill thinks it is still operative. She faults Cartmill's characterizations of the humanist views of science as 'irresponsible misrepresentations' and contends he is confused about what humanists believe. Smith challenges and implies that he has misused or misunderstood his two examples of Baudrillard and Haraway. Like so many other humanists she fastens on Thomas Kuhn's work as exemplary of the new understanding of what science really is and seems to believe that Cartmill has not understood that point. She charges Cartmill with continuing the enlightenment belief that knowing scientific truth will set people free. To Dr. Smith that belief is naive, if not dangerous, and she feels that his suggestion of medical technology as an appropriate entry into science will not free them from their misconceptions harbored from their pasts.

Cartmill's rejoinder to her reply basically defends his earlier assessments, quotes more carefully and clearly from his sources and in general attempts to refute the negatively critical assessments of Professor Smith's article. He, in fact, charges her with carelessness in debate. Interestingly, he also charges her with an unwillingness to recognize the disjunction between the ontological and epistemological halves of objectivism; that is, that she does not seem to believe there is a truth out there to know as well as not believing that we can know it, whereas he thinks that most scientists are convinced that there is a truth out there to know. He ends his comment with a humorous and ironic note that Profesor Smith has read his talk in a typical de- constructive way. His final comment: "I leave it to the reader to judge whether my objectivist or her anti-objectivist approach involves the greater arrogance."

Clearly the two cultures are alive and well, at least in certain departments at Duke University. What is relevant about all this to us as Christian faculty is that such a bifurcated world (or tri-furcated if the social sciences are seen as part of neither side) is not what God intended. His servants (you and I) should not be party to this breakdown. We should be working hard to listen to, to know and to help develop those in the "other culture". We know all truth is God's truth and therefore fully compatible. Of course it may exceed our present capabilities, but we expect to grow together toward it.

I'm suggesting that Christians in the sciences should make the effort to talk to, listen to, try to understand colleagues in the humanities. We must work at translating their worldviews and values into terms we can handle. Christian scholars in the humanities should likewise work to hear/comprehend what is going on in science and technology.

It is after all the presuppositions, the world picture/world view, of the two cultures that divide. These often come out of attempts to negate God and His revelation in Jesus and the Bible. Sin may well be at the base of this divide. We must prayerfully and humbly work together--across the divide--as part of our witness to Christ and part of our service in His name to the university. We may not get rid of the divide entirely but we can at least act to remove some of the enmity and lower some of the walls, for Christ's sake.