The One Culture focuses on the state of the American culture in the so-called Age of Technology. This book is composed of four chapters that consider the influence of humanities and social sciences in engineering education. The opening chapter focuses on the famous two cultures’ assertion that art and science do not mix. This chapter deals with the problems of definition, semantics, image, and attitude in this assertion. The succeeding chapter examines the typical contemporary “confrontation between art, literature, and technology. A chapter describes the connecting link between the fields of humanities, social sciences, and engineering. The final chapter looks into the prospect of order, design, and unity as a counter-argument to a negative, self-destroying dualism. This book will prove useful to humanists, engineers, social scientists, and students who are interested in human culture.

So far the "Science Wars" have generated far more heat than light. Combatants from one or the other of what C. P. Snow famously called "the two cultures" (science versus the arts and humanities) have launched bitter attacks but have seldom engaged in constructive dialogue about the central issues. In The One Culture?, Jay A. Labinger and Harry Collins have gathered together some of the world's foremost scientists and sociologists of science to exchange opinions and ideas rather than insults. The contributors find surprising areas of broad agreement in a genuine conversation about science, its legitimacy and authority as a means of understanding the world, and whether science studies undermines the practice and findings of science and scientists. The One Culture? is organized into three parts. The first consists of position papers written by scientists and sociologists of science, which were distributed to all the participants. The second presents commentaries on these papers, drawing out and discussing their central themes and arguments. In the third section, participants respond to these critiques, offering defenses, clarifications, and modifications of their positions. Who can legitimately speak about science? What is the proper role of scientific knowledge? How should scientists interact with the rest of society in decision making? Because science occupies such a central position in the world today, such questions are vitally important. Although there are no simple solutions, The One Culture? does show the reader exactly what is at stake in the Science Wars, and provides a valuable framework for how to go about seeking the answers we so urgently need. Contributors include: Constance K. Barsky, Jean Bricmont, Harry Collins, Peter Dear, Jane Gregory, Jay A. Labinger, Michael Lynch, N. David Mermin, Steve Miller, Trevor Pinch, Peter R. Saulson, Steven Shapin, Alan Sokal, Steven Weinberg, Kenneth G. Wilson

This is the first in a planned series of volumes on science and literature, which grow from three basic assumptions explicit in this first volume: first, that science and literaure are two alternative but related expressions of a culture's values and beliefs; and second, that understanding science in its relation to culture and literature requires some understanding not only of its own internal processes, but of pressures exercised by social, political, and psychological forces; third, that the idea of "influence" of one upon the other must work both ways. It is not only science that influences literature, but literature that influences science the authors say. ISBN 0-299-11300-0: $45.00; ISBN 0-299-11304-3 (pbk.): $12.95.

This book argues that science and the arts are not two different cultures, but rather different manifestations of the same culture. Divided into seven parts, it presents a collection of translated and revised essays, mostly at the intersection between realia and humaniora. In the first two parts, the author discusses how some myths, both ancient and modern, have become intertwined with scientific ideas. The chapters in the following four parts address poems, novels, plays, and pieces of fine art that have some scientific content, as well as scientific findings which seem to have also been discovered in art. The chapters in the final part examine a number of inspiring doubts and necessary errors in the history of science. This collection of essays, most of which were originally published in Hungarian, is intended for the general public and as such includes no mathematical, physical or chemical formulae. It offers a unique resource for all those curious about the interconnections between science, art and literature.

This in-depth analysis examines how and why Southern culture was forever changed when Scotch-Irish immigrants flooded the Appalachian Mountains in the 1700s. Geographical similarities between Southern Appalachia and the Highlands of Scotland and Ireland are discussed, as well as the parallels and differences of the two cultures in four basic areas—music and dance, agricultural practices, fighting and hunting techniques, and technological innovativeness. More than 300 years of the communities' ideology is explored based on data culled from ethnographic observation, interviews at various heritage sites, historic accounts, archived letters, and other textual documentation.

The white man's burden, darkest Africa, the seduction of the primitive: such phrases were widespread in the language Western empires used to talk about their colonial enterprises. How this language itself served imperial purposes--and how it survives today in writing about the Third World--are the subject of David Spurr's book, a revealing account of the rhetorical strategies that have defined Western thinking about the non-Western world.Despite historical differences among British, French, and American versions of colonialism, their rhetoric had much in common. The Rhetoric of Empire identifies these shared features--images, figures of speech, and characteristic lines of argument--and explores them in a wide variety of sources. A former correspondent for the United Press International, the author is equally at home with journalism or critical theory, travel writing or official documents, and his discussion is remarkably comprehensive. Ranging from T. E. Lawrence and Isak Dineson to Hemingway and Naipaul, from Time and the New Yorker to the National Geographic and Le Monde, from journalists such as Didion and Sontag to colonial administrators such as Frederick Lugard and Albert Sarraut, this analysis suggests the degree to which certain rhetorical tactics penetrate the popular as well as official colonial and postcolonial discourse.Finally, Spurr considers the question: Can the language itself--and with it, Western forms of interpretation--be freed of the exercise of colonial power? This ambitious book is an answer of sorts. By exposing the rhetoric of empire, Spurr begins to loosen its hold over discourse about--and between--different cultures.