C. P. Snow as Anti-Historian of British Science: Revisiting the Technocratic Moment,1959–1964

This paper forms part of chap. 5 of Edgerton David , Warfare state: Britain, 1920–1970 (Cambridge, 2005). It was first given at the 1997 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Leeds, in a session celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Association. For press reports see the Times, 10 September 1997, Observer, 14 September 1997, and Nature, 18 September 1997. An earlier version of the paper has been published in Chinese in Dawie Fu (ed.), STS: Taiwan STS reader (2 vols, Taipei, 2004), i, 107–22.

Beer Samuel H. , Britain against itself (London, 1982), 121–3.

Beer , Britain (ref. 2), 123–5.

Sampson Anthony , Anatomy of Britain (London, 1962); Shanks Michael , The stagnant society (Harmondsworth, 1961); Shonfield Andrew , Modern capitalism: The changing balance of public and private power (London, 1965); and Balogh Thomas , “The apotheosis of the dilettante”, in Thomas Hugh (ed.), The establishment: A symposium (London, 1959), 83–126.

Indeed it has been re-issued with an introduction by a Cambridge intellectual historian: Snow C. P. , The two cultures and the scientific revolution (Cambridge, 1993), with an introduction by Stefan Collini. Originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1959.

Koestler Arthur (ed.), Suicide of a nation (London, 1994).

For example the loss of world leadership, resistance to structural change, the failure to meet aspirations, and the appearance of comparative economic data. See Supple Barry , “Fear of failing: Economic history and the decline of Britain”, Economic history review, lxvii (1994), 441–58; and Tomlinson Jim , The politics of decline: Understanding post-war Britain (London, 2000). Tomlinson sees Snow's declinism as a particular version because of its focus on science: Politics of decline, 24. True, others might be a bit less lyrical specifically about natural science, but the tenor was the same, and science the model. See my “The prophet militant and industrial: The peculiarities of Correlli Barnett”, in Twentieth century British history , ii (1991), 360–79.

For discussion of this definition of declinism, see my Science, technology and the British industrial “decline”, 1870–1970 (Cambridge1, 1996), 3–5.

Thompson E. P. , uses the term in a different sense, that of weeders of official documents: Beyond the frontier: The politics of a failed mission to Bulgaria (Woodbridge, 1997), 14, 20.

For the details of these anti-histories and their impact see Edgerton , Warfare state (ref. 1), chaps. 1, 3, 5 and 7.

Harwood Jonathan , Styles of thought: The German genetics community 1900–1933 (Chicago, 1993), 363.

And he went on: “Anyone who wishes can observe the stupidity of thought, judgement and action shown today in politics, art, religion, and the general problems of life and the world by the ‘men of science’ and behind them, the doctors, engineers, financiers, teachers, and so on.” Ortega y Gasset José , The revolt of the masses (London, 1961; 1st Spanish edn, 1930; 1st English edn, 1932), 86 [transl. anon.].

Distinctions between old-style and new-style intellectuals, the former broad and the latter narrow in their thinking, has been a theme of commentary on the twentieth century. See Whitehead A. N. , Science and the modern world (London, 1975; 1st publ. 1926), 233; Collingwood R. G. , An autobiography (Oxford, 1939); and Mayer Anna-K. , “‘A combative sense of duty’: Englishness and the scientists”, in Lawrence Christopher Mayer Anna-K. (ed.), Regenerating England: Science, medicine and culture in interwar Britain (Amsterdam, 2000), 67–106, espec. pp. 81–83. See also Edgerton , Warfare state (ref. 1), chaps. 3 and 4.

Werskey P. G. , The visible college: A collective biography of British scientists and socialists of the 1930s (London, 1978); McGucken W. , Scientists, society and the state (Columbus, 1984); and Horner D. S. , “Scientists, trade unions and the labour movement policies for science and technology, 1947–1964”, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Aston, 1986. Studies of futuristic literature include discussion of the work of scientific intellectuals, but such studies often place a premium on the supposed prescience of their subjects. See Armytage W. H. G. , Yesterday's tomorrows: A historical survey of future societies (London, 1968); Clarke I. F. , Voices prophesying war: Future wars, 1763–3749, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1992; 1st edn, 1966); and Clarke I. F. , The pattern of expectation: 1763–2001 (London, 1979). For more recent accounts see Pick Daniel , War machine: The rationalisation of slaughter in the machine age (London, 1993); Crook D. P. , Darwinism, history and war: The debate over the biology of war from the “Origin of Species” to the First World War (Cambridge, 1994); and Lawrence Mayer (ed.), Regenerating England (ref. 13).

I take scientific intellectuals to be scientists (overwhelmingly academic scientists) who as a second or parallel career did a good deal of writing on science and society issues, and the large number of men of scientific background who were full time writers/journalists on and for science, such as Lockyer Norman , Gregory Richard , Crowther J. G. Wells H. G. Snow C. P. ,.

Turner Frank M. , “Public science in Britain, 1880–1919”, Isis, Ixxi (1980), 589–608. As I will show, this is no less true of the period after 1918. See also Hull Andrew , “Passports to power: A public rationale for expert influence on central government policy-making: British scientists and economists, c 1900 – c 1925”, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Glasgow, 1994.

Harwood , Styles of thought (ref. 11).

See Edgerton , Warfare state (ref. 1), chaps. 3 and 4.

Hoff Cooper Harry Worked with the Civil Service Commission and later the Atomic Energy Authority, dealing with scientific personnel. He wrote a trilogy: Scenes from provincial life (London, 1950), covering the pre-war period; Scenes from metropolitan life (London, 1982), dealing with the Ministry of Supply after the war; and Scenes from married life (London, 1961), also set in the 1940s. His novel, Memoirs of a new man (London, 1966), set around nuclear power/electricity generation and an Oxbridge college not unlike Churchill College Cambridge, usefully divides the world into three cultures: Scientists (in R&D [research and development]), Engineers, and Administrators. It also makes the point that all three tended to come from similar backgrounds and were not of the old gentry. None wrote, as did the Italian industrial chemist Primo Levi, about technical work as such. For a memoir that is revealing of émigré technical industrialists in Britain, see Sacks Oliver , Uncle tungsten: Memories of a chemical childhood (London, 2001). See also Frayn Michael , The tin men (London, 1965).

Brock W. H. , “C. P. Snow — Novelist or scientist”, Chemistry in Britain, 1988, 345–7.

Spectator, 4 October 1963, 406.

Snow C. P. , The two cultures and a second look (Cambridge 1969), 11. From other data we can conclude that recruits to the scientific civil service after the war were reasonably representative of science graduates. Entrants around 1950 (who were presumably reasonably representative of Snow's sample) were 65% grammar school, and 17% public school; 10% were Oxbridge. PEP (Political and Economic Planning), Graduate employment (London, 1956), Table 42, p. 105.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 13. It is often pointed out that Snow's analysis of the “two cultures” was not at all original. This is certainly right, but it is more important to note that some writers went, as it were, “beyond” the two cultures well before Snow had even published. Roy Lewis and Angus Maude argued that: “So long as the universities persist in turning out scientists so specialised, so ignorant of anything outside a narrow sector of ‘science’ itself as to be totally unaware even that they lack culture, a vast expansion of science faculties may well prove a mixed social blessing.” While the universities should provide vocational training, one should ask whether “they ought to turn out half-baked ‘scientists’ who are largely ignorant of literature and who have but the haziest idea of the historical processes that gave rise to scientific discoveries and of the social and ethical frameworks in which science operates to-day; or whether the lawyer who is ignorant of the structure of science, or the doctor who is a stranger to philosophy are really cultured beings”. Lewis Roy Maude Angus , The English middle class (London, 1949), 243–4.

Denman Roy , The Mandarin's tale (London, 2002), 3.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 9.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 2.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 10. Snow provided no detailed evidence, noting merely that the distribution of schools attended by Fellows of the Royal Society was markedly different from that of the Foreign Service or Queen's Counsel (note 5). The comparison is of course an extreme one.

PEP, Graduate employment (ref. 22), Table 9, p. 32. Some insights are produced by various studies and observations. English grammar schoolboys of the 1960s were famously found to be psychologically different, depending on whether they studied science or arts. Hudson Liam , Contrary imaginations: A psychological study of the English schoolboy (London, 1966).

I remember a senior British scientist (in the 1990s) giving a talk in which figures were presented showing Italy doing more R&D than Britain. To my astonishment a letter to the Times higher educational supplement took up the point not as the obvious absurdity that it was, but as evidence of the decline of British science.

Zuckerman Solly , Monkeys, men and missile: An autobiography, 1946–1980 (London, 1988), 111. I was amused by this part too, as I had made this same argument about the whole declinist literature on British science and technology (British industrial “decline” (ref. 8), 69).

Leavis F. R. , Two cultures? The significance of C. P. Snow, with an essay by Yudkin Michael (London, 1962). The lecture was given in Downing College, Cambridge. The Richmond Lecture was named for the naval historian and strategist Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond, who had been Master of the College. See also the important new work by Ortolano Guy , “Two cultures, one university: The institutional origins of the ‘two cultures’ controversy”, Albion, xxxiv (2002), 606–24; “Human science or a human face? Social history and the ‘two cultures’ controversy”, Journal of British studies, xliii (2004), 482–505; and Leavis F. R. , “Science, and the abiding crisis of modern civilization”, History of science, xxxv (2005), 161–85.

Leavis , Two cultures? (ref. 31), 15.

A neat and much better comparison of fifties intellectuals is due to Jonathan Rée, who compares two overrated lecturers of the time: “If Snow was an emblematic plebeian technocrat … [Isaiah] Berlin was an archetypal cosmopolitan intellectual who had fallen in love with British cultural and political traditions.” Berlin's “Two concepts of liberty” was given in Oxford in 1958. Rée Jonathan , “Talking philosophy”, Prospect, May 2002, 34–37.

Fairlie Henry , “Cults not cultures”, Spectator, 1 November 1963, 554. Fairlie, who is credited with coining the term “The Establishment”, had a nice line in anti-declinism (see his contribution to Koestler , Suicide of a nation (ref. 6)) and debunking the scientists and their propaganda more generally. In one article he said: “He is already a buffoon: Dr Ernest Braindrain, one of Britain's ‘top’ scientists, which he has somehow managed to become while remaining in an obscure or minor post in what we were once allowed to call a provincial university” (Henry Fairlie, “Dr Braindrain — Bon voyage”, Spectator, 21 February 1954, 243). The Spectator was in this period an extremely interesting journal, with a consistent hostility to scientism. Its air correspondent was Oliver Stewart who was essentially nostalgic for a pre-war, smaller and more competitive aircraft industry. The Spectator was not then reactionary or fogeyish. It published Leavis's Richmond Lecture.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 29.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 30. This periodization is unfamiliar to us now, because historians have subsequently pushed back the second industrial revolution to the late nineteenth century.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 23.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 23.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 24.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 33.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 40.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 34–36.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 21.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 18.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 19.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 17.

Snow , Two cultures (ref. 22), 38.

Obituary in the Guardian, 21 December 2004.

Sampson , Anatomy (ref. 4), 227. Sampson's father was an ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) chemist. He noted that “The Ministry of Aviation is much more like ICI than the Home Office, and it employs 3,000 scientists. ICI's board of 22 includes 18 former research scientists”.

Sampson , Anatomy (ref. 4), 227.

See Koestler , Suicide of a nation (ref. 6), 249–53. Apart from Albu, the others were one journalist without higher education, ten Oxford graduates, none studying anything more technical than PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics), and four Cambridge graduates, including an economist and a medical student. Shonfield did not specify, but he was at Oxford. Tomlinson , The politics of decline (ref. 7), 23, tells us that this point was made at the time.

Shonfield , Modern capitalism (ref. 4).

Coleman D. C. , “Gentlemen and players”, Economic history review, xxvii (1973), 92–116, was influential in studies of British business. The key data are challenged in Edgerton , British industrial “decline” (ref. 8), 27. As yet unpublished work by Clive Cohen based on the Dictionary of business biography confirms the importance not only of scientists and engineers amongst the leaders of British industry, but specifically of Oxbridge trained ones.

Thomas Inskip's son Robert (1917–), Lord Caldecote, an Etonian and Cambridge engineer, who served in the navy during the war, was at Greenwich and the Vickers yard on the Tyne after the war, and was a lecturer in engineering at Cambridge, 1948–55. He joined the board of English Electric in 1953 and stayed till 1969, representing the company on the British Aircraft Corporation's board from 1960 to 1969.

Noel Annan claims that Leavis did succeed in destroying Snow's standing as a novelist with “middlebrow opinion”, Our age (London, 1990), 284. This seems doubtful. Annan and Robbins were particularly loathsome to Leavis, as is clear in his essays following up the “two cultures” critique ( Leavis F. R. , Nor shall my sword: Discourses on pluralism, compassion and social hope (London, 1972)). I thank Guy Ortolano for this reference.

In 2002, the fortieth anniversary of the Richmond Lecture was marked in the Guardian newspaper by a pro-Snow piece, which even then argued that Snow was right. See Kettle Martin , “Two cultures still”, Guardian, 2 February 2002. It was noted in Prospect by a ‘plague on both their houses’ reflection, which again misses the significance of Snow. See Wheatcroft Geoffrey , “Two cultures at forty”, Prospect, May 2002, 62–64. Leavis F. R. had long complained, and rightly, that his attack on Snow was misunderstood, and that the misunderstanding revealed the ubiquity of Snow-like analyses (see his Nor shall my sword (ref. 55)). See also Ortolano , op. cit. (ref. 31, 2005).

Wood Neal , Communism and British intellectuals (London, 1959), perceptively observes the use made of operational research (p. 133). See Crowther J. G. Whiddington R. , Science at war (London, 1947); Ministry Air , Origins and development of operational research in the RAF (London, 1963); and Waddington C. H. , OR in World War 2: Operational research against the V-Boat (London, 1973).

Rosenhead Jonathan , “Operational research at the cross-roads: Cecil Gordon and the development of post-war OR”, Journal of the Operational Research Society, xl (1989), 3–28.

Tizard Henry Sir , address to the annual conference of the Institute of Professional Civil Servants, July 1946, reprinted in State service, copy in Tizard Papers, HTT 596, Imperial War Museum. Here he argued that the civil departments were behind, and also argued against the view that Britain needed more research.

Sir Henry Tizard to Chancellor, 8 December 1953, Tizard Papers, HTT696, Imperial War Museum.

For a particularly repellent example see Bronowski Jacob , The ascent of Man (London, 1973). See my discussion in “British scientific intellectuals and the relations of science, technology and war”, in Forman Paul Ron J. M. Sánchez (ed.), National military establishments and the advancement of science: Studies in twentieth-century history (Dordrecht, 1996), 1–35.

Snow C. P. , Science in government (London, 1961), 8–12.

Snow , Science in government (ref. 62), 47.

Blackett P. M. S. , “Science in government”, review of Snow, Science in government, reprinted in Blackett P. M. S. , Studies of war (Edinburgh, 1962), 126. This argument here is congruent with that in the excellent paper by Crook Paul , “Science and war: Radical scientists and the Tizard-Cherwell Area Bombing debate in Britain”, War & society, xii (1994), 69–101, which concentrates on the post-war debates. The paper adds many fascinating details, including J. D. Bernal's involvement. On the significance of naval OR, showing that in itself it was not as important as is usually implied, see Hore Peter (ed), Patrick Blackett: Sailor, scientist, socialist (London, 2003); see especially the contributions by Gardner Jock and by Llewelyn-Jones Malcolm .

Blackett , Studies (ref. 64), 123.

Sherry Michael has noted the importance of this kind of moral thinking about air warfare and nuclear weapons, but comments that decisions “certainly resulted from choices but not from a moment of choice”. Sherry Michael , The rise of American air power: The creation of Armageddon (New Haven, 1987), 363.

Webster C. Frankland N. , The strategic air offensive against Germany (London, 1961), i, 331–6, is a very clear summary of the correspondence between Tizard and Lord Cherwell (as Lindemann became in 1941), in Tizard Papers, HTT 353, Imperial War Museum. For a clear defence of Cherwell against Snow's quite bizarre arguments and insinuations, see Wilson Thomas , Churchill and the Prof (London, 1995).

See Tizard Henry Sir , “Estimates of bombing effect”, 20 April 1942; and Lord Cherwell to Sir Henry Tizard 22 April 1942, in Blackett Papers, D66, Royal Society. Nowhere is there any reference to moral questions. See also Tizard Papers, HTT 353, Imperial War Museum. Tizard and Blackett were arguing in different ways, for the use of bombers against both submarines and enemy merchant ships (Tizard particularly emphasizing the latter), rather than the bombing of land targets, but in the very particular context of early 1942.

Blackett Papers, J44, Royal Society, collects the crucial correspondence and papers from the early 1960s.

Zuckerman Solly , From apes to warlords (London, 1978), 139–48. Zuckerman complains that Lindemann's preliminary analysis of his and Bernal's survey of the effect of bombing, incorrectly claimed that morale was strongly affected by bombing.

Snow C. P. , Postscript to science and government (London, 1962), 27.

Kirby Maurice , Operational research in war and peace (London, 2003) makes clear these aspects of the origins of OR.

Dyson Freeman , “The children's crusade”, in Disturbing the universe (New York 1979), 29–30.

As he wrote in 1947: A new Defence Force “must obviously become more and more dependent on science, and must make it its main business, as the only condition of winning the next war, to exploit the best contemporary weapons that science has to offer, with no more regret when it relinquishes an older weapon than a scientist shows when a hypothesis is exploded, or when he finds a quick and easy method to replace one that was inefficient and laborious” (Marshal of the RAF Sir Arthur Harris, Bomber offensive (London, 1947), 278).

Balchin Nigel , The small back room (London, 1962; 1st publ. 1943), 26–27. The Powell and Pressburger film of 1949 is wonderful.

Balchin , Small back room (ref. 75), 84–85.

He was also Lord President of the Council, 1960–64, the senior post which traditionally carried responsibility for the research councils. Hailsham's grandfather, also Quintin Hogg, had founded the Regent Street Polytechnic (now part of the University of Westminster).

Hailsham Lord , Science and politics (London, 1963), 13.

Hailsham , Science and politics (ref. 78), 33.

Hailsham , Science and politics (ref. 78), 59.

See his comments in “Two cultures”, Encounter, xiii (1959), 61–64; reprinted in Green Marjorie (ed.), Knowing and being: Essays by Michael Polanyi (London, 1969). I thank Guy Ortolano for this reference.

Vig Norman J. , Science and technology in British politics (Oxford, 1968), is good on this.

“Shadow and substance”, Spectator, 11 October 1963. The periodical then had a wide range of writers, including Jenkins Roy . See his Life at the centre (London, 1991), 117–18.

Rose Hilary Rose Steven , “The radicalisation of science”, Socialist register 1972, 117–18.

See Chun Lin , The British New Left (Edinburgh, 1993); Kenny Michael , The first New Left: British intellectuals after Stalin (London, 1995); and Dworkin Dennis , Cultural marxism in post-war Britain: History, the New Left, and the origins of cultural studies (Durham NC, 1997).

Anderson Perry , “Components of the national culture”, New Left review, no. 50, July-August 1968, 11.

“The origins of the present crisis”, New Left review , no. 23, January-February 1964.

Thompson E. P. , “The peculiarities of the English” (1965), reprinted in The poverty of theory (London, 1978), 35–91, p. 57.

Thompson , “Peculiarities of the English” (ref. 88), 56.

See his Innocence and design (London, 1986).

Brittain Samuel , “Lessons of Iraqgate”, Financial times, 23 November 1992.

Philip Prince is often found as a signatory to congratulatory prefaces to books about the aircraft industry. In the 1950s Prince Philip, in an echo of Victoria's consort, became the “Prince Albert of the jet age”, playing a big role stressing the importance of science and technology for Britain's future. See Weight Richard , Patriots: National identity in Britain 1940–2000 (London, 2002), 236.

Fedden Roy , Britain's air survival: An appraisement and strategy for success (London, 1957); see also the papers of Barnes Wallis, Science Museum Library. See, generally, my England and the aeroplane (London, 1991).

His biographer points out that he spoke in support of a Conservative candidate in 1955, and of another in 1964, and that on both occasions his comments were widely reported in the press on election day. The biographer notes that in 1964 he wrote an “open letter to the voters of Smethwick which was a fierce attack on the Labour candidate, Patrick Gordon-Walker”: Golley John , Whittle: The true story (Shrewsbury, 1987), 210–11. Golley does not say that Gordon-Walker lost due to a viciously racist campaign, which remains notorious. The Tory victor, Peter Griffiths, was famously called a “parliamentary leper” by Harold Wilson, and he lost his seat in 1966.

Barnes Wallis Papers, BNW H25, Science Museum Library. See also Morpurgo J. E. , Barnes Wallis (London, 1972), chap. 17.

Moss John , The scientific revolution (London, 1967), 53.

He gave a lecture to the far right-wing Monday Club in the very late 1960s. “Is there any hope that you will once more be willing to address the Monday Club?… we all remember your wonderful lecture two years ago”, Meetings Secretary, Monday Club to Sir Barnes Wallis, 22 March 1971, BNW H82, Science Museum Library. Wallis agreed but later had to cancel. The biography mentions nothing of this.

Werskey P. G. , The visible college (London, 1978); Horner David , “The road to Scarborough: Wilson, Labour and the scientific revolution”, in Coopey R. Fielding S. Tiratsoo N. (ed.), The Wilson governments 1964–1970 (London, 1993), 48–71; Horner David , “Scientists, trade unions and Labour Movement policies for science and technology: 1947–1964”, Ph.D. dissertation, Aston University, 1986; and Steward Fred Wield David , “Science, planning and the state”, in McLennan G. (ed.), State and society in contemporary Britain (Cambridge, 1984), 176–203.

Sherwood Roy , Superpower Britain (Cambridge, 1989).

See Goldsmith Maurice Mackay Alan (eds), The science of science (London, 1964).

Bloor David , Knowledge and social imagery (London, 1976), p. ix. See also Mulkay M. , Sociology of science: A sociological pilgrimage (Milton Keynes, 1991), p. xv.

See Edgerton , British industrial “decline” (ref. 8) and Warfare state (ref. 1).

See Edgerton , Warfare state (ref. 1), chap. 6 for this analysis of the Ministry of Technology.