2.3.1 Buckminster Fuller in his Utopia or Oblivion (1969) alludes to being instrumental in changing Snow's mind about the chasm between the humanities and sciences by engaging him in his thinking process on mapping nature's co-ordinate system. Although he conceded that the chasm indeed exists and related his own battles throughout his lifetime, Fuller consciously worked on bridging this gap. For instance, he fought many battles while working for Fortune magazine from 1938 to 1940 as the technical advisor to the editors. Whenever he attempted to report the scientific content of industrial enterprises to Fortune readers in words, the scientists within those industries told him he would be unable to do so. They said science is entirely mathematical and unless Fortune readers read mathematics, there would be no way to explain their scientific formulations. But, he was convinced that science is not a separate department from nature and made it his mission to prove them wrong.

2.3.2 Fuller related to Snow that the break was not due to the antipathy on the part of the literati, but rather to a fundamental event that occurred in the world of science in the mid-nineteenth century. This was after Faraday discovered electrical behaviours, and the work of Maxwell and Hertz indicated existence of invisible electromagnetic waves-waves going through the walls and through each other without interference with one another. Scientists were able to deal with these invisible phenomena in beautifully neat mathematical answers. "They found themselves doing very well without seeing what was going on." (Fuller, 1965, pp 81-84) But literary circles who were trying to relate this new electrical energy to their audiences used familiar analogies to explain invisible behaviour. For instance, the concept of a current of water running through a pipe as analogous to electricity running through a wire was employed. Scientists felt that electricity had nothing to do with the properties of water and disliked the analogies of literati. From then on they moved away from physical models and towards instruments, forcing the literati to further make their own interpretations. It is relatively recent that models came back into the scientific process, through visualisation utilising computer technology.

2.3.3 Fuller goes at length about all that he related to Snow about his thinking of how to solve the problem of nature's co-ordinate system and how he arrived at the tetrahedron-octahedron complex. He posed the following question: "Can we make realistic, multidimensional, visible, tangible models of equilength vectors all running into each other at the same angle?" He intuited that it might be possible to generalise Avogadro, who researched universal patterns of gases and hypothesised that "all elements under identical conditions of energy may disclose the same number of something per given volume." He experimented with geometry and found that the vector-edged octahedron with the same length edge as the vector-edged tetrahedron had a volume four times the tetrahedron. Fuller concluded that if you make a model of a cube with rubber joints, it collapses; it is completely unstable, and that a triangle is the only structurally stable polygon. A tetrahedron is the most fundamental of all structures: "There are only three basically stable omintriangulated, omnisymmetrical structures‹the octahedron, the tetrahedron, and the icosahedron. Each is a basic system because each is stable and symmetrically subdivides the universe into two parts: all of the universe inside and all of the universe outside the system." (Fuller,1969, pg. 95) He claimed that much of his work was thinking-feeling, intuitive and not based on "an accomplished, mathematically coordinate, generalised-experience system." (1969, pg.89) and summarised to Snow that: "all of nature's formulating is tetrahedronally coordinate." (1969, pg. 103) In short, Fuller was very proactive in trying to prove to Snow that there is hope in bridging the Two Cultures, and according to his account, he was successful.

2.3.4 Fuller quotes Snow, a scientist, as saying, "From what you have related to me, I am inclined to agree with you; in fact, this information happens at a very strategic moment in my life." It is not clear how much Fuller influenced a shift in Snow¹s thinking about the cultural divide, but in the second edition of The Two Cultures, in 1963, Snow added a new essay, "The Two Cultures: A Second Look." In that essay he suggested that a new "Third Culture" would emerge and close the gap between literary intellectuals and scientists. (Snow, 1963, pg. 53) It is significant to note that Snow originally named his lecture "The Rich and the Poor" and intended this to be the centre of his argument: "Before I wrote the lecture I thought of calling it 'The Rich and the Poor,' and I rather wish I hadn't changed my mind." (Snow, 1964, pg. 79) He remained dissatisfied with the Two Culture concept and had on several occasions tried to refine the claim. In his last public statement he makes clear that the larger global and economic issues remain central and urgent: "Peace. Food. No more people than the Earth can take. That is the cause." (Snow, 1968, pg. 220) [top]