Events

Past Event

The Two Cultures Reading Group - C.P Snow and “Corridors of Power”

September 14, 2017
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
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Fayerweather Hall (Room 513), Columbia University, 1180 Amsterdam Avenue, New York
Image of C. P. Snow's novel Corridors of Power

Fabian Kramer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, History and Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science and Society

Have you ever wondered what the inventor of the phrase “two cultures”, Charles Percey Snow, was really up to? Today, C.P. Snow is mostly remembered, if at all, for his 1959 Rede lecture “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution” and the intense debate that ensued about the rightful status of “scientific culture” as opposed to “traditional” or “literary culture” in Cold War Britain. Back in the fifties, however, Snow was also considered an important novelist. His novels, too, shed some light on the status of the sciences in Britain in the mid-twentieth century – and on Snow’s views of what their status should have been, and why.

We will be discussing “Corridors of Power” (1964), a novel that centers around nuclear weapons policy in 1950s Great Britain. Newcomers are welcome!

This group is only open to Columbia University affiliates and invited guests. Please RSVP online to receive the reading.

This event is sponsored by the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University.