The Rich and the Poor

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• Professor Philip Kitcher FBA (Columbia University)
• Tuesday 07 March 2023, 18:00-19:15
• The Yusuf Hamied Theatre, Christ's College.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Clare Kitcat.

The C P Snow lecture will be given by Christ’s Honorary Fellow, Professor Philip Kitcher in the Yusuf Hamied Theatre on Tuesday 7 March.

C P Snow was a Fellow of Christ’s College and, in memory of his contributions, a lecture was endowed in his name some years ago by an admirer, with the aim of bridging the division between the humanities and the sciences. As Snow argued in the first part of his 1959 Rede Lecture, ‘The Two Cultures’, this division is a major barrier to solving the world’s problems.

“The Rich and the Poor” was C.P. Snow’s original title for his Rede Lecture (“The Two Cultures”). In reflecting on the lecture, Snow claimed that the second half of the lecture, in which he emphasized the obligations of the rich to the poor, sounded his principal themes. But Snow’s vision of a world in which the advances of science would greatly reduce or even eliminate poverty has not been realized. Avoiding politics, he had simply assumed that the benefits of knowledge would automatically flow to areas of deprivation.

Others have seen more clearly the need for socio-political institutions through which poverty might be remedied. The subsequent developments of global capitalism have not, however, lived up to Snow’s predictions. This lecture will review successes and failures, offer an approach to human development, and argue that current institutions are not only inadequate to deliver what is needed, but also at odds with the conditions of ethical life. Possibly also inimical to the human future on our planet.

This talk is part of the C P Snow series.

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• C P Snow
• The Yusuf Hamied Theatre, Christ's College

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