The relations—or lack of relations—between the humanities and the natural sciences has been a subject of long-standing debate and disagreement, perhaps since as far back as the “scientific revolution” of the early modern period.

More than 60 years ago, British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow famously took up and codified that debate, lamenting that the humanities and natural sciences had become so distant and detached from each other that they effectively constituted “two cultures” separated by a “gulf of mutual incomprehension” and “hostility.”

Today, the question of the relations or distances between the humanities and the natural sciences seems once again newly urgent. Ours is a moment in public discourse when both the humanities and sciences are subject to increasing scrutiny and even attack, a moment within the academy when colleges and universities are investing in the sciences and divesting from the humanities, a moment when the University of Oregon is completing the final stage of the Knight Campus for Accelerating Scientific Impact while shrinking humanities departments, and a moment when the Oregon Humanities Center is celebrating its 40th anniversary.

In response to these enduring debates and more recent developments, and as part of our 40th anniversary theme of Humanities Matter(s), the OHC has invited three UO humanities faculty whose scholarship engages the natural sciences in various ways to talk about their work across the divide between the “two cultures” and why that work matters: why it is important for humanists to study the sciences, to work with scientists, and to interrogate the two cultures’ divide, especially in this moment.

Join us for the “Science and the Humanities” faculty panel discussion on Tuesday, April 23, 2024 at 3 p.m. in the Knight Library Browsing Room

Vera Keller, Professor and Department Head of History, is a historian of early modern Europe particularly interested in the emergence of experimental science and the entanglements of research with capitalism, colonialism, and political economy and more broadly in the history of knowledge, of research, and of the research disciplines.

Nicolae Morar is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy, and associate member of the UO Institute for Ecology and Evolution. Professor Morar’s research interests lie at the intersection of biology, ecology, and bioethics. His work considers how various conceptual analyses in the philosophy of biology and ecology influence and transform debates in bioethics, and in ethics broadly construed.

Cera Smith is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Black Studies. Professor Smith’s research focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. Black literature, Black Studies, and the health humanities. Their current book project analyzes how and why U.S. Black artists use biology to depict racialized life.

The panel discussion is free and open to the public and will be livestreamed: youtube.com/@ISMediaServicesUO.