Bridging the gap between science and humanities.

It has become a commonplace to mention C.P. Snow's The Two Cultures seminal work when discussing the often difficult relations between the sciences and the humanities. Wilson offers a possible solution that may help us bridge the gap:

There is only one way to unite the great branches of learning and end the culture wars. It is to view the boundary between the scientific and literary cultures not as a territorial line but as a broad and mostly unexplored terrain awaiting cooperative entry form both sides. (...) The two cultures share the following challenge. We know that virtually all of human behavior is transmitted by culture. We also know that biology has an important effect on the origin of culture and its transmission. The question remaining is how biology and culture interact, and in particular how they interact across all societies to create the commonalities of human nature.

(Edward O. Wilson: p. 126)

Removing the "territorial lines" between the two is, obviously, not so easy, especially taking into account that plenty of people's livelihoods depend precisely on these boundaries. Yet, Wilson is absolutely right. The divide cannot be bridged by having one side or the other claim final victory. The debate has already lasted long enough for us to realize that they both have a point. We cannot understand the human being and our surroundings without resorting to both types of knowledge. The task now ought to be finding out how they interact with each other which will inevitably require the work of "synthesizers", people with the ability to speak both languages. That is the challenge we have in front of us, and we'd better make sure we start introducing that idea into our schools.