Week 1: Between Two Cultures

The readings for this week, Vesna's "Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between" and Snow's "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution" reflected phenomena I have experienced my entire life. It was interesting to have the observations I have made be taken from abstract observations to concrete, well-articulated articles.

A mesh of Iran and the United State's flags.

Growing up as an Iranian-American, I constantly felt torn between two cultures. Though I was immersed in an "American" atmosphere in public, within my home, I was fully Persian. The dichotomy between my two cultures has been difficult to overcome at times. This is due to the markedly different moral foundations of Iranian and American culture. For example, while American culture emphasizes independence and a sense of 'go with the flow,' Iranian culture emphasizes family and responsibility.



Upon entering college, I found myself again battling between two cultures: science and art. At UCLA, I found there to be a prominent divide between the sciences and the arts, despite the fact that as an avid artist and lover of biology, these two things had always merged in my mind.

An example of my art that merges science
(in this case anatomy and psychology) with art.

As a biology major and anthropology minor, I have had the rare chance to experience both UCLA's North and South campus. This led me to a discovery that was reflected in John Brackmen's, "The Third Culture"; that studying science and humanities together enabled me to understand both subjects on a much deeper level.

CityLab at UCLA's artistic logo

As someone who loved aspects of both of these cultures, I immersed myself in CityLab, a club at UCLA that meshes sciences education with innovative and interactive PowerPoint presentations. This club epitomizes the emergence of the Third Culture. The group is composed of a bunch of creative science majors who use art and popular culture to explain to high school students how complex scientific concepts, such as DNA replication and mutations, occur.


Though the divide between the sciences and the arts is prominent, I feel that at UCLA and throughout the world, we can see the Third Culture beginning to arise. Scientists more and more are using art and animated videos to communicate their discoveries to the general public, and artists are using scientific theories and technology to create their artwork. I am excited to see what the future holds.

Scientists paint microbes onto Petri dishes to create beautiful art

References:

Snow, C. P. Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. Reading. 1959. New York: Cambridge UP, 1961. Print.

Vesna, Victoria. “Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between.” Leonardo 34.2 (2001): 121-25. Web.

Higgins, Patricia J.. “Interviewing Iranian Immigrant Parents and Adolescents”. Iranian Studies 37.4 (2004): 695–706. Web.

Unknown. Image of the American and Iranian flags merged together. Photograph. 2012. <http://www.politicspa.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/U.S.-Iran.jpg>

Brockman, John. The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution. London: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Print.

CityLab at UCLA. Logo of CityLab at UCLA. Photograph. 2009. < http://static.wixstatic.com/media/f94d49_1e1e78cc6f88432f8fbff75bdd853741.jpg_srz_486_163_85_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_jpg_srz>

CNN. Scientists paint with bacteria to make art. Photograph. 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/21/health/petri-dish-art-irpt/>