The poetry of science writing : the panacea of the third culture in Ian McEwan’s Saturday

Abstract EN

This paper deals with the theory of the third culture as put forward by Ian McEwan and diverse other thinkers who stress the importance of the interdisciplinarity of science and the humanities as the only panacea they envisage for man‘s salvation in the contemporary ―macabre‖ age.

Having adamantly precluded the role of religion in any cultural or civilizational enterprise, McEwan has been keen on drawing on the integration of science and the humanities to achieve a consummate third culture that can heal the fissures of our world and provide a healthy, propitious environment for the fruitful coexistence of disparate forces.

It is the objective of this paper to explore McEwan‘s problematization of this belief in the ability of the third culture to effect harmony in people‘s lives, as manifested in his Saturday.

The paper starts with an account of the third culture as explicated by C.

P.

Snow, John Brockman, and Ian McEwan and then highlights the aversion of the proponents of this concept to religion as a possible panacea to the ills of the contemporary world.

McEwan‘s Saturday will finally be investigated as a cogent substantiation of the professed ability of the third culture to initiate such a positive transformation into man‘s life.