On 7 May 1959, C.P. Snow delivered his now famous Rede Lecture, ‘The two cultures’. Building on an article he had published a few years earlier in the New Statesman, Snow bemoaned the growing divide between the sciences and the humanities. His thesis, later expanded in the 1961 book The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, sparked wide debate and inspired repeated calls to bridge what many saw as a defining rift in twentieth-century intellectual life.
Convinced that the estrangement of the two cultures now constituted a crisis, in May 1967 the little-known Jesuit philosopher Enrico Cantore wrote to Werner Heisenberg, one of the leading physicists of the twentieth century, asking whether he might visit him to discuss the philosophical questions arising from modern physics. Heisenberg invited him to Munich in June, where they engaged in discussion over the course of the week. This would mark the beginning of an ongoing dialogue that lasted the better part of the next decade. Between 1967 and 1973 they met on four separate occasions and engaged in a lively correspondence until Heisenberg’s death in 1976.
Claudio Tagliapietra has undertaken the valuable task of compiling, translating and publishing this correspondence, comprising some 107 letters, several of which were originally written in German. Much of the correspondence centres on Cantore’s efforts to enlist Heisenberg’s help in establishing an Institute of Scientific Humanism at Fordham University and in securing permanent academic employment. Heisenberg emerges from this correspondence as a sympathetic mentor, offering encouragement and support. Indeed, he recommended that Cantore be tasked with translating his book Der Teil und das Ganze into English and was disappointed to learn that Harper and Row had chosen another translator.
The letters provide a glimpse of Cantore’s anthropological–philosophical view of the ‘crisis of modern man’ (p. 93). Cantore was convinced that philosophical reflection on modern science was essential to understanding the human condition and to forging a new identity in the technological age. The clearest expression of Cantore’s vision is contained in a memorandum entitled ‘Scientific humanism at Fordham University’ (pp. 93–9), in which Cantore set out his objectives for the institute. These were: (1) to create a space for dialogue on the ‘humanistic meaning of science’, (2) to pursue research on the ‘humanistic problems of science’ and (3) to contribute to the improvement of education.
Although most of the letters are between Cantore and Heisenberg, Tagliapietra includes exchanges with Annemarie Giese (Heisenberg’s secretary), Wolfgang Büchel (one of Heisenberg’s colleagues in Munich), Detlev Wulf Bronk and Frederick Seitz (who were presidents of Rockefeller University in the 1960s) and Ruth Nanda Anshen (general editor for the World Perspectives series at Harper and Row). The correspondence is chronologically organized into six chapters. Tagliapietra’s introductory chapter and Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti’s biographical essay provide some much-needed context, supplemented by a bibliography and a chronology of events. A short epilogue and appendix shed further light on the institutional divisions, intellectual reservations and administrative obstacles that frustrated Cantore’s attempts to found an interdisciplinary Institute of Scientific Humanism at Fordham.
The most dramatic episode in this story is the so-called ‘Cantore affair’. Writing to Heisenberg in February 1968, Cantore informed him that his employment at Fordham would be terminated, leaving his hopes for an institute in tatters – a blow he described as ‘the hardest of my whole life’ (p. 108). In the ensuing months, Heisenberg proved to be a source of great support, encouraging him not to lose heart. He wrote several letters of recommendation for academic posts, access to research archives and funding applications. After several setbacks, the institute was established in 1974, though by the late 1980s it had effectively ceased to exist.
Although Tagliapietra does a fine job of situating Cantore’s struggle within his institutional setting, there is little effort to place him within the wider social and political context of the late 1960s and the 1970s. As many historians have pointed out, this was a period that saw calls for science to disentangle itself from the military–industrial complex amidst student protests and the Vietnam War. Yet Cantore’s view of the ‘crisis of modern man’ appears driven by a rather different set of concerns, rooted in a theological anthropology. It would nevertheless be worth examining whether his vision of scientific humanism intersected with wider attempts to articulate a new image of science in the 1970s.
One notable absence from the introduction is any discussion of how Cantore viewed the social, political or moral responsibility of the individual scientist and the scientific community more generally. This seems especially important given the centrality of ethical concerns to scientific humanism and the enduring controversy over Heisenberg’s decision to remain in Germany and his subsequent leadership in the Nazi atomic programme during the Second World War. Though Cantore defended Heisenberg’s decision in his review of Physics and Beyond, it is unclear how he sought to reconcile Heisenberg’s commitment to German science with the broader goal of ensuring that humanistic values guide the scientific enterprise. This remains an important and unexplored question.
Equally striking is the lack of any discussion of the relationship between science and religion in the correspondence between Cantore and Heisenberg, or in Cantore’s vision for scientific humanism. One might have expected this to be a shared point of interest – perhaps it arose in their personal meetings – but, as Tagliapietra notes, there is ‘no evidence of any religious or spiritual references in their exchanges’ (p. 16). In light of the success of Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics (1975) and the renewed interest in Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s work during this period, one wonders whether Cantore might have missed an opportunity to articulate points of convergence between scientific and spiritual world views – a theme that figured prominently in the cultural zeitgeist. Whether or not this is so, the publication of this correspondence between a largely overlooked Jesuit philosopher and one of the twentieth century’s most celebrated physicists enriches our understanding of both figures.
