News:

Fifty years ago, on May 7, 1959, the British novelist and scientist C. P. Snow presented the Rede Lecture at Cambridge University titled “The Two Cultures.” The gist of that lecture was that a wide and worrisome gap had developed in Western society between the sciences and the humanities. During and after World War II, Snow had helped conduct interviews of thousands of British scientists and engineers. When he asked his subjects what books they had read, their typical reply was: “I’ve tried a bit of Dickens.” Humanists, he discovered, were equally ignorant when it came to science. He surmised that they had about as much insight into modern physics as did their Neolithic ancestors. Snow put much of the blame for this gap on overspecialization in education. He worried that the house of Western culture had become so deeply divided that it was losing its ability to keep pace with Russia and China and to “think with wisdom” in a world of accelerating social change where the rich “live precariously among the poor.”

A different “two cultures” problem afflicts my own discipline of philosophy, and that is my subject here. But perhaps thinking about philosophy’s future offers us additional insight into the problem that Snow expounded.

 

When nonphilosophers think about philosophy, they tend to think of it as the history of philosophy. They think of it as a succession of eminent philosophers—along with, of course, the theories those philosophers developed, the texts they wrote, and the movements they inspired. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are the perennial favorites. After that, the lists vary according to taste and background, but there are some philosophers who seem never to get on these lists. I have found, for example, that a good way to kill conversations with nonphilosophers is to ask what they think of Willard Quine or Saul Kripke. Because Quine and Kripke are among the most influential American philosophers of the past fifty years, there is reason to wonder why they are not better known outside of philosophy.

One reason for their extramural obscurity is suggested by an imperious quip attributed to Quine, who is alleged to have said: “There are two kinds of philosophers, those who are interested in the history of philosophy and those who are interested in philosophy.” What is intimated here is that the history of philosophy is not really philosophy at all, and that those who pursue such a history are not really philosophers.

Quine knew full well that philosophy departments were expected to conduct research and teach classes in the history of philosophy, but he did not think that service of that kind had much to do with the proper business of philosophy—working out solutions to philosophical problems like, What is there? and, What can we know? In other words, he saw two cultures within philosophy: a can-do culture akin to mathematics and science, and a can-teach culture akin to the humanities.

As a humanist and historian of philosophy, I am tempted to dismiss Quine’s dichotomy as false. I am ready to point out that philosophy, unlike the natural sciences, is the custodian of its own history. Astrophysicists do not think it is their task to write histories of astrophysics. They relegate that task to historians of science—a branch of learning that belongs to the humanities. Philosophers, in contrast, are jealous guardians of this duty and, thus, of their own footing in the humanities. I am also disposed to argue that every chapter in the history of philosophy is an experiment from which we can learn valuable lessons. I am inclined to insist that retelling the story of philosophy can be a powerful way of doing and critiquing philosophy. But these objections may miss a deeper point. Perhaps Quine’s dichotomy should be construed, not as an imperious quip, but as a provocative way of raising an Aristotelian question about the telos—the good—of philosophy. Is the telos of philosophy to solve problems in the manner of the natural sciences, or is it to produce a rich succession of inspiring texts and ideas?

 

The answer I would like to give is, “Both!” Unfortunately, both alternatives face significant difficulties.

The first alternative is compromised by the fact that, after 2,500 years, philosophers have not reached agreement on the solution to a single, central philosophical problem by means of philosophical methods or argument. Scientists, in contrast, have enjoyed spectacular success in reaching provisional agreement on a wide range of problems and in changing the face of the world with technological applications. I emphasize the word provisional, for agreement in science is always subject to revision when new evidence warrants. If you had asked astrophysicists twelve ago what the universe is made of, they would have said “matter and energy” and referred you to the “standard model” of particles and forces, plus gravity, to describe the details. Today, most astrophysicists will tell you that that ordinary matter and energy make up only about 5 percent of what there is. The rest, they now say, is dark matter and dark energy—elusive stuff whose origin and characteristics remain unknown. Again, this is provisional knowledge, but it is the best answer we can get now, because it fits the relevant data better than any previous answer does. To page back in the history of science for an answer one finds more congenial or inspiring would be foolishness.