“Strangers and brothers”: revisiting the question on the two cultures

Abstract

We discuss the relationship between art and science. The need to build bridges between the artistic culture and scientific culture is pointed out. They grew apart in spite of the regular contact between them which have always led to mutual enrichment. We compare the claims of Charles Snow and Jacob Bronowski in the fifties with those of the Portuguese António Lobo Vilela, an intellectual banned by the “Estado Novo” very attentive to scientific culture who wrote a book entitled “Science and Poetry”. Bearing in mind the history of this debate, we propose the deepening of these bridges in order to materialize the union of artistic culture and scientific culture.