Bridging the divide between disciplines

Nearly half a century ago a famous essay by the scientist-novelist C.P. Snow, "Two Cultures," diagnosed a growing communications gap between scientists and humanists. The problem has become more acute since then, even in universities, and even at Princeton, where the generous vision of the "arts and sciences" still caries over into personal friendships among faculty of different divisions. But it is increasingly difficult for anyone to know enough about one field, let alone a lot about many.

In the fall I had the honor of being invited to a gala celebration — an academic conference followed by elegant banquet — in honor of a distinguished old friend on the engineering faculty. I thought I'd better earn my place at dinner by sitting in on at least one or two sessions of the conference. I am ashamed to report that the first paper I heard, as also its ensuing discussion, was nearly incomprehensible to me. The subject appeared to be a certain female to me unknown, Polly Murz, whom the speaker had observed under various hideous tortures, especially exposure to extreme temperatures. To the roasting and freezing of Polly Murz, to subjecting her to violent mechanical force of differing kinds, to a whole catalogue of abuse recorded in PowerPoint graphs, both speaker and admiring audience appeared entirely matter of fact and unfeeling. My relief at dinner was considerable, though my enlightenment slight, when I learned that the experimental subject had not been Polly Murz at all, but "polymers," a polymer being "a substance polymeric with another; any one of a series of polymeric compounds."

But if ignorance is bliss, it turns out that not all of the blisters are humanists. Two weeks ago I published a column in which the major theme was bovine pathology and the minor theme my linguistic distaste for proliferating alphabetical abbreviations. I prefer to denominate living human beings by nouns rather than alphabetical abbreviations. I prefer to call an engineer an engineer, not a "BSE;" I prefer to call a teacher a teacher, not an "FTE." I timorously repeat that I find such alphabetical non-words repellent. My linguistic attitude is wholly unrelated to the fact that some good friends are engineers, some teachers and some both. The only timely negative response to my negativity towards BSE came from an alumnus in the agribusiness. Hence my astonishment that a week later two old friends and fellow graybeards on the engineering school faculty would publish letters on this page castigating me for insulting engineers!

The relationship between words and things, of course, is a perennial problem of the humanities. As an adherent of Augustinian linguistics, I recognize that the two are quite distinct and that it can be dangerous to confuse them. Augustine facetiously proves the wholly arbitrary and conventional relationship between the two as follows. He asks, Is "cænum" (excrement) a "good" or a "bad" word? If you confuse words and things, you are supposed to think "Offal? Awful!" so that Augustine can amaze you by saying it is a most excellent word. How so? Remove one little stroke and you have "cælum" (Heaven)! I guess it's lucky for librarians that the Library of Congress classification systems has assigned BS to Theology rather than to Engineering. Theologians at least can handle it.

.....It is true that even paranoids do, on occasion, have real enemies. It is likewise true that no state or federal law prohibits a reader from using a newspaper column as a Rorshach test. But offense to engineers was so far from my intention that I offer the following balm. On our campus the balance of intellectual trade between the "two cultures" tends to show a large surplus in favor of those east of Washington Road.

And while generalizations are risky, I'll repeat two I have risked on this page in the past. In my long experience Princeton undergraduate engineers as a group tend to be more committed to the intellectual task than do arts students — as a group. Secondly, while one or two large and famous "science" courses — David Billington's "Bridges" being the obvious example — will attract young humanists, student engineers have often appeared in even my most arcane or specialized courses — "Ovid in the Middle Ages," for example — where, incidentally, they have done strong work.

John V. Fleming is the Louis W. Fairchild '24 professor of English. His column appears on Mondays.