Rethinking the Two Cultures: A Sociological Approach to the Division between Science and Humanities

The division of science and humanities, as famously described by Charles Snow as “the two cultures,” emerged in the 19th century and is becoming wider and wider today. Why did this division emerge and how would it proceed? Immanuel Wallerstein argued that “scientific universalism” serves as the ideology of the power relations in the capitalist world system, where humanities are seen to be subordinate to science. Wallerstein’s observation was also based on the critique of modern science triggered by Thomas Kuhn, but his endeavor to reunify science and humanities is yet to bear fruit. My proposal here is to look back to theoretical sociology for clues to the mechanism lying behind the division. Sociological tradition has looked at science from two points of view: positive and negative. The former is represented by Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, which regards science as one of the sub-systems functionally differentiated from the whole society. The function of science is to make our society able to adopt novel and exotic knowledge. Luhmann’s notion looks very important because we live in an era where we have to live reflexively coping with constantly changing environment. For Luhmann, however, the division of science and humanities is just the result of functional differentiation. The latter is represented by Jürgen Habermas, who regards science as an ideology which sustains the dominance of life world by political and economic systems. Habermas’s observation clearly identifies the power of military-industrial-academic complex we are faced with today, which lies behind the division of science and humanities. A possible way forward is to regard functional differentiation as an unfinished project, with partial inclusion of people and dominance of experts. Democratization of the science system and inclusion of science into communicative action should be the way to overcome division between science and humanities.