Far from believing science is one culture and the humanities and the arts are a very different culture, scientists, humanists and artists are fundamentally engaged in the same enterprise, said former Cornell Provost Don Randel, a musicologist and president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Oct. 14 in Lincoln Hall.

This enterprise is at the heart of what universities are all about, said Randel, speaking on "The Place of Arts in a Research University."

The "two cultures" idea stems from British scientist and novelist C.P. Snow's 1959 lecture at Cambridge titled "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" said Randel, who served 32 years on Cornell's faculty, and as provost 1995-2000, when he left to become president of the University of Chicago.

However, "Snow believed that the other culture, the culture of the literary intellectuals, was preventing science and technology from doing what was so obviously needed. This was not to just identify two cultures but to mount a serious attack on the humanities and the arts," said Randel.

"We have been left with the phrase 'the two cultures' to convey that the sciences on the one hand and the humanities and the arts on the other constitute separate cultures that are different by their very nature and thus do not always play well together," said Randel. "Various remedies have been proposed."

These include liberal arts curricula that require students to undertake some study in both cultures, said Randel. However, this solution recognizes the humanities and the sciences as well as the social sciences but leaves out the arts altogether.

"The distribution requirements of liberal arts curriculums do not serve either of the supposed two cultures very well," said Randel. "Both cultures overstate or simply misstate their claims. These claims promise much more than can be delivered in a couple of courses."

To ensure that the arts are a crucial part of the intellectual fabric of the institution, Randel said, "We must vigorously assert that we are all one in the pursuit of the mind." We need to demonstrate that we are all one in spirit, that "the arts are not mere amusement, that the humanities are not idle pursuits of the obscure, that the sciences and social sciences are not simply of practical utility." This will require an active collaboration of the cultures, said Randel.

Colleges and universities must be committed, above all else, to fanning whatever flame there is still in them when these collaborations arise, Randel said, and to light one when it is in danger of being permanently suffocated.

Randel concluded with the idea that we need a sustained collaboration between the two cultures.

"Physics cannot only be for physics majors. And music cannot only be for music majors. Architecture should be for everyone, since it combines art and science and human behavior and history and thinking and making as nothing else does," said Randel. "There are not two cultures ... but only one, and that's us, all of us."

The talk was presented by Cornell's Musicology Colloquium Lecture Committee and the Department of Music.

Dorothy Chan '12 is an intern writer for the Cornell Chronicle.