p The idea that the natural and social sciences are today influencing people’s minds, world outlook, moral and aesthetic consciousness as never before runs through all Western works dealing with the future of mankind.

p Many eminent writers, scientists and public figures in the West are increasingly drawing attention to the growing divergence between the old culture of the “humanities” and the new culture which is growing up today as a product of 307 the scientific and technological revolution. A corresponding lack of understanding and alienation is developing between the “two intelligentsias" belonging to each of these cultures. This, in their opinion, is fraught with serious consequences for mankind in the future.

p The eminent French physicist Louis de Broglie urges people to overcome the alienation between the culture of those who are connected with science and technology and those who are called on not only to enrich the human cultural heritage of the past, but to create a new culture.  [307•1 

p In a report delivered to the Royal Society in 1964 and entitled “Motives and Aims of the Scientist" Fred Hoyle attacked the so-called separate culture of the scientists. “In the early years of the century the second culture did not exist,” he said. “There was then no sensible difference between the inspirations of the scientist and those of the musician, the writer, and the artist.... I believe it is potentially far more dangerous to science than it is to the humanities. The future ... will depend much more on the environment in which the scientist is called on to operate than it will on the scientist himself.” He concludes: “I suspect that if there are two cultures, as I agree today there are, then tomorrow there will be no culture at all."  [307•2 

p This idea of Hoyle’s reflects the social contradictions in the capitalist world, where the prevalence of a narrow businesslike approach and the absence of creative ideas common to the whole of society frequently lead scientists to a kind of moral bankruptcy, to attempts to create their own “culture”. As John Bernal has pointed out “the retreat to an ivory tower in science is in many cases simply an escape from the general meaninglessness and purposelessness of life in a world where the only prospect is destruction. Constructive social purpose carries with it emotional sanctions and satisfactions which we in this selfish civilisation have lost much to our detriment."  [307•3 

p Grey Walter sees the narrow specialisation of scientists and technologists as yet another danger to the future of mankind—the spiritual impoverishment of scientists and 308 a hostile attitude towards them on the part of all those who are not directly connected with science and technology. “Continuation of the sectarian process of specialisation could only lead to one result, the creation of an irresponsible scientific priesthood, preoccupied entirely with its liturgy and its mysteries; and, in due course, to a popular revulsion from scientific knowledge and a slump of scientific credit that would usher in a dark age as vicious and prolonged as the aftermath of an atomic war,” he writes.  [308•1 

p The English scientist A. Standon also writes with great alarm about the turning of science into a “sacred cow”. He notes that it is necessary to bar the way of abusing the might of science, the conversion of people into nonentities and the adaptation of them to some scientific-synthetic happiness.  [308•2 

p Developing the same idea, the well-known French writer Vercors in an address at a conference in Royaumont expressed the fear that under the influence of modern science and technology a “practical ethic" would prevail capable of “enclosing” human intelligence in itself, in an immense contentment with itself which could lead us, one day, to a new savageness of the spirit. “...The need for limiting research to increasingly narrow fields is already leading many young researchers to shut themselves up in their specialities ... to despise the other spiritual activities.... This is already resulting in a number of fields in the beginning of sclerosis, the suffocation of research."  [308•3 

The problem of the “two cultures”, the contradictions between science and bourgeois culture, the danger of succeeding generations turning against science and the threat for mankind of falling into spiritual savagery are indeed becoming increasingly urgent problems in capitalist society. As one of the clearest manifestations of the social contradictions rending this society, the growing feeling of protest against the spiritual impoverishment which is spreading to wider and wider sectors of the bourgeois intelligentsia is becoming an important factor in the ideological struggle, a factor which is undermining the ideological foundations of the capitalist world.