The term two cultures refers to a failure of scientists and humanists to comprehend the content, nature, and implications of each other's intellectual activities. An issue that goes back at least to the rise of modern science as a distinct practice and the romantic criticism of some of the results of the scientific worldview, it received international attention when Charles Percy Snow (1905–1980) considered the breakdown in a 1959 lecture, "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution."

Snow, who had experience as a novelist and a scientist, coined the phrase to deplore a widening gulf of mutual incomprehension between literary intellectuals and natural scientists. The division between cultures represented a dilemma over the role of science and technology in human affairs and led to the failure to address the three menaces of nuclear weapons, overpopulation, and the gap between rich and poor. Although he recommended broadening education for...