Nanoscience and literature: bridging the two cultures

The growth of nanoscience and nanotechnology as academic pursuits raises important questions about the nature of disciplinarity both within and beyond the sciences. These burgeoning fields also offer many opportunities for interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaboration among the sciences and various humanities fields. Literature-nanoscience collaborations, specifically, offer one way for workers in the humanities and sciences--the "two cultures" described by English scientist-writer C. P. Snow in the late 1950s--to cross the great divide that typically isolates them in order more fully to understand and address the potential social and moral consequences of developments in nanotechnology.