Week 1 Blog

Two Cultures

Growing up, I had always found myself struggling with, although I didn’t know it yet, C.P. Snow's idea of two cultures. I could never decide whether I was more inclined towards studying math and natural sciences, or the humanities. I had also never considered myself a particularly “creative” mind, but that was before I began to realize that creativity has multiple meanings. However, I had never considered that the reason I thought that was due to the segregated education system. As someone that takes mostly math and science based classes here at UCLA, I noticed after watching the lectures how I’m almost always on the south side of campus, whereas my friends taking more humanities and art based classes spend more time on the north side. This split of UCLA's campus shows how the education system has normalized stereotyping students based on areas of study and perceived strengths, instead of attempting to integrate the two cultures of natural science and humanities.  


Broad Art Center at UCLA

By taking this class, I hope to better understand how the communication of two cultures and the emergence of the “Third Culture” can impact the way we understand art, science, and technology. David Bohm’s “On Creativity” began to alter my perspective on what a creative mind truly is, and I am starting to realize that artists and scientists may not be as different as they seem, and that contrary to what many people may believe, that artists do have important contributions to make to science and the technological world, and that it is possible to be invested in the education of both humanities and sciences, regardless of what educators or school systems may try to prevent or tell children/teenagers as they go through school being tested and labelled based on what their perceived strengths are.

Math Sciences Building at UCLA



















The "left-brain" versus the "right brain"





















Links:

Bohm, D. "On Creativity." JSTOR. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2013.
Snow, C. P., and Stefan Collini. The Two Cultures. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
theRSAorg. “RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigms.” YouTube, YouTube, 14 Oct. 
Vesna, Victoria. "Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between." Leonardo. 34 (2001): 121-125.  

Print.

Wilson, Stephen. “Myths and Confusion in Thinking about Art/Science/Technology.”







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