Science and Society Overview

Century of Endeavour

Appendix 11: Science and Society Overview

(c) Roy Johnston 2002

JJ in the 1920s as a result of his economic studies had early identified the role of intelligent enterprise, or 'knowhow', among the 'factors of production'(1). Later, JJ in the Seanad in the 1940s was promoting investment into scientific research on peat as a raw material for a chemical industry. He also contributed to the debate on the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, on the occasion when TCD sold Dunsink Observatory to them, and used the occasion to regale the Seanad with the history of TCD contributions to world science(2).

JJ had encouraged me to study science, but had little actual scientific knowledge himself. I gave a paper to the Dublin University Experimental Science Association (DUESA) in or about 1947 or 48 on the historical interaction between discovery and political development. It was broadly based on the Hessen paper at the London 1932 'Science in History' conference, on the 'social and economic roots of Newton's Principia'. The conference was attended by a strong Marxist group from the USSR, which included Bukharin, Hessen and others. I recollect that much of the Hessen paper was devoted to the problem of finding position at sea, and its influence on trying to understand the movements of the moon and the planets, in the context of the longitude problem(3). PS O'Hegarty, a noted cultural activist and publisher, by then retired from the Civil Service, spoke to my paper. I remember him saying that 'any tool larger than a hand tool becomes a menace'. This for me was an early introduction to the 'science and culture' problem in the national context.

During the 50s in my Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies(4) epoch I was acutely aware of the mismatch between the DIAS as de Valera's implant, the Irish universities, and the Irish development process generally, such as it was in that black era.

The British Association met in Ireland in 1957; the Irish science community rallied round and welcomed it, though it had ceased to have the importance it had had in its 'belle epoque' in the previous century, of which I later analysed the Irish impact in 1983 in the Crane Bag(5). The BA meeting is basically a refresher course for schoolteachers on vacation, and as such it is important and useful. It is occasionally used for policy announcements by scientific 'heavies'. In the Irish context it may have had some influence in helping to initiate the 1964 OECD Report(6) by Patrick Lynch and Dusty Miller.

In the 60s there was an encounter with the issue in the lead-up to the setting up of the National Science Council (NSC), and an unsuccessful attempt to influence the politics via several learned societies, whose representations were ignored in favour of a top-down nominated body(7).

Then in the 1970s I had the chance to shadow the work of the NSC via the Irish Times column(8), which ran from 1970 to 1976, thanks to Douglas Gageby, who bought the idea; it had not been done before in a national daily in Ireland; it had I believe been done in Britain by JG Crowther in the Manchester Guardian. As an example I give here some extracts from my April 18 1973 column, to indicate its prescient flavour:

"...I think that the following point is relevant to the animal wastes problem. Chemical fertiliser depends for its production on fossil fuels, which are liable to exhaustion. A far-sighted, conservationist economy would organise to recover, by biological means, all organic wastes, whether animal or human. Such wastes, already rich in phosphorus and nitrogen, can be concentrated still further by digestion, producing methane as by-product. The basic problem is one of mechanical handling; any economic solution will depend on the intelligent use of a gravity feed of slurries into a continuous digestion system...."

"...Theoretical solutions to the problem of dumps of old motor vehicles need also to be examined. There is more fossil fuel squandered in the manufacture of the vehicle than is burnt during its lifetime. This could be changed by introducing a system whereby vehicles were hired from the manufacturer, and were built for durability. There is no reason why a car should not last for 50 years or more, with good maintenance...."

In the 1970s there was some not very productive interaction with the then student Left, in an attempt to address the 'science and society' issue in Ireland within what I understood to be the Marxist canon. It was frustrated by the worsening corruption and dogmatism of the latter(9). More productive was the Kane-Bernal Society, which Derry Kelleher and I got going in TCD. It evolved into a sort of environmentalist lobby, fortified by my work with the Irish Times column(10).

The 'Science in Irish Culture' struggle

This could be said to have begun with my paper in the Crane Bag which looked at science in the Irish environment in the 19th century using the Irish meetings of the British Association as sort of snapshots. Then there was the Academy bicentenary in 1985, when a seminar was organised. The Crane Bag folded up but was replaced by the Irish Review, and I attempted to keep up the continuity, with rather minor and ephemeral success. To this day there is no journal which includes in its scope the scholarly study of 'science and society; issues in Ireland.

The Crane Bag Episode

In 1983 I persuaded Richard Kearney, who was then editing the Crane Bag, a cultural review published biennially, that the 'culture' concept in Ireland should include the culture of science in the national context. He accepted my 'history of science' paper, based on the records of the British Association meetings in Ireland(11). This however aroused some interest, and it was agreed with the Editor that I should organise a follow-up with a group of papers on related themes. I collected some, including one by James O'Hara in Hamburg on 19th century Irish mathematics, and one by Kieran Byrne in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, on the RDS outreach lectures in the mid-19th century, which attempted to bring science to the Irish outside Dublin, and which interfaced with the Mechanics Institute movement for popular enlightenment. These however never saw the light of day, since after 1984 the Crane Bag folded, and I had to write apologetically to the frustrated authors. I had high hopes that the Crane Bag might have become a beacon for the scholarly integration of the culture of science into the general Irish cultural mainstream, but alas it was not to be.

Bernal Remembered

In the early 1980s I had made contact with the Bernal biographical project (which bore fruit finally in 1999, after much delay)(12). In this context I organised a Bernal Memorial Seminar in Dublin on Sept 20 1985. With this quite modest event I attempted to contribute to the Bernal rehabilitation process. It took the form of commemoration of the publication of Bernal's 'World Without War'. It attracted some international participation, including Professor Roger Dittman from California, and a scientist from the German Democratic Republic who was in touch with Prof Brian Leonard in UCG. Dr Jane Bernal came from London, and Kevin Bernal, Desmond's brother, came up from Nenagh. Prof Dittman was (and remains) an activist on the network of the World Federation of Scientific Workers, founded by Bernal and Joliot-Curie after the war.

Irish support came from the ASTMS trade union, into which Bernal's old 'Association of Scientific Workers' had been subsumed; Michael Sharpe the IIRS patent specialist and ASTMS scientific staffs branch officer represented them. Martin Mansergh, political adviser to the Taoiseach, came. I contributed a paper Irish Neutrality, Disarmament and the 3rd World: the Bernal Message(13) which took the basic ideas of the thinking of Bernal as outlined in his 1958 book 'World Without War' and related them to contemporary Ireland, both as regards the development co-operation process itself and the global political problem of disarmament.

The Royal Irish Academy Bicentenary

This event attracted some scholarship from abroad, including O'Hara who came from Hamburg, and others. It was evident that Irish scholarship on the history of science in Ireland was largely lacking. There have always been a few amateur historians working in marginal time at the historical fringe of their scientific and professional specialities. Some papers, published obscurely, had been collected by Gordon Herries Davies, and published in 1983 as a duplicated bibliography. I had hoped that the Academy event would publish a proceedings, which might act as a focus for bringing into existence a centre of research into the cultural and political history of science in Ireland, but no such initiative was taken. I took it up with them, and the excuse was that all the papers were published separately in various scattered learned journals abroad. This of course is an absolute abdication of intellectual leadership, and highly reprehensible on the part of a body which claims to be a focus for Irish scholarship. The abstracts are I believe available in file somewhere in the Academy bureaucracy.

This hiatus was noticed by some activists in the field, and the result was a further conference, which took place the following year 1986 in TCD(14). But there still is no focus of continuity for the systematic study of science in Ireland in the colonial to post-colonial transition. This field is of course of crucial importance in the third world development economics domain, and the Irish as the pioneer nation in this process have a duty to provide the world with a relevant map of the various minefields with which the domain is littered.

The Irish Review

The gap left by the end of the Crane Bag was partially filled by the emergence of the Irish Review in 1986. This was less scholarly and more popularising, and the editorial team at its inception included Richard Kearney and Edna Longley. It was published by Cork UP. The first issue in 1986 included an offering by Hubert Butler on 'Ireland and the Nuclear Age', and one by Dorinda Outram, a historian of science who had been recruited to Joe Lee's Modern History Department in UCC, on 'Why Historians Deny Irish Science'. This was an opening and a challenge, to which I eventually managed to rise with my Science in a Post-Colonial Culture(15). This however was subjected to editorial cuts, there being severe space constraints, and in effect it got emasculated. I gained the impression that the Irish Review was not seriously addressing the issue of science in Irish culture, and that the challenge indicated by Dorinda Outram remained extant.

Science and Culture in the 1990s

This proved to be a mainstream issue for me in the 1990s, and I made repeated efforts with various agencies. I continued the contact with Wrixon as best I could. I wrote reviews and used them as campaign material. I interacted with President Mary Robinson, giving her some material for an event in Lismore to celebrate Robert Boyle. I submitted a proposal to the Academy in 1993, when Aidan Clarke, the historian and son of Austin Clarke, was President, which however went down some black hole. I wrote an article The Practical Arts in Irish Culture for of the then new Belfast publication 'Causeway' on May 11 1993, I think as a result of an encounter with the editor. It was published in the first issue, which appeared shortly after. I contributed a paper entitled Science and Government, dated 3/10/93, in support of the Carlow 'Tyndall School', in the form of an article for the Irish Times using the School as leverage to get support for the academic study of the role of science in culture. There were numerous Green party science memoranda. The battle at the end of the century is still ongoing(16).

Notes and References

1. See JJ's Groundwork of Economics (Educational Co of Ireland, 1925) where he identifies 'knowhow' among the factors of production.

2. See Seanad reports for April 11 1946 on peat and February 26 1947 on Dunsink Observatory.

3. I put on record in more detail this and other related incidents in the 1940s Science and Society module. The Hessen paper influenced JD Bernal towards writing his Social Function of Science (Routledge Kegan Paul 1939).

4. I have touched on the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies in the 1950s Science and Society module; this however undoubtedly needs and deserves critical treatment in depth, more than I am in a position to give now. JJ in the Seanad continued to promote the need for peat research, with ideas picked up from contact with Desmond Greaves and the present writer.

5. Science and Technology in Irish National Culture, RHW Johnston, The Crane Bag Forum Issue, Vol 7 no 2, 1983, p58.

6. I got to review the 1964 OECD Report in the December 1966 issue of Development, edited by Jim Gilbert. I have made this available in the 1960s Science and Society module of the hypertext.

7. There emerged a loose federation called the Council for Science and Technology in Ireland, under the stimulus of the Lynch-Miller OECD Report Science and Irish Economic Development, which attempted to co-ordinate the influence of the various science and engineering communities. I have put this into context in the 1960s Science and Society module of the hypertext. The experience fuelled a series of articles in the Irish Times in January 1967 by the present writer, Science in Ireland, which may perhaps have influenced the setting up of the National Science Council in 1969.

8. This column for most of the time was weekly; it started as a 'feature' and ended up on the financial page, with a change in emphasis. During the 1980s I collected it and edited it down into a book In Search of Techne for which I thought I had a publisher, Tycooley, who had specialised in the UN development agency market, for which the experience recorded in the column would have been relevant. Unfortunately Tycooley collapsed, but I have retained the edited Irish Times material, and it is available in the hypertext.

9. See the 1970s Science and Society module of the hypertext.

10. See also the 1970s Science and Society module of the hypertext; see also my 1972 review of an Einstein biography.

11. This appeared in the Crane Bag Volume 7, #2, 1983, the 'Forum Issue', and I have reproduced it in the hypertext.

12. JD Bernal: a Life in Science and Politics, Verso, London, 1999. I have been able to use this as a source for the 2002 'who was who' publication by the Royal Irish Academy, Irish Innovators, edited by Charles Mollan et al, and also for Physicists of Ireland published in 2002 by the Institute of Physics, edited by Andrew Whitaker and Mark McCartney. The Bernal outline given here is based on the latter. The 1980s and 1990s in this stream were increasingly dominated by a perceived need, on the part of the present writer, to get the history of science, technology and the innovation process taken seriously in the Irish academic context, as an important background study in the business and humanities schools.

13. I make this paper available in full in the 1980s science and society module of the hypertext.

14. The proceedings were published by the TCD Physics Department; I got to review them.

15. My 1990 Irish Review (Spring 1990) paper Science in a Post-Colonial Culture is available in full here, and on the whole the printed version I consider unworthy and repudiate it. I went on to specify how a history of science centre might be developed, and I give in the 1980s science and society module of the hypertext some correspondence with Joe Lee in UCC and Gerry Wrixon in Eolas the science finding agency on this topic. [See also my Fall 2001 review paper in the Irish Literary Supplement on books by Norman McMillan and Derry Kelleher.]

16. I have given documentation for all these still current 1990s issues in the 1990s science and society module of the hypertext.

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