Reference no: EM133241867
Assignment:
Before 1945, the social sciences were internally split between the two cultures, and there were many voices who urged the social sciences to disappear by merging either into the natural sciences or into the humanities, according to one's preferences. In a sense, the social sciences were being called upon to accept the deep reality of the concept of two cultures and to enter the one or the other on its terms. Today, the discovery of common themes and approaches seems to be occurring on different bases than in the past. Natural scientists are talking of the arrow of time, which is what has always been central to the more humanistic wing of the social sciences.
At the same time, literary scholars are talking of "theory." However hermeneutic such theorizing is and however hostile it proclaims itself to master narratives, theorizing is not what literary scholars used to do. No doubt, this is not the kind of theory that has always been central to work of the more scient is tic wing of the social sciences. Nonetheless for a group to whom the use of terms is so important, it is at least to be noted that the proponents of cultural studies have turned "theory" into one of their code words.
We cannot speak of a real rapprochement between the multiple expressions of the two (or three) cultures. But the debates have aroused doubts about the clarity of the distinctions. And we seem to be moving in the direction of a more noncontradictory view of the multiple domains of knowledge. In a strange way, the shifts in viewpoint in all fields seem to be moving more toward than away from the traditional standpoints of the social sciences. May we then say that the concept of two cultures is in the process of being overcome? It is much too early to tell. What is clear is that the tripartite division between the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities is no longer as self-evident as it once seemed. It also now seems that the social sciences are no longer a poor relative somehow torn between the two polarized clans of the natural sciences and the humanities; rather they have become the locus of their potential reconciliation.
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