​The Two Cultures and the Contemporary Crisis in the Humanities

​Join us for an evening dialogue with Debashish Banerji and Jacob Sherman, where they will discuss the widening gulf between the sciences and the humanities, exploring whether and how these "two cultures" might be bridged in our contemporary moment.

​​Audience Q&A will follow.

​​The schedule, description, and bios are below.

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​Schedule

​​5:30 pm: Arrival + Refreshments
6:00 – 7:00 pm: Event Time 
7:00 – 7:30 pm: Q&A

​​Description

​Many today are speaking or writing about the contemporary crisis in the humanities, but this, in fact, is no surprise given the increasing gulf between the sciences and the arts since the nineteenth century. In his Rede Lecture titled "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution," delivered in 1959, Sir C.P. Snow acknowledges this gulf and appeals for its overcoming through curriculum change and individual practice. Much water has passed under the bridge since then, but the gap has, if anything, grown more unbridgeable. This talk and conversation will consider the history of the modern humanities in this context, moving from modernism to postmodernism and now to the posthumanities. Through this consideration, the participants will ask the question: can the two cultures be bridged, and if so, under what conditions?

​Guest Bio

​Debashish Banerji, PhD, is the Haridas Chaudhuri Professor of Indian Philosophies and Cultures and the Doshi Professor of Asian Art at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), San Francisco. He also chairs the department of East-West Psychology of that university. He has authored and edited several books on figures of "the Bengal Renaissance,” critical posthumanism, integral yoga psychology, and on creative and art-related projects. He has curated exhibitions of Indian and Japanese art and has written and produced a documentary film, Darshan: The Living Art of India (2018). A monograph Time-Steps of the Cosmic Horse: The Contemplative Philosophy of the Great Forest (Brihadāraṇyaka) Upaniṣad and a co-edited volume Posthumanism and India: A Critical Cartography, are his latest published book projects. He is presently working on a monograph on a theoretical approach to Indian art, Visual Imagination of India: History, Theory, Method.