The two cultures of cities

Juval Portugali

Chapter 7 in The Second Urban Revolution, 2025, pp 185-201 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: One of the most famous observations in the history of science is Snow's thesis about “The Two Cultures” – the culture of the sciences and scientists and the culture of the arts, humanities, and the “literary intellectuals,” as Snow referred to the proponents of this second culture. Chapter 7 firstly traces that the origin of these two cultures in the tension between Descartes's science and Vico's New Science in the 18th century. Secondly, it demonstrates that the study of, and discourse on, cities fluctuates between these two cultures of science: the first attempting to describe and understand the city from the viewpoint of the hard sciences versus interpretations that commence from the perspective of the humanities and social sciences. Thirdly, it explores the potential for their unification.

Keywords: The two cultures; Descartes; Vico; Hybrid complex systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035350117
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035350124.00016 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:24112_8

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().