C.P. Snow于1959年5月7日在剑桥大学发表讲座《两种文化与科学革命》，在知识界引发了一场持久而深刻的论战1。Snow在讲座中提出，科学家和文学知识分子构成两个相互隔绝的文化群体，并主张科学家在道德上更为优越，而文学知识分子则是"天然卢德分子"1。这一观点迅速引起广泛关注，美国参议员肯尼迪甚至称其为"我曾阅读过的最具挑衅性的讨论之一"1。
Snow的论述招致了剑桥文学批评家F.R. Leavis的猛烈抨击。Leavis在1962年2月的Richmond讲座中，将Snow称为"智识虚无"和"傲慢无知"，并创造"技术工具理性主义"一词来批评Snow所代表的分析理性主义1。Leavis坚持认为，伟大文学的核心在于"生命"这一内在本质，但他拒绝将其进行学理定义，认为定义本身就构成了误解1。两人的对峙反映了关于现代性的根本分歧——科学理性与人文精神的永恒张力。
Snow于1964年被册封为男爵，其座右铭为"Aut Inveniam Viam aut Faciam"（我将开辟道路或创造道路）1。尽管获得了这一荣誉，Snow曾抱怨Leavis的批评妨碍了他获得诺贝尔奖的机会1。这场论战成为了20世纪知识分子思想世界中关于文化身份与社会价值的经典之争。
C.P. Snow delivered a landmark lecture at Cambridge on May 7, 1959, titled "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution," in which he argued that scientists and literary intellectuals constituted two mutually isolated cultural spheres 1. Snow contended that scientists possessed moral superiority over their counterparts in the humanities, whom he characterized as "natural Luddites" 1.
The lecture provoked intense scholarly response, most notably from F.R. Leavis, who delivered a scathing counterattack during a Richmond lecture in 1962 1. Leavis denounced Snow as an "intellectual nullity" and "portentously ignorant," rejecting Snow's theoretical framework entirely 1. Rather than accepting Snow's binary division, Leavis articulated his own critique by coining the term "technologico-Benthamism" to describe what he saw as Snow's reductive analytical rationalism 1. At the heart of Leavis's defense of literature lay his insistence that "life"—the vital essence of great writing—represented something that could not and should not be formally defined, as definition itself constituted a fundamental misreading 1.
The dispute reflected a deeper philosophical tension about modernity's direction. Snow's vision championed technological progress as a moral imperative, positioning science as the path forward, while Leavis warned against the destruction of humanistic vitality through instrumental reason 1. The controversy extended beyond academic circles; American Senator Kennedy called Snow's lecture "one of the most provocative discussions that I have ever read" 1. Snow's professional trajectory afterward included his elevation to a baronetcy in 1964, when he adopted the Latin motto "Aut Inveniam Viam aut Faciam"—"I shall find a way or make one" 1. Later, Snow expressed bitter sentiment that Leavis's criticism had cost him a Nobel Prize 1.
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