In his 1959 Rede Lecture, "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution," C. P. Snow warned of a gulf that had opened between literary intellectuals and natural scientists, across which existed a mutual incomprehension that threatened to undermine the university's ability to solve the world's most pressing problems. Reflecting on his experience as both a novelist and a research scientist, Snow appealed for a greater understanding between what he saw as two distinct cultures, yet he also asserted the importance of the sciences over literature for securing humanity's future prosperity. According to Snow, literary intellectuals were natural Luddites, and the university needed to prioritize the training of scientists and engineers in order to accelerate global industrialization and thereby raise standards of living. His privileging of the sciences drew a scathing rebuke from the literary critic F. R. Leavis, who pilloried Snow's understanding of literature and his faith in technological progress. For Leavis, bringing the Industrial Revolution to impoverished areas of the globe could indeed improve the material conditions of humankind, but such a project ungoverned by the values conveyed through literature, especially those insights of D. H. Lawrence and other novelists into the dehumanizing effects of industrial labor, would lead to a future divested of any real quality of life. Leavis insisted, therefore, that the university revolve around English studies as its "centre of human consciousness" (2013, p. 75).