F. R. Leavis,Science,and the Abiding Crisis of Modern Civilization

Geertz Clifford , “Which way to Mecca?”, New York review of books, 12 June 2003, 27–30, p. 30.

Snow C. P. , The two cultures and the scientific revolution (Cambridge, 1959); and Leavis F. R. , Two cultures? The significance of C. P. Snow (London, 1962).

Huxley T. H. , “Science and culture”, Science and education: Essays (New York, 1896), 134–59; Arnold Matthew , “Literature and science”, Super R. H. (ed.), The complete prose works of Matthew Arnold, x (Ann Arbor, 1974), 52–73; and Wyndham-Goldie Grace , The challenge of our time (London, 1948).

That tendency persists, as in a recent special issue of the literary journal American literature on “Literature and science: Cultural forms, conceptual exchanges” (December 2002). The guest editors observed the “convergence” of the two cultures, a phenomenon that “makes scientific illiteracy no longer an option” and presents “an opportunity for creative and productive responses to the emergence of new forms of knowledge”. Interdisciplinarity, not surprisingly, was offered as the answer, “born of the necessity to address the growing entanglement of culture, technology, and science”. These claims beg the question of when culture, technology, and science were not so entangled — They certainly were, for example, in the 1950s when Jacob Bronowski wrote in nearly identical terms, as well as in the 1960s when Snow's lecture generated similar clichés. See Bronowski , Science and human values (New York, 1956), and the bibliography of the “two cultures” debate in Boytinck Paul , C. P. Snow: A reference guide (Boston, 1980).

Snow, however, seemed unaware of the history of the tradition he had stepped into, and The two cultures is an example of the tendency to drape the venerable argument in the language of novelty and urgency — Indeed, it was that move that gave the lecture much of its force. The literature on the ‘two cultures’ is vast; the accounts I return to repeatedly include Trilling Lionel , “Science, literature and culture: A comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy”, Commentary, xxxiii (1962), 461–77; Lepenies Wolf , Between literature and science: The rise of sociology, transl. by Hollingdale R. J. (Cambridge, 1988); Stefan Collini's introduction to Cambridge University Press's reprint of Snow, The two cultures (Cambridge, 1993); Porter Roy , “The two cultures revisited”, The Cambridge review, November 1994, 74–80; Hollinger David , “Science as a weapon in Kulturkaempfe in the United States during and after World War II”, Isis, lxxxvi (1995), 440–54; MacKillop Ian , F. R. Leavis: A life in criticism (New York, 1995), chap. 9; Burnett D. Graham , “A view from the bridge: The two cultures debate, its legacy and the history of science”, Daedalus, cxxviii (1999), 193–218; Guillory John , “The Sokal affair and the history of criticism”, Critical inquiry, xxviii (2002), 470–508; and Edgerton David , “C. P. Snow as anti-historian of British science”, lecture at the 1997 BAAS meeting in Leeds and included in The warfare state (forthcoming).

Leavis , Two cultures? (ref. 2), 15.

Huxley Aldous , Literature and science (London, 1963).

White Paul , Thomas Huxley: Making the “man of science” (Cambridge, 2003); Smith Roger , “Biology and values in interwar Britain: C. S. Sherrington, Julian Huxley and the vision of progress”, Past and present, clxxviii (2003), 210–42, p. 212; and Guillory , “The Sokal affair and the history of criticism” (ref. 5).

Stefan Collini points to the contingencies in English history that paired Romanticism with the Industrial Revolution and the development of literary studies with the rise of consumerism and commercialized culture; John Guillory depicts attacks upon ‘science’ as an occasional lapse in the standards of cultural criticism. These excellent accounts thus historicize the recurrent preoccupations of Anglo-American cultural criticism, while resisting the temptation to reduce them to hostility to ‘science’. Collini , “On highest authority: The literary critic and other aviators in early twentieth-century Britain”, in Ross Dorothy (ed.), Modernist impulses in the human sciences, 1870–1930 (Baltimore, 1994), 152–70; and Guillory , “The Sokal affair and the history of criticism” (ref. 5). For a critical consideration of the conception of ‘science’ at work in Leavis's own history of science, see Wallace Jeff , “‘Taking possession of the ordinary man's mind’: Literary studies and the history of science”, Literature and history, 2nd ser., i (1990), 58–74.

Other scholars have treated the Richmond Lecture as a moment of transition in Leavis's career and criticism, notably Anne Samson, Leavis F. R. (Toronto, 1992) and MacKillop , op. cit. (ref. 5).

Snow , The two cultures (ref. 2), 27.

Ibid., 14.

The commentary on the debate is enormous; the best place to get a handle on it (although skewed toward the American discussion) is Boytinck, Snow C. P. : A reference guide (ref. 4). Burnett provides a useful overview in ”A view from the bridge” (ref. 5), esp. pp. 200–5.

Lasky Melvin to Snow , 8 May 1959, Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas (hereafter HRC): Snow 94.17.

Snow C. P. , “The two cultures and the scientific revolution”, Encounter, June 1959, 17–24, and Encounter, July 1959, 22–27; and “A discussion of C. P. Snow's views”, Encounter, August 1959, 67–73. Snow apparently suggested Blackett Patrick , Bowden B. V. Ashby Eric on the science side, and Plumb J. H. , Wilson Angus Ayrton Michael Allen Walter on the other, for these are the names written in Snow's hand on Lasky's letter to him of 8 May 1959, HRC: Snow 94.17.

Allen Walter , “A discussion of C. P. Snow's views”, Encounter, August 1959, 67–68; Lovell A. C. B. , “A unified culture”, ibid., 68; and Russell Bertrand , “Snobbery”, ibid., 71. The Master of Churchill was the distinguished physicist Sir John Cockcroft.

New Statesman, 6 June 1959, 806; and Wollheim Richard , “Grounds for approval”, Spectator, 7 August 1959, 168–9.

“A great debate”, Listener, 3 September 1959, 344.

“Matters of moment: Art and sciences in the schools”, chaired by Asa Briggs, 22 October 1959, BBC-Written Archives Centre (hereafter BBC-WAC): MF “MAT”, T331; and de la Mothe John , C. P. Snow and the struggle of modernity (Austin, 1992), 62.

Allen Walter , “A discussion of C. P. Snow's views”, Encounter, August 1959, 67–73.

Plumb , “Welfare or release”, Encounter, August 1959, 68–70; Bantock G. H. , “A scream of horror”, Listener, 17 September 1959, 427–8; Polanyi Michael , “The two cultures”, Encounter, September 1959, 61–64; and Yudkin Michael , “Sir Charles Snow's Rede Lecture”, originally printed in the Cambridge review and reprinted in Leavis , Two Cultures? (ref. 2), 33–45.

Read Herbert , “Mood of the month — X”, London magazine, August 1959, 39–43 (Snow responded in October, to which Read replied in November); and Nott Kathleen , “The type to which the whole creation moves? Further thoughts on the Snow saga”, Encounter, February 1962, 87–88, 94–97.

Leavis F. R. , Nor shall my sword: Discourses on pluralism, compassion and social hope (London, 1972), 15.

Leavis F. R. , English literature in our time and the university (London, 1969), 2.

Leavis F. R. , “Anna Karenina” and other essays (London, 1967), 175, reprinted from “‘Lawrence scholarship’ and Lawrence”, Sewanee review, lxxi (1963), 25–35. Leavis's biographer (and former student) Ian MacKillop discussed this passage in a wonderful essay posted on his website: http://www.shef.ac.uk/english/literature/imk/leavis.html.

Terry Eagleton states the Leavisian case well: “The quality of a society's language was the most telling index of the quality of its personal and social life: A society which had ceased to value literature was one lethally closed to the impulses which had created and sustained the best of human civilisation.” Eagleton , Literary theory: An introduction (Minneapolis, 1983), 32.

Leavis , “The pilgrim's progress”, in “Anna Karenina” and other essays (ref. 25), 33–48, p. 41, originally published as an afterword to Bunyan John , The pilgrim's progress (New York, 1964).

Leavis F. R. , “Literary criticism and philosophy: A reply”, Scrutiny, vi (1937–38), 59–70, reprinted in The common pursuit (London, 1952), 211–22, see esp. pp. 212–13.

Leavis F. R. , Thought, words and creativity: Art and thought in Lawrence (New York, 1976), 121, emphasis in original.

Guillory touches upon the distinction between evaluation and interpretation in literary criticism in “The Sokal affair and the history of criticism” (ref. 5).

Leavis F. R. , “The relationship of journalism to literature: Studied in the rise and earlier development of the press in England” (1924), Cambridge University Library, Ph.D. 66.

Leavis F. R. , Mass civilisation and minority culture (Cambridge, 1930).

See my “Two cultures, one university: The institutional origins of the ‘two cultures’ controversy”, Albion, xxxiv (2002), 606–24.

Porter , “The two cultures revisited” (ref. 5).

Collini discusses Leavis's dismissal of Wells in the first issue of Scrutiny, as well as the importance of the 1930s context to the development of Snow's argument, in his introduction to The two cultures (ref. 5), pp. xxiii–xxv.

Leavis , Nor shall my sword (ref. 23), 129.

Leavis F. R. Thompson Denys , Culture and environment: The training of critical awareness (London, 1933), esp. the chapters “The organic community” and “The loss of the organic community”. See also Leavis's discussion of Cecil Sharp's recovery of Appalachian culture in “Literature and society”, Scrutiny, Winter 1943, 2–11.

Leavis F. R. , Mass civilisation and minority culture (Cambridge, 1930), 25.

Eliot T. S. , “The metaphysical poets”, Selected essays (New York, 1932), 241–50, p. 247. The essay dates from 1921.

For Leavis on the dissociation of sensibility, “English poetry in the seventeenth century”, Scrutiny , iv (1935–36), 236–56, reprinted as “The line of wit”, Revaluation (London, 1936), chap. 1; and “Eliot's ‘axe to grind’ and the nature of great criticism”, English literature in our time and the university (ref. 24), chap. 3.

Leavis F. R. , “English poetry in the eighteenth century”, Scrutiny, v (1936–37), 13–31, reprinted as “The Augustan tradition”, Revaluation (ref. 40), chap. (quotation from p. 96).

On the seventeenth century, see Leavis F. R. , Education and the university: A sketch for an English school (London, 1943), esp. chap. 2; English literature in our time and the university (ref. 24), esp. chap. 3; Nor shall my sword (ref. 23), esp. chap. 4; and The living principle: ‘English’ as a discipline of thought (London, 1975), esp. chap. 1.

Sprat Bishop Thomas , History of the Royal Society (London, 1667), quoted in Leavis , English literature in our time and the university (ref. 24), 94. Consideration of the Royal Society also appears in Leavis , Revaluation (ref. 40), 35, 96, and Nor shall my sword (ref. 23), 172.

For Leavis on Milton: “Milton's verse”, Scrutiny , ii (1933–34), 123–36, reprinted in Revaluation (ref. 40), 42–61; “In defence of Milton”, Scrutiny , vii (1938–39), 104–14 and Eliot Mr. Milton , Sewanee review, lvii (1949), 1–30, both reprinted in The common pursuit (ref. 28).

Leavis , Revaluation (ref. 40), 48, emphasis in original.

Leavis , English literature in our time and the university (ref. 24), 98.

Leavis , Revaluation (ref. 40), 50.

Ibid., 53.

My reading of Leavis on Milton differs from that of Stanley Fish, who interprets Leavis as arguing that “Milton's language does not direct us to a referent outside itself, but, rather, traps us within its own confines, demanding that we attend to the connections it is itself forging; the reality of the medium privileges itself over any reality that we might think prior to it” (emphasis Fish's). Fish is correct that Leavis is critical of Milton for calling attention to the language that is his medium. However, this is not because Leavis would prefer verse to direct the reader to a reality existing outside of it, and he does not criticize Milton for privileging the medium over a prior reality. Instead, Leavis's argument is that Milton's facility with language calls attention to itself as such — That is, it merely communicates Milton's genius with words, rather than working through those words to create a new experience in the mind of the reader. The reason for that failure is that Milton's language is detached from the idiom of daily speech. Leavis's point is not that language properly used would direct us to that idiom, but that it would work through it to create an altogether new experience in the mind of the reader. Milton, because of his fascination with his own language, cannot create any such experience. Fish Stanley , How Milton works (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), 478–9.

Leavis , Education and the university (ref. 42), 22–23.

Ibid., 55.

Ibid., 72, 71.

Leavis to Raymond Harold , 5 November 1943, Chatto and Windus archive, University of Reading (hereafter Chatto and Windus): CW 94/17.

Leavis to Raymond , 2 June 1943, Chatto and Windus: CW 94/17.

“Readers and citizens”, Times literary supplement, 15 January 1944; the collected reviews are held at the University of Reading.

“The idea of a university”, Times educational supplement, 1 January 1944.

Leavis to Walton Geoffrey , 4 February 1947, Downing College, Cambridge: DCPP/LEA/7 Leavis, F.R.

Williams Robin , “Some memories of F. R. Leavis and other Downing dons in the early 1950s”, from a memoir held in Downing College: DCHR/1/2/FRL Leavis F. R.; Governing Body Minutes, Downing College, ccxx, 6 June 1957, p. 418, minute 7.

Leavis to Raymond , 17 June 1943, Chatto and Windus: CW 94/17. When the separate examination was challenged in the 1950s, Leavis opposed — Ultimately unsuccessfully — The effort to collapse Downing's examination in with other colleges. “English as a group scholarship subject”, 20 January 1953, Downing College: D/M/P/1. For more on the scholarship system, see MacKillop Leavis F. R. (ref. 5), 154–5.

Leavis to Parsons Ian , 17 July 1968, Chatto and Windus.

Leavis , English literature in our time and the university (ref. 24), 3. On his respect for the standards maintained in the sciences, see pp. 40, 64, 64–65.

Ibid., 40.

Ibid., 64–65.

Ibid., 17, 87, 132.

See Fish Stanley , Professional correctness: Literary studies and political change (New York, 1995).

Leavis , English literature in our time and the university (ref. 24), 118. For consideration of what Leavis meant by the terms ‘nisus’ and ‘ahnung’, see Roger Poole's contribution to the special issue of The Cambridge quarterly , xxv/4 (1996), 391–5.

Leavis , English literature in our time and the university (ref. 24), 128.

Leavis , Thought, words and creativity (ref. 29), 47–48.

Leavis , The living principle (ref. 42), 13.

Grene Marjorie , The knower and the known (London, 1966).

Leavis , The living principle (ref. 42), 39.

Leavis used the term in Nor shall my sword (ref. 23), and relied on it most extensively in The living principle (ref. 42).

Leavis , The living principle (ref. 42), 97.

MacKillop provides an excellent account of the Richmond Lecture in Leavis F. R. (ref. 5), chap. 9, esp. pp. 311–25.

Gorley S. Putt's address to the English Association was reprinted as “Technique and culture: Three Cambridge portraits”, Essays and studies, xiv (1961), 34. See Wilson Angus , “If it's new and modish, is it good?”, New York Times book review, 2 July 1961, 1, reprinted as “A plea against fashion in writing”, Moderna Sprak , lv (1961), 345–50. Wilson repeated his claim in “Fourteen points”, Encounter , January 1962, 10–12.

MacKillop Leavis F. R. (ref. 5), 311. In July 1961 Leavis acidly lamented his exclusion from the “corridors of power” in the English Faculty in Cambridge; Snow, with his knack for such turns of phrase, had introduced that one as early as 1957, and adopted it as the title of a novel in 1964. Leavis to D. F. Pocock, 25 July 1961, Emmanuel College: 9.59.121.20; Snow , “The corridors of power”, Listener, 18 April 1957, 619–20.

Downing College: Governing Body Minutes, 27 October 1961, 106.

Singh G. , F. R. Leavis: A literary biography (London, 1995), 288; and MacKillop , F. R. Leavis (ref. 5), 317.

Keen R. E. to Leavis , 23 February 1962, BBC-WAC: F. R. Leavis, File I, 1940–1962; Leavis denied permission in his reply of 27 February 1962. “Stormy don's swan song should be a fiery one”, Evening standard, 28 February 1962.

MacKillop Leavis F. R. (ref. 5), 318. I am grateful to David Holbrook for sharing his recollections of the occasion with me.

Leavis , Two cultures? (ref. 2), 9–10. Leavis's manuscript is held at the Houghton Library at Harvard, MS Eng 1218.

Ibid., 11–12.

Ibid., 12.

Ibid., 13.

Ibid., 14–15.

Plumb to Snow , 5 March 1962, HRC: Snow 226.12. I explore the institutional connections between these figures — Especially as they relate to the establishment of Churchill College — In my doctoral thesis, “The ‘Two Cultures’ controversy”, Northwestern University, 2005.

Spectator of 16, 23, and 30 March 1962; Snow to Plumb, 7 March 1962, HRC: Snow 226.12.

Trilling , “Science, literature and culture” (ref. 5), 463–4. Trilling's reluctance to criticize Leavis was apparent in his refusal to review the reprint of Scrutiny for the BBC unless he found himself able to take a broadly favourable view: BBC internal memorandum, 8 April 1963, BBC-WAC: F. R. Leavis, File II, 1963–1964.

The Richmond Lecture as a classic: Leavis to Parsons, 25 June 1962, Chatto and Windus; Leavis to J. Schwartz, 19 March 1964, Harvard: Houghton, autograph file; Leavis to Parsons again, 16 January 1968, Chatto and Windus.

For instance, in 1965 he confided to a colleague that a forthcoming lecture entitled “Luddites? Or, there is only one culture”, referred to Snow as little as possible, so as to prevent misrepresentations of his argument as a mere personal attack. Leavis to Doyle A. I. , 9 September 1965, Downing College: DCPP/LEA/2 Leavis, F. R.

Leavis to Parsons Ian , 25 June 1962 and 16 January 1968, Chatto and Windus.

Steiner George Leavis F. R. , Encounter, May 1962, 37–45.