The Imperial Civilising Mission(?)

I recently reviewed for the Irish Democrat a book on a related topic by Gillian M Doherty, published by the Four Courts Press in 2004. There is however only one reference in the current book to the earlier one, relating to Irish being the language of the rural poor, which to my mind is obvious, to the extent of hardly requiring a reference. This I find strange, because both books come out of University College Cork. The Doherty book, published in July 2004, acknowledges support from Joe Lee, Dermot Keogh in the History Department, and from scholars in the areas of cartography and toponomy. The O Cadhla book is rooted in the domains of folklore, ethnology and anthropology, and is supported by extensive networking with DCU, Maynooth, TCD and abroad in Scotland, Israel, Australia and the USA. There are no acknowledgements shared.

Some of the same ground in the O Cadhla book is covered in the earlier work; I suspect that O Cadhla working in UCC might not have been aware of this, which is a pity; he might have found some pegs on which to hang his critique of the evident culture-gap. This, if true, reflects on the relative isolation of specialist researchers within Ireland, and suggests a need to develop some more systematic networking, and a collaborative interdisciplinary team approach.

O Cadhla does more than Doherty to uncover the procedures and the philosophies of the language-competent field-workers, co-ordinated by Petrie, who supported the Army surveyors who wielded the theodolites and did the actual cartography. These included O'Donovan, O'Curry, O'Keefe and others, and much if this book is devoted to O'Donovan's records, which show an ambivalent attitude to the project, consequent on his role as, in effect, a 'collaborator' (in the derogatory political sense) with what was essentially an imperial colonial project. The cover of the book emphasises this, with its redcoats in an army camp in the hills, with a theolodite, at a time when the memory of 1798 was fresh in the public memory.

The work is based on the memoirs and letters of the field-workers, some of which were initially published in 1837, covering the parish of Templemore in Co Derry, in great detail. This generated controversy, to the extent that no more were published, but they remain accessibly in the archive. Petrie's collection of antiquities formed the nucleus of what is now the National Museum. The employment of Irish scholars in the Ordnance Survey project reflected the realisation by the imperial intelligence services (who permeated the London learned societies) that dependence on military memoirs for insight into the background of 'aboriginal' culture was somewhat unreliable, thanks to the discrediting of the writings of Vallancey, who was obsessed by 'orientalist' hypoheses, and others. O Cadhla however comes up with a suggestion, supported by a quotation from Edward Said, that the 'Celticist' discourse as it has evolved is basically the same as the 'Orientalist', reflecting an imperial mind-set for understanding 'aborigines'.

O Cadhla goes further, and comes up with the (valid to my mind) claim that post-colonial emergent nations in general tend to inherit the mind-sets of their colonisers: '...nineteenth century English antiquarian notions, translated into Irish, served to re-map revolutionary Ireland, symbolically cordoning the homely aborigines in Gaeltacht reservations..'. He hints at what might have been an alternative path, when he notes (p106), in the context of Irish-speaking markets serving Presbyterian colonist: '...those unacquainted with the language are regarded as foreigners, and to cheat them is regarded as a praisworthy deed..'. This motivated an interest by colonists in the Irish Bible: '...they feel that their ignorance of (Irish) is highly inconvenient..'.

O'Donovan was dismissive of the work of the 'romantic ascendancy antiquaries' as 'hagiology or fairyology', in which category he included Crofton Croker's 1825 'Fairy Legends and Traditions', which at the time was ranked with Grimm. This literature according to O Cadhla, '..emptied the narratives of storytellers' subversive messages..'. He was also dismissive of much local lore, especially about archaeological relics, raths and such, which usually were attributed either to the Danes or to Finn McCool. O'Donovan however does show skill in drawing out relevant local knowledge, especially in pinning down place names, which he tries to spell in a way which will enable an English speaker to get their pronunciation at least approximately right.

This book will be seen as controversial, and Eamon O Cuiv TD in his forward looks forward to its role in helping to understand the workings of the English colonial mind.

Roy Johnston, March 21 2007.

Science and Society in Peace and War

Andrew Brown, JD Bernal: The Sage of Science, Oxford University Press. 2006. 562pp. £25.

John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971) began as a physicist and crystallographer, but developed wide-ranging interests, stimulating the invention of the word 'polytropism' among his biographers. The domains and issues to which he contributed robust critical writings include science in history, science and society, science and government, science in war and in peace, the peace dividend, the 'third world', development economics, also modelling complex systems in stochastic environments, which process eventually emerged under the label 'operational research'.

Bernal's primary scientific work in X-ray crystallography was dedicated to the understanding of the structures of proteins and viruses, the physical basis of life. He was responsible for the development of the experimental technology which enabled Watson and Crick to solve the structure of DNA, an important link being the work of Rosalind Franklin (see Brenda Maddox, The Dark Lady of DNA, Harper-Collins, London 2002, in which there are many Bernal references). The author treats in depth, in one closely-argued scientific chapter, the details of Bernal's scientific career, which fuelled Nobel Prize work by Bragg, Blackett, Crick, Kendrew, Perutz, Watson, Wilkins and others, all of whom generously recognised Bernal's influence.

The bulk of the book however is taken up with the politics of 'science and society', which was dominated by the second world war and the cold war. Prior to WW2 Bernal had established a reputation as a Marxist social critic; by sticking to internal British politics he managed to avoid the 'Soviet intelligence' route taken by his Cambridge colleagues Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Blunt. Under pressure of the threat of war in 1938 he was recruited into civil defence work, analysing the effects of bombs, and was recruited during the war by Mountbatten into the planning of the Normandy landings, in the context of which the 'Operational Research' process was invented. For example, he managed by assembling quantitative evidence from a variety of improbable sources to evaluate the Normandy beaches as regards their ability to land heavy equipment, without direct access to them.

Bernal's role with Mountbatten was later challenged, in arguments which arose in the context of his obituary, by Bernal's sometime colleague Solly Zuckerman, who had subsequently fallen out with him. The author in a postscript demolishes Zuckerman's arguments, which had influenced an earlier biographical attempt by Maurice Goldsmith. The latter was blacked by Bernal and his trustees, who went on to produce, after much delay, a more rounded omnibus biography, with contributions mostly by people who knew him (I got to do the 'Irish roots' chapter). This was published by Verso in 1999, edited by Brenda Swann and Francis Aprahamian. Andrew Brown acknowledges this book as a valid contribution, but goes into much greater depth in all aspects of Berrnals polytropic existence, including his many women (designated disparagingly by Zuckerman as his 'widows' in the post-obituary controversies), most if not all of whom retained lasting respect for him.

The book is structured in a rough chronological framework, but switching between the various domains according as they acquire priority with Bernal, so that one sometimes get overlapping chronologies in different domains. Most readers, being critical-minded scientists, will treat this as an interesting zig-saw puzzle which when fitted together will be seen to give a superb picture of a Renaissance character, of Leonardo da Vinci stature, spanning all aspects of human culture, and pioneering in modern times the resurrection of science as a key cultural component.

My own interest in Bernal goes back to my 1940s time in Trinity College Dublin, where I attempted to understand aspects of the 'science and development economics' domain in the context of left-wing politics in post-colonial Ireland, then stagnant and crippled by 'brain-drain'. I discovered Bernal's 1939 book The Social Function of Science, and was hooked. Later in the mid-1960s I corresponded with Bernal when I was associated with a group of scientist and engineers lobbying the Government to take seriously the 1963 OECD Report Science and Irish Economic Development. He replied with some good suggestions, though he was then in bad health. After he died I came across the unauthorised Goldsmith biography, read it critically, and found the Irish background material in it seriously deficent; this prompted me to research it, leading eventually to my chapter in the 1999 Verso book. See also my own book Century of Endeavour, the Irish edition of which was published by Tyndall/Lilliput in April of this year, following a US edition by Academica in 2003; an overview is available at the URL http://www.iol.ie/~rjtechne/blurb.htm.

Andrew Brown treats Bernal's early views on Soviet science, which were somewhat uncritical (for example he initially accepted Lysenko), without any whitewashing. My own explanation is in terms of his Catholic background; I have observed cases where people abandon Catholicism for Marxism and remain in a similar mind-set, substituting Moscow for Rome. Bernal however managed to avoid the worst aspects of this syndrome; his later work in the peace movement during the Cold War undoubtedly contributed to the peaceful resolution of the Cuban missile crisis; he had a direct line to Khrushchev via the Soviet scientific establishment. His work on the 'peace dividend' concept, pioneered in his book World Without War (London, 1958), deserves to be developed in greater depth, taking into account our current understanding of global warming and the fossil fuel crisis. Indeed, any scientific agency specialising in addressing the global warming problem, and promoting the necessary reorientation of the US government's policies relating to energy, could well be named the Bernal Institute!

Roy H W Johnston Techne Associates Dublin Sept 2006

Science, History, Public Awareness

The group of books under review presents this reviewer with the problem of how best to relate them to a rapidly evolving context, to which they all relate, from differing perspectives, and with widely differing philosophies. The first one was produced some time ago and was not reviewed, so I am resurrecting it because it was the first one in a series, of which I was asked recently to review the second, along with the other two recent publications.

I can see why the first one was sidelined: it lacks a coherent philosophy, not does it have a well-defined target readership. It attempts to set the scene for a 'science studies' community, but alas no such community has emerged, at a level such as to enable it to 'get its act together'. The market does exist; I identified it decades ago: it is among those concerned to learn from the Irish experience, good and bad, of the interaction between global science and the emergent national culture, in the 20th century 'colonial to post-colonial transition' process, in which Ireland was among the pioneers.

In the 1980s I pulled together my 1970s Irish Times 'science critic' column material into a chronological series of snapshots of the evolving 'science and society' scene, in a variety of defined domains, for the publisher Tycooley, with which Sean MacBride was associated, and which supplied the UN Development Programme and other UN agencies with relevant material. Unfortunately this publisher went out of business, and I was left with my unpublished masterpiece in a binder. I have re-edited it for hypertext, and in the current context perhaps a resurrection is on the agenda, as a sort of 'prequel' to the Ahlstrom book.

The need for a 'science and society' community became apparent acutely again recently in an international conference held in DCU which I attended: the topic was 'Development Education', and there were people there from the UN and from Africa, Asia and the Americas, expressing a keen interest in the role of science in the development economics context, anxious to learn from Irish experience, and appalled at the non-recognition of its importance in Ireland. So these books, supported by my hypertext, and other related recent books listed in their bibliographies, constitute a background for an agenda for the science funding agencies, in the context of the need to fund a high-level Bernalist focus for 'Science and Society Studies' capable of achieving international standing.

Science in Irish Culture: Why the History of Science Matters in Ireland; Vol 1. Ed David Attis & Charles Mollan. Royal Dublin Society, 2004, 174pp, npg, ISBN 0-86027-047-5.

This first volume of the RDS series had the task of defining the series philosophy, and despite a preface by Mollan and an introduction by Attis this comes across only tentatively; there are too few hints at an understanding that the market for this experience is essentially exportable, not only in the 'hard' sciences, but also in the humanities, social sciences and business schools, who produce the teachers, development economists and entrepreneurs needed both in currently prospering Ireland and in emergent post-colonial nations abroad.

Dorinda Outram contributes a 1980s reprint, updating it; I remember commenting at the time, in an attempt to open the present debate. Gordon Herries Davies writes on science and political violence, showing how the colonial system helped to generate the cultural barrier. David Attis reinforces the imperial image with his study of William Petty and the 'Down Survey'. Garrett Scaife's history of the Holland submarine helps reinforce the initial impression that science and scientific technology is dominated by military requirements, which indeed for centuries it was.

The latter part of the book begins to explore 'civil society', with chapters from Sean Lysaght, Greta Jones and Ruth Bayles on aspects of Darwinism and natural field studies.

This inauspicious beginning however begins to be compensated for by the second volume, produced in an attempt at a comprehensive overview in the context of the 2005 British Association (BA) meeting in Dublin, a relevant target market.

Science and Ireland: Value for Society; Vol 2.Ed Charles Mollan. Royal Dublin Society, 2005, 294pp, npg, ISBN 0-86027-050-5.

It begins with two dedications: to Arthur Hughes (1908-2000) who was MD of Guinness from 1966 to 1973 and Secretary of the BA from 1965 to 1971, and to Adrian Philips (1936-2003) the geologist who set up the first TCD campus company in 1983, ERA (Environmental Resources Analysis) which specialised in remote sensing technology. Helen Haste in a forword for the BA market highlights the roles of John Tyndall on the mid-19th century and JL Synge in the 20th as communicators of science to the lay public.

Charles Mollan's introduction skates rapidly over the surface of the history of the BA's links with Ireland, and highlights the current revitalised science scene, contrasting it with the earlier post-Treaty depression. He pays tribute to the few who worked abroad and opted to come home in the earlier period, without however managing to name them. Nor does he make use of the analysis of the BA meetings in Ireland published in the Crane Bag in 1983 by the present writer, or even reference it; this however is understandable, being an aspect of the problem: there is no focus in Ireland for the retention and collation of this type of knowledge.

Passing over Peter Pearson's introduction to Dublin for the benefit of visiting participants, we again have Mollan, this time attempting to give a historical overview sketch of Irish science, which he begins, regrettably, by putting 'Irish' in quotes, thus confusing the nature of the problem of nationality in this context. The perceived nationality of the individual scientist is not the problem; it is the relationship between the emerging national culture and the culture of science, the latter being intrinsically global.

He offers overviews of the history of science in Ireland within disciplines: Astronomy, Chemistry, 'Physics and Mathematics' (together), and then a final nod in the direction of Technology. I have serious philosophical problems with this approach: firstly, many of the scientists listed do not sit easily in such a classification (Bernal a chemist? He was a physicist primarily, pioneering 'Science and Society Studies' in marginal time; Marconi a physicist? surely a pioneer of communications technology, derived from the physics of Maxwell and Hertz). And if one does impose a discipline structure, why amalgamate maths with physics? No, in this context, history within discipline is meaningless.

The interesting features begin to emerge if one gets a chance to see how the discipline-mix, and indeed the 'brain-drain' process, evolves with the changing socio-political and economic situation, with focal environmental events such as the napoleonic wars, the famine, the land war, the first and second world wars etc defining the context. The key question at all times. which Bernal would have asked in the Irish context, is: how does the global culture of science relate to the perceived requirements of an emergent nation and its culture? This relationship can be negative, if the emergent national cultural perception is of science as being an imperial tool. This perception is widespread in the post-colonial world, and this is a problem which Irish culture has learned to overcome; whence the importance of Irish experience globally.

Don Thornhill, a former Chairman of the HEA and Secretary of the Dept of Education, overviews the policy enironment within which the current research culture has developed, key influences being the OECD report series: 1963 (when the process of recovery began, Thornhill dates it 1966, but I have a copy and it is dated 1963) and then 1974 and 1985. Other reports in the sequence were Cooper-Whelan 1972, Telesis 1982, Culliton 1992, STIAC 1995. This gives the top-down view of the evolving sience support environment: initially the 1967 National Science Council, then the 1978 NBST, which merged with the IIRS to become Eolas in 1987; this in the 90s complexified into Forbairt, Forfas, ICSTI, PRTLI, SFI etc, suggesting a serious need for the systematic, and indeed scientific, study of the relationship between science and government. I can't resist quoting from an e-mail I got from David Dickson (not the TCD historian, but the Editor of http://www.scidev.net, the web-site which is becoming the essential global knowledge-base for the domain addressed by this review itself, and the books under review): 'Come back Bernal, all is forgiven'.

The following sections include one on the Environment by John Feehan, on Agriculture by Liam Downey and Gordon Purvis, Forestry by Edward P Farrell, Marine Science by Christopher Moriarty, Biomedical Research by Dermot Kelleher, Genetics and Biotechnology by David McConnell, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences by Matt Moran, Information and Communications Technology (ICT) by Henry McLoughlin; the series concludes with a paper on Irish Contributions to International Science by Fionn Murtagh.

In this context sectoral overviews make sense, and it is worth trying to pick out a few highlights. The Environment paper picks up on the '..total absence of sustainable transport provision..'; in agriculture the sustainability issue is addressed with a call for effective use of home-grown feeds, with closer integration of crops and livestock production and deseasonalised milk production. In forestry problems of management and logistics are emerging; the marine domain contains complex issues arising from the application of advanced technology in what is effectively a hunter-gatherer environment.

Biomedical research suffers from organisational obstacles to the development of a dynamic interaction with clinical practice. In the genetics domain McConnell delivers an interesting historical paper which shows how the evolving complexity of the funding system generated problems, some of which remain with us, despite the current relatively benign reign of the SFI. In this important current area of research it is increasingly important who sets the objectives, who owns the results, and what they are used for; these are all issues which scientists and the general public need increasingly to address. The same is true of the chemical and pharmaceutical domains, where the industry in Ireland is moving 'up the value chain' and increasing its R&D content, in response to global pressures.

The ICT area suffers from lack of references or bibliography, a consequence perhaps of its meteoric development; it is presumably from the author's experience, which alas did not include contact with the 1960s Aer Lingus real-time reservations project. This was highly productive, and spun off many important innovative enterprises, many of which are still with us. This history needs to be written comprehensively; John Byrne in TCD I understand is, or was, working on it; I wonder did it see the light of day? The lack of reference to it here suggests otherwise.

The final chapter lists among the internationally important projects the Shannon Scheme, peat technology, molecular biology (including the Schroedinger link), and early computing, in which context he credits the present writer, for which I thank him, though the nature of the link is obscure. I explain it in more depth in my book Century of Endeavour, recently published in a revised Irish edition, and currently on the review agenda of Books Ireland, I understand. Murtagh picked it up from the abortive 2003 US edition. He continues with notes on the various EU collaborations, the SFI and John Bell, concluding with the 'grand challenge': how to set up the institutional framework so as to get the dynamics right, between research, development, innovation and intellectual property.

Flashes of Brilliance: The Cutting Edge of Irish Science. Dick Ahlstrom (Science Editor of the Irish Times). Royal Irish Academy, 2006, 174pp, npg, ISBN 1-904-890-15-6.

Ahlstrom's 'Flashes' are selected from his Irish Times features over the period 9 May 02 to 26 Jan 06; each takes 2 pages with a good picture; they are sequential and cover a wide range of scientific domains, usually obvious from the title, and all are indexed. There are many beautifully produced additional illustrations, and these are also listed at the back. There is an associated DVD with some documentary film.

This has been widely reviewed in the press, by Mary Mulvihill and others, so its author I hope will forgive me if I just give it a positive mention here. I could perhaps add the comment however that it would be interesting to restructure it as several sequences of snapshots within topics conforming to the classification suggested in my aborted Tycooley publication; the comparison over the 3-decade interval would be interesting. There is, perhaps, a paper here for a publication by the Bernal Institute hinted at above.

The Irish Scientist: 2005 Year Book, ed Geraldine van Esbeck, Oldbury Publishing ltd, 2005, 120pp, npg, ISBN 0-9546166-5-0.

Finally we have to acknowledge the Yearbook, initiated by Charles Mollan in 1995; it is less bulky than in recent years; I wonder does this imply that it has run its course, and is being upstaged by competing platforms? It fulfils a useful shop-window function for researchers who want their work to be publicly known. It suffers badly from the lack of an index; in earlier editions from 1999 to 2004 there were website versions published subsequently, which rectified this lack by providing a table of contents classified by topic and sub-topic, and an index by author's name. These earlier website versions can be seen at http://www.irishscientist.ie/ and we hope the 2005 will eventually come out in this mode. The primary organisation of the contents by institutional source is of little use for someone seeking to identify a specific area of expertise in a context.

It would take a relatively modest effort to integrate the website version of this yearbook as a promotional annexe to the extensive knowledge-base embodied in http://www.expertiseireland.ie/ and to enable the whole to be accessed with a modern n-dimensional parametric indexing system, so that one could feed in a structured requirement profile, find the right guy, and view his shop window if there is one. I have explored this, but the barriers seem to be institutional. So we have another task on the agenda of the projected Bernal Institute, if and when it manages to struggle into existence.

Science and Religion

Friendly Word, circa April 05

The author is Professor of Complex Systems in Capetown University, and also visiting Professor of Astronomy in Queen Mary College, London. His research background is in general relativity and cosmology. He has been in Capetown since 1973 and has been a Quaker since 1974; he became interested in problems of housing policy and homelessness in a context where he was critical of the apartheid regime.

He begins by considering the perceived conflicts between science and religion in areas such as creation and evolution, in the context of current 'hot big bang' creation models. He notes the fine-tuning of the values of the various physical constants in such a way as to enable biological complexity to evolve; this is regarded by some theologians as an argument for a Designer, constituting an '...amazing way of getting creation going..'. He goes on to consider the 'Anthropic Principle' which argues that there could be an infinity of universes, with various sets of differing physical constants, from which only those enabling biology to evolve would support consciousness such as to enable them to be observed and considered. He supports the former approach, that God designed the universe, and the laws of nature operational in it, in such a way as it was inevitable that life would come into being.

He goes on to deal with the nature of humanity, and the emergence of ethics, in the context of a social agreement. The area of ethics is outside science, in that it is not easy to think of measurement of good and bad on a scale, of, say, so many milli-Hitlers. He is critical of the attempts of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology to do this, particularly of the claims of 'social Darwinism'. What does science say about Israel and Palestine? he asks. He regards aesthetics as being outside the scope of science. Yet within science on finds evidence of faith and hope, in that scientists can get together in the belief that they may be able to gain useful insights into how things work.

Ethics is not invented, but discovered; he dismisses the output of sociobiology as being 'shallow ethics', counter-posing 'deep ethics', or 'kenosis', capable of leading to self-sacrifice, a concept which is embedded in all world religions, and at the core of Christianity. He relates this to the Quaker peace testimony, and to the South African experience as expressed by Mandela, Tutu and Biko.

He then comes round to the question of 'fundamentalism' which he defines as 'the proclamation of a partial truth as the whole truth'. There are 'science fundamentalists' as well as religious. Ellis links the former with 'reductionism', and devotes the last section of the pamphlet to an analysis of 'Scientism', as exemplified in Galileo's Finger, by Peter Atkins: 'science is the sole route to true, complete and perfect knowledge'. He does however leave a window open for the the holistic scientist, who is aware of the limitations of reductionism, and is prepared to accept the theology of a transcendent vision, and in this context the present writer can recommend this to a scientific as well as a lay readership.

The Irish Ordnance Survey:

Many of us have been aware of the importance of the Ordnance Survey (initiated 1824) as a pioneering scientific enterprise, and training ground for many who subsequently became famous in the sciences (Tyndall being perhaps typical in this context). Few however are aware of the role of the Survey in social and historical scholarship, though hints of this emerge in works such as Brian Friel's Translations.

The Survey engineers were accompanied by a group of roving scholars: historians, topographers, linguists, genealogists, who recorded what came to be known as the Memoirs, but only one of these sets of local Memoirs was ever published, those related to the parish of Templemore in Derry. This was widely welcomed, and created something of a political stir, to the extent that while the collection of the memoirs continued, their subsequent publication was suppressed. They remain however in the National Archive, and this book is an overview of the material, the tip of the iceberg.

Colonel Thomas Colby, the overall Director of the British Ordnance Survey, appointed Captain Thomas Larcom the Director of the Survey in Ireland, with a view to providing '..a foundation for statistical, antiquarian and geological surveys..'., Larcom produced enlightened and comprehensive guidelines, his Heads of Inquiry, basically a manual for field workers. Among the latter were people with knowledge of Irish who were able to contribute to the understanding of the place names, one being John O'Donovan. George Petrie later became associated, producing papers for the Royal Irish Academy based on the memoirs which were emerging. The topographical and genealogical work had to be defended against allegations of 'Popery and Monkery' from the Orange lobby, and Irish MPs were lobbied, with the aid of 'improving landlords' such as Adare and the TCD librarian Henthorn Todd, both of whom were associated with the movement to educate the landed gentry in the Irish language, the better to understand their tenants.

Thus the Survey project was seen by the emergent liberal intelligentsia as part of the Enlightenment movement, a step in the direction of the future good government of Ireland, based on an objective assessment of the nation's physical, human and cultural resources. It was however seen by the many of the Ascendancy as a threat, whence he suppression of the publication of the Memoirs, many of which tended to focus on the local perceptions of the dispossessions of the 1640s and 1690s. Most of the book expands on this aspect.

The topographical work was centred in George Petrie's house in Dublin ('Teepetrie'), where he used to meet with John O'Donovan and an extended group which included James Clarence Mangan the poet as well as Eugene O'Curry, Patrick O'Keefe, Thomas O'Conor and others. They grappled as best they could with variations in place-name pronunciations from native and settler sources. They perceived themselves as gatherers of the raw material for 'scientific history' in the Enlightenment tradition, as pioneered by Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886), and taken on board by Larcom and Petrie.

In this context many manuscript records were discovered, in the possession of descendants of dispossessed aristocracy; these have usually ended up in the Academy, forming the core of its collection: '...O'Donovan told Larcom how ancient manuscripts that once belonged to Ireland's literate elite were now damaged by damp and dust and rotted in the sooty cabins of their wretched descendants..'.

Folklore was collected and recorded; archaeological relics were discovered, laying the foundation for modern archaeology; myths were demolished (like for example Vallencey and his association of round towers with fire-worship and oriental influences). The boundaries of ancient tuatha were established, from local lore. The high civilised status of early mediaeval Ireland, prior to the Viking invasions, was firmly established. Echoes of this were taken up in the Nation by Thomas Davis.

Much evidence emerges about the dynamics of language shift and its motivations in pre-famine times, as expressed in family and place names, in various socio-economic contexts. I quote: '..Memoir research on Irish language, literature and folklore was part of a large scholarly effort to recreate Irish-language culture in English, to make it available to English speakers, Anglo-Irish gentry in particular, and to promote it as the basis of a unified, non-sectarian, non-political Irish identity..'. Petrie, supported by other prominent Protestant intellectuals, '..sought to foster a national identity that was Irish, Protestant and Unionist...'.

Lurking in the background however are the 'underground gentry' as documented by Kevin Whelan in his study of the dispossessed Catholic aristocracy, whose leading role remains embedded in local popular memory. The final chapter explores this in some depth, giving some insights into the bitterness of the current Northern situation, where focused on land ownership.

Altogether this is an important pioneering work, which will be a trigger for much more research into the complex historical roots of Irish nationality.

Roy Johnston February 2005

Neglected Episodes

Recoveries: Neglected Episodes in Irish Cultural History, John Wilson Foster, UCD Press 2002, ISBN 1 900621 82 7, hb, NPG.

Foster spent some time in 2001, on sabbatical leave from the University of British Columbia at Vancouver, in NUI Maynooth, where he gave 3 seminars on topics which had 'science, technology and religion' aspects: Evolution, the Titanic, and field work in natural history. I had the good luck to attend, and participate in, the Evolution one: I was suitably impressed at the ambiance, and the nature of the philosophical bridges being built. Foster has worked these seminars up into a creditable book, which I hope will stimulate others on the theme of science and technology in the Irish cultural context.

John Tyndall (whose Carlow origin has become known and celebrated thanks to the work of Norman McMillan), in his capacity as President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, delivered the 1874 keynote address to that body assembled in Belfast, in the form of a broadside attack on the religious establishment, in defence of the scientific treatment of domains such as evolution and cosmology, in contrast to the biblical version of creation.

This was basically an episode in the development of science in the British culture, echoing the public controversies involving Charles Darwin, TH Huxley, Bishop Wilberforce and others, which are well-known in the history of science. The impact on Ireland however has been neglected, and Foster illuminates this, treating the reactions from the clergy and scientists of Belfast, from the Irish colonial scientific establishment in the Royal Irish Academy, and from the Irish Catholic establishment in Maynooth, as well as Newman and the Catholic University lobby.

The Belfast Protestant scientific establishment had been comfortable with the two culture approach to science and religion, but Tyndall's 1974 Address introduced tensions, and the situation became complex. Kelvin's estimate of the age of the earth at 500M years was far too short for evolution to have taken place; it lurked uneasily between the two camps.

Foster takes issue with Richard Kearney, whose 1993 Carlow conference paper Tyndall and Irish Science he criticises for ignoring the Northern dimension, the Presbyterian evangelical response (with many echoes in Britain and in the US) being substantially more vehement than the Catholic.

There is more work to be done in elucidating how this impacted on the attitude of the Catholic Hierarchy to university education, and the process that led eventually to the NUI, and to the general acceptance of Evolution in Irish science. Foster has however made a creditable start.

The Titanic was indeed the triumphal culmination of 19th century engineering, symbolic however of the forces which led inevitably to the first world war. Foster goes into the European background, bringing out some of the contradictions, as expressed in the German-British technological rivalry. Size and speed of ship was a competitive inter-imperial race.

In the analysis of the Titanic disaster from the liberal humanist angle, Foster leans on Kipling, Conrad, Wells and EM Forster. The workers engineers who built and manned the ship come out of the story well; the villains are associated with profit-oriented management and capitalist greed. Incidentally, it is not widely known that Lord Pirrie, who ran Harland and Wolff, was a Home Ruler, and sought to recruit Catholic workers, believing in the industrial resources of Ireland as a whole; Foster mentions this in passing.

In the final section we get the history of the Belfast Naturalists Field Club, from which emerged Robert Lloyd Praeger, whose classic Way that I Went has introduced several generations to the Irish natural environment. This was a result of the spread of the railways and the invention of the bicycle; the Field Club movement peaked before World War 1. The movement spread over all Ireland, and fuelled the Lambay Island and later the Clare Island survey. Praeger was the moving spirit behind the first all-Ireland meeting of the Irish Field Club Union, in Dublin in 1895, moving then to Galway. Subsequent triennial meetings took place in Kenmare 1898, Dublin 1901, Sligo 1904, Cork 1907 and Rosapenna (Donegal) 1910. The Union however dissolved in 1913, though activity persisted for a while, and the Belfast club remains active to this day.

Ironically the gunboat Helga, which bombarded O'Connell St in 1916, was a fisheries protection vessel, and it had serviced the Clare Island survey earlier, and in 1915 had been used in a scientific survey of crustaceans.

To conclude: while Foster's book is another contribution to the establishment of the scientific component of Irish culture on a secure all-Ireland basis, it is far from definitive; it suggests many trails to follow. One which Foster seems to have missed is, perhaps, the role of the Field Clubs in making the acceptance of Evolution in scientific biology the unquestioned norm. The discursive nature of Foster's book indicates a need for a more integrated approach. It should be bought by cultural historians, and if the many trails are followed systematically, maybe a credible 'colonial to post-colonial transition' paradigm for 'science and Irish culture' will emerge.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1999