Writing & Society Research Centre 'Writing by the River' Event: 'Biology and the Two Cultures'

ABOUT THE EVENT

Position Papers and Discussion with Jason Tuckwell, Marilyn Stendera and Timothy Jackson (chaired by Anthony Uhlmann)

C. P. Snow famously remarked that by the twentieth century a gulf had opened up between two cultures; the sciences and the humanities. This gulf seems cemented today in the institutional siloing of Arts from STEM. Perhaps what is less clear, is the reason for these persisting antagonisms: are they historical artefacts or do they still reflect irreconcilable differences within these disciplines? This is to enquire into the targets and terms of reference implied (‘science’, ‘technology’, and so on), and which are certainly contested, if not outdated and unhelpfully generic.

This seminar opens with the following problem: which sciences and which technologies are precisely opposed to the Humanities, and on what terms? Drawing on recent biological research and the biological and epistemological philosophies of…

From the organiser’s listing · catalogue updated Sat, 10 Oct