Week 1- Two Cultures
Immediately upon reading C.P. Snow’s work The Two Cultures and The Scientific Revolution, I found that he was echoing a sentiment very familiar to me. When describing the dichotomy between his literary and scientific friends, Snow could easily have been describing the current divide on the UCLA campus rather than what he was experiencing in London in the 1950’s. The north versus south campus rivalry is perhaps the worst kept secret about life as a UCLA student.
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| Cartoon featured in 2011 Daily Bruin article illustrating the north and south campus rivalry. |
This campus divide is not without reason as the classes for north and south campus majors different not only in content but in length, number of meetings per week, number of midterms, and physical location with various buildings on campus used as unofficial markers of the campus divide. At times, the divide between the two seems immense. But, it is not unbridgeable and I am proof of that fact. Currently, I am double majoring in Political Science and Human Biology and Society, two things that on the surface, appear completely disparate. I’ll admit, when I first starting taking classes, I too believed that. However, like Victoria Vesna wrote in her article, “Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between,” I have found that academia has allowed me to bridge the gap. While the Political Science Department at UCLA is still somewhat insular, the Institute of Society and Genetics (ISG), which oversees the Human Biology and Society Major, is a big proponent of interdisciplinary and working with those who are outside the field of biology. This is evidenced not only in the faculty that work in ISG but also in the content of the classes I have taken.
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| Poster for interdisciplinary symposium sponsored by ISG and the UCLA Center for Women's Studies |
The emphasis on approaching a scientific or biology problem through several lenses that is prevalent through ISG has shown me that perhaps society and education is not doomed to be stuck in the mindset of two cultures and instead will focus on bridging the gap through the so called third culture.
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| Poster illustrating why bridging the gap between disciplines is important, as one discipline does not always have all the answers. |
Sources:
Snow, C.P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1961. Print.
Vespa, Victoria. “Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between.” Leonardo, vol. 34, no. 2, 2001, pp. 121-125. JSTOR http://www.jstor.org/stable/1577014
“Chemical Entanglements- Gender and Exposure.” Institute for Society and Genetics, UCLA, http://socgen.ucla.edu/events/chemical-entanglements-gender-exposure/ Accessed 8 April 2017.
Silverwing1310. North vs South Campus UCLA. 2011. http://silverwing1310.deviantart.com/art/North-vs-South-Campus-UCLA-199654234 Accessed 8 April 2017.
“Physics Humanities Poster.” UMarket, University of Utah, https://umarket.utah.edu/um2/humanities/product.php?product=8 Accessed 8 April 2017.
I'm so glad to hear that there are institutes at UCLA that engage people in interdisciplinary programs. I just think our education system still needs reforms as it is contributing to more gap between the two cultures overall. I believe this idea of combining several disciplines should not limit to only a few programs, but it should be the agenda of our whole campus. Maybe they should first eliminate the division between south and north campus by mixing the already existing departments. In my opinion, UCLA should also obligate students to take more than a few courses outside of their major departments, and they should start changing the content of courses so that they include different perspectives.
ReplyDeleteI like the points that you make as they are as extension of my original post. By finding something in the middle that borrows elements from the both cultures is a way to bridge a gap between the two culture. In doing so, this interconnectivity can lead to different outcomes and deeper understanding of these academias. As you mentioned, do so enables these academias to be studied from various lenses and could lead to research into an area of the subject that has not been fully explored. The divide exists mainly due to the difference in content and style of research/exploration. Despite that the two are not separate entities that cannot be intertwined. Rather one can learn much about his own field of study by working in collaboration with the other and your interesting major choice proves just that.
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