by Rick Nason, PhD, CFA
RSD Solutions Inc.
Kim Vicente, author of the book, The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way We Live with Technology, quotes comments that C.P. Snow made in his 1959 essay “The Two Cultures”. To quote Vicente, who in turn is quoting Snow;
“…’the intellectual life of the whole of the western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups’ – science and art. The gulf between technical / analytical thinking on the one hand and creative / Humanistic thinking on the other was already so deep that ‘those in the two cultures can’t talk to each other’. … ‘When those two senses have grown apart, then no society is going to be able to think with wisdom …’”
Readers of my blogs – or someone who has attended one of my speeches or seminars - knows that this is a theme that I have been pounding away at for some time. (Unfortunately my words and my thinking are not as clear as C.P.Snow’s.)
The question that must be constantly asked is has our risk function become so siloed and specialized that as an institution we have lost the ability “to think with wisdom”?
