This review was published in the June 2006 issue of Books Ireland, under the title 'Science of Science'.

Science, History, Public Awareness

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 Unfortunately this publisher went out of business, and I was left with my unpublished masterpiece in a binder.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.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 2005