Bohr, Nils

Typed letter signed ("Nils Bohr"), 1 page (11 x 8 1/8 in.; 280 x 205 mm) on letterhead of the Universitetets Institut for Teoretisk Fysik, Copenhagen, 10 December 1959, to Henry Strutz in New York City; two tiny tears at top and bottom edge. Green cloth folding-case, gilt-stamped title label on spine.

Bohr on the "Two Cultures". Written in response to a letter from a lecturer in German at the City College of New York, who had asked him to comment on the decline of the humanities, the great physicist's reply clearly responds to the ideas of C.P. Snow, whose essay on the breakdown of communication between the sciences and the humanities was first published in 1956: "... the dire prophecies of the state of humanities in today's scientific age appear to me as to many others to reflect a lack of appreciation of both the tradition of humanistic studies and of the characteristics of scientific research. Any serious study of our position as regards e[n]quiry of the nature to which we belong as well as of human relations emphasizes the unity of knowledge, but of course it is in this respect essential that historians and humanists do not close their eyes towards the epistemological lessons which often originate in the study of simpler fields like mathematics and the physical and biological sciences."