When Snow expresses his view on what is happening nowadays in the world in general, two main theses are discernible. The first arises from his concern over the widening, in the Western world, of the gap between science and literature: his thesis is that this widening is in any case intellectually and socially undesirable; and that in the case of a country in the particular situation that ours is in, it could in a short time be catastrophic. He argues that the splintering of a culture into an increasing number of fragments, between which communication becomes less and less possible, inevitably leads to attrition and decay. (pp. 44-5)

The second thesis is that the widening of the gap between science and literature in the Western world obscures the existence of the major gap in the whole world today, namely that between the countries which are technologically advanced and...