The third culture: C.P. Snow revisited

As an historian of modern technology who has both taught and taught with engineers for two decades, I am repeatedly dismayed by the lackluster contemporary public image of engineers held, not only by the general American public, but also by many nonengineers in our universities, governments, and industries. Respectable and reliable though they may be, engineers are invariably associated with conservatism not only in their politics and their behavior but also, and more important, in their work. The author Snow recognized that engineering is in fact a third culture separate from the two he focused upon: science and the humanities (Snow, 1960).