The literature comparing artistic and scientific creativity is sparse, perhaps because it is assumed that the arts and sciences are so different as to attract different types of minds, each working in very different ways. As C. P. Snow wrote in his famous essay "The Two Cultures," artists and intellectuals stand at one pole and scientists at the other: "Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension-sometimes . . . hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding. . . . Their attitudes are so different that, even on the level of emotion, they can't find much common ground" (Snow, 1964, p. 4). Our purpose here is to argue that Snow's oft-repeated opinion has little substantive basis. Without denying that the products of the arts and sciences are different in both aspect and purpose, we nonetheless find that the processes used by artists and scientists to forge innovations are extremely similar. In fact, an unexpected proportion of scientists consists of amateur and sometimes even professional artists, and vice versa. Contrary to Snow's twocultures thesis, the arts and sciences are part of one, common creative culture largely composed of polymathic individuals.

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