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raman srinivasanuroscience can also benefit from the reactions of artists. Novelists can simulate the latest theory of consciousness in their fiction. If a theory can’t inspire characters that feel true, then it probably isn’t true itself. (Woolf, for example, was an early critic of Freudian theory, dismissing the way it turned all of her “characters into cases.”) Painters can explore new theories about the visual cortex. Dancers can help untangle the mysterious connection between the body and emotion. By heeding the wisdom of the arts, science extends to art the invitation to participate in its conversation and the opportunity to add science to its repertoire. And by, in turn, interpreting scientific ideas and theories, the arts offers science a new lens through which to see itself.
C.P. Snow, the essayist who coined the “two culture” cliché, proposed a simple solution to the problem of divided cultures. He argued that we needed a “third culture,” which would close the “communications gap” between scientists and artists. Each side, Snow said, would benefit from an understanding of the other, as writers learned about the second law of thermodynamics and scientists read Shakespeare.
There is currently a nascent third culture, but it strays from Snow’s conception. While his third culture was based upon dialogue, our current third culture consists, almost entirely, of scientists talking directly to the general public. As John Brockman, the founder of this new third culture, wrote: “What traditionally has been called ‘science’ has today become ‘public culture’...Science is the only news.” There is, of course, much to be said for scientists cutting out “the middleman” and translating their data for the masses. Many of the scientists that make up this third culture have greatly increased the public’s understanding of the scientific avant-garde. From Richard Dawkins to Brian Greene, from Steven Pinker to E.O. Wilson, these figures not only do important scientific research, they write in elegant prose. In doing so, they are teaching u
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