The One Culture Festival, which took place this last weekend (Oct. 2-3, 2011), celebrates the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society’s Library (my Dec. 2, 2010 posting noted the Royal Society kicked off its 350th anniversary with a report). One assumes that the Royal Society was founded some months before the library was created. From the introduction to the festival by Professor Uta Frith,

This year we are celebrating the anniversary of the foundation of the library and collections of the Royal Society. It all started small, with a single book, and a tiny one at that. Diplomat, natural philosopher and founder member of the Royal Society, Kenelm Digby donated this gift and thereby inspired others to do likewise. In this way he initiated what has now grown into a national treasure. What could be more fitting for a celebration than a festival for literature, arts and science! Its apt name ‘One Culture’ confronts the famous C.P. Snow lecture “Two Cultures” (1959), which pointed out that modern society suffered from a lack of communication between sciences and humanities, and reminds us that the separation of science from other cultural achievements is both artificial and unnecessary.

Here’s a description of some of the festival events from Anna Perman’s Oct. 3, 2011 post for the Guardian Science blogs (Notes and Theories; Dispatches from the Science Desk),

This weekend at the Royal Society, the One Culture festival explored the sweeping narratives and the smaller dramas of science and literature, of individual scientists and their great ideas. Science’s most elite club opened its doors to writers like Sebastian Faulks, Michael Frayn, John Banville; dancers from the Rambert Dance Company; Take the Space theatre company; and scientists who manage to combine artistic pursuits with a research career.

…

In his conversation with Uta Frith on Sunday, Sebastian Faulks described how he starts with a big idea, then narrows his focus to a story that can illustrate it, and the characters who can make that possible: much like a scientist, who starts with a question about how the world works and narrows the focus of their microscope to the tiny part of it that can answer that question. Through focusing on single molecules of human existence, Faulks reveals the wider truths about humanity.

…

For the Rambert Dance Company, and their scientist in residence Nicky Clayton, the big ideas of science have informed some of their most challenging dances. For them, the boundaries of “science” and “art” are artificial – what links them is far more basic. As Mark Baldwin, director of Rambert, put it:

“The commonalities at the base of it all are enormous. We’re talking about ideas.”

The ideas they both get excited about are big, abstract ones. Clayton, as scientist in residence at Rambert, talks to the dancers about scientific ideas. She has to think carefully about what can be put into movement. For her, these movements are not just a way of communicating, or illustrating these ideas. They are about inspiration. And this inspiration has found its way back into her science, as shown by this video from Cambridge University (note the opening Stephen Fry voiceover!) [I will be placing the video a little further down.]

Both in this article and in Frith’s introduction there’s a description of C. P. Snow’s 1959 book (originally a lecture), Two Cultures as being about the two cultures of art and science. I read it a few years ago and found that Snow also opined at length about the developed and developing worlds, science education, and worries over Britain’s science primacy being threatened. I probably wouldn’t have noticed the other themes since the art/science theme is the first idea he mentions and he offers personal anecdotes about his experiences, which makes it more memorable, if I hadn’t come across a commentary pointing out these other themes in the book. (I did post about Two Cultures, May 8, 2009 on its 50th anniversary. [scroll down about 1/3 of the way])

Here’s the video featuring Nicky Clayton, scientist-in-residence with the Rambert Dance Company. Prepare yourself for birds and Argentine tango.