"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

Albert Einstein

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"Project 2C"


WHAT IS "PROJECT 2C"?
By Yves Messer


2C is an acronym for “Two Cultures”.

“The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution” was the title of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture given at the University of Cambridge (England) by British physicist, chemist and novelist Charles Percy Snow (1905-1980). His thesis was that the breakdown of communication between two apparently antagonist poles, "two cultures" in modern society — the sciences and the humanities — was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems.

He stated:
I believe the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups. Two polar groups: at one pole we have the literary intellectuals, who incidentally while no one was looking took to referring to themselves as 'intellectuals' as though there were no others. […] Literary intellectuals at one pole- at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension-sometimes (particularly among the young) hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding. They have a curious distorted image of each other. Their attitudes are so different that, even on the level of emotion, they can't find much common ground.  

He, however, warned:
The number 2 is a very dangerous number: that is why the dialectic is a dangerous process. Attempts to divide anything into two ought to be regarded with much suspicion.

But, there is light at the end of the tunnel:
The clashing point of two subjects, two disciplines, two cultures of two galaxies, so far as that goes ought to produce creative chances. In the history of mental activity that has been where some of the breakthroughs came. The chances are there now. But they are there, as it were, in a vacuum, because those in the two cultures can't talk to each other. It is bizarre how very little of twentieth-century science has been assimilated into twentieth-century art.

…this is why he suggested a solution of a mediating ‘third culture’ in his 1964 book The Two Cultures and a Second Look.

Project 2C does not look for a “third culture” solution but instead seeks to contribute to a dialogue to bridge that gulf between the two existing poles (arts/humanities and sciences), to create a place (an agora, a forum, a platform) where artists inspired by Science’s discoveries could meet with scientists inspired by Art’s creations; a special place where a fruitful dialogue between these “two poles” could take place.

As a forum it is open to all contributions in any form, language or shape to the debate.

I believe that a dialogue between Science and Arts is essential (and beneficial) to our society.
But I do not know whether such a dialogue is possible.

Project 2C is, therefore, an experiment.