WHY HUMANITIES?

Event date: 4 November 2010
18:00 Beveridge Hall, Senate House, Malet St, London WC1 7HU

Keynote address by:

Professor Onora O’Neill, Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve – ‘The Two Cultures Fifty Years On’

Abstract:
In his 1959 Rede lecture The Two Cultures C.P. Snow contrasted what he called ‘the traditional culture’ of literary study with the culture of natural science, and judged them wholly different in approach and achievements. The scientific culture, as he saw it, was rigorous and productive; the literary culture was neither. However, if we consider the approaches and methods actually used by inquiry in the humanities and in the natural sciences we find many similarities. In both domains inquiry relies on interpretation and inference, makes and seeks to support empirical truth claims and deploys and defends normative assumptions. It is hardly surprising that no single or simple conception of ‘impact’ can do justice to the diversity of work undertaken in either culture.

This event has been recorded and is available as a podcast at the following URL: http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2010/11/onora-oneill-the-two-cultures-fifty-years-on/