ICTS AND SOCIETY: THE SALZBURG APPROACH - ICT&S

ICTs and Society: The Salzburg Approach
Sciences with the words: “The law and the event remain to exist alongside one another
as the final, incommensurable forms of our notions about the world” (Windelband
1894, translated by Mos 1998). Also in the 1880ies T.H. Huxley and Matthew
Arnold had a controversy about the relation between scientists and literary intellectuals.
For T.H. Huxley, a biologist who taught Darwinian Evolution Theory, the natural
sciences were more important than any other discipline within the arts and humanities
because for him culture was nothing but nature. In his lecture ”Science
and Culture“ T.H. Huxley said: “Mr. Arnold tells us that the meaning of culture is ‘to
know the best that has been thought and said in the world.’ [... But...] culture certainly
means something quite different from learning or technical skill“ (Huxley 1880,
online). Matthew Arnold, one of the leading literates and intellectuals in Victorian
England, was convinced that culture means something else than nature. For him it
was more important to have at least some knowledge of Greek, Roman, and Eastern
Antiquity (see Arnold 1882, online).
In the late 1950ies Snow reflected the Two Cultures in science. For him it was
dangerous to have two cultures, which are not able or willing to communicate. “In a
time when science is determining much of our destiny [...] it is dangerous in the
most practical terms. Scientists can give bad advice and decision-makers can’t know
whether it is good or bad” (Snow 1998a, 98). The solution to such a dangerous
distinctions should be a “third culture”, as Snow pointed out in his second essay
“The Two Cultures: A Second Look”, which was published in 1963. Snow’s second
essay ends with the words: ”With good fortune, however, we can educate a large
proportion of our better minds so that they are not ignorant of imaginative experience,
both in the arts and in science, nor ignorant either of the endowments of
applied science, of the remediable suffering of most of their fellow humans, and of
the responsibilities which, once they are seen, cannot be denied” (Snow 1998b,
100).
The notion of the Third Culture is very popular in today’s scientific world. John
Brockman, a US-American publisher and author, used this term as the title of his
anthology ”The Third Culture – Beyond the Scientific Revolution“ (1995), in which he
refers to Snow’s Third Culture: ”Although I borrow Snow’s phrase, it does not describe
the third culture he predicted“ (Brockman 1995, 18). Whereas Snow demanded
a culture in which scientists and literary intellectuals were able and willing
to communicate with each other, Brockman’s “third-culture thinkers are the new
public intellectuals“, who are ”communicating their thoughts to the public and to
one another“ (Brockman 1995, 18 and 20). The Third Culture is according to
Brockman ”founded on the realization of the import of complexity, of evolution.
Very complex systems – whether organisms, brains, the biosphere, or the universe
itself – were not constructed by design: all have evolved“ (Brockman 1995, 20-21).
Brockman’s attempt is not sufficient for the concept of an emerging Third Culture,
as he is only referring to “scientists and other thinkers in the empirical world“
(Brockman 1995, 19). He fosters the distinction between the natural sciences and
the humanities by only considering sciences that employ analytical and empirical
methods.
For some researchers the Third Culture means disciplines that cannot be classified
as either belonging to the natural science or to the humanities. E.g. Wolf Lepenies
(2002) argues in such a way; he sees sociology as a mediating science, the social
Hofkirchner | Fuchs | Raffl | Schafranek | Sandoval | Bichler 8