Speech at The Royal Society
London, 9th April 2014
Vice-President Pethica:
Distinguished Fellows of the Royal Society:
Ladies and Gentlemen:
May I thank Professor Pethica for his kind words of introduction, and all of you for your generous welcome.
Mar Uachtarán na hÉireann, is mór an onóir agus an pléisiúir dom é cuairt a thabhairt ar an gCumann Ríoga, institiúid a bhfuil tar éis forbairtí gaoiseacha a dhéanamh ar eolaíocht an Iarthair agus ar ár dtuiscint ar an saol mór.
[As President of Ireland, I am both honoured and greatly pleased to visit the Royal Society, an institution which has made such a profound contribution to the development of Western science and our understanding of the world.]
This first State Visit by a President of Ireland to the United Kingdom is a celebration of the relationship between our two countries, in all of its rich dimensions. The vibrancy of this relationship irrigates the circulation of knowledge, the debates of ideas, and the many productive collaborations that bring together British and Irish scientists.
Though sometimes not fully appreciated, the human and intellectual ties between our two countries carry great significance and historical depth. In 1968, my distinguished predecessor, Éamon de Valera, who had a keen, life-long interest in mathematics, was elected a Fellow of this Society.
In the 1940s, de Valera had presided over the foundation of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, in consultation with two of his old professors, Arthur Conway and Sir Edmund Taylor Whittaker. Professor Whittaker had, as Royal Astronomer of Ireland, taught mathematical physics at Trinity College Dublin before taking on a position at the University of Edinburgh. Arthur Conway had introduced de Valera to quaternions – a number system which itself originated in Ireland, in the work of William Rowan Hamilton, whose achievements are still celebrated each year in his native Dublin.
In fact, the Royal Society’s Irish connections go back much further, to the Society’s very first meetings in the mid-1640s. Among the founding figures, that group of “natural philosophers” who put forward the virtues of observation and experimentation as a means to apprehend the natural world, we find Robert Boyle, the son of the Earl of Cork and one of the most prominent Irishmen to have made science his vocation.
The experimental investigations, the spirit of discovery and questioning which made Boyle one of the central figures in the scientific revolution of the 17th century, aptly reflect the particular nature of the Irish genius. Indeed the most significant products of Irish culture have had as their defining characteristic a tendency to look at the world in novel and unconventional ways and to question prevailing orthodoxies.
Because the power of imagination has, in Ireland, found such remarkable incarnations in the realm of words – in the spheres of arts and literature – its contribution to our understanding of the natural world has, perhaps, been overshadowed. Even among the Irish, the names of Swift, Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, Shaw, Beckett or Heaney are of far more renown than that of Ernest Walton who, in 1951, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work on the artificial splitting of the nucleus of the atom.
That is not as it should be: we need to better understand the role of scientific knowledge in shaping our relationship to the world. Irish scientific achievements represent many milestones in the journey of modern Western rationality.
We can think of Robert Boyle and William Hamilton, but also of John Tyndall, who explained why the sky is blue; Nicholas Callan, who invented the induction coil; William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, who built the world’s largest telescope and used it to locate new structures in the heavens; George Gabriel Stokes, who investigated the phenomenon of fluorescence and advanced the wave theory of light; William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, who contributed so much to the transatlantic telegraph project; John Lighton Synge, who pioneered the study of black holes; or George Francis Fitzgerald, whose understanding of the laws of motion provided an essential building block for the Special Theory of Relativity.
Let us not forget either the famous 1939 essay of John Desmond Bernal on The Social Function of Science.
Finally, I am delighted to note that the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Society, in 1945, was X-ray crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale, from Newbridge, County Kildare.
It would be a mistake to view Irish science as somehow separate from our culture, as alien to the boundless imagination which drove our great writers. It was an Irish scientist – George Johnstone Stoney, Professor of Natural Philosophy at Queen’s College Galway and later a Vice-President of this Royal Society – who coined the term ‘electron’. But it was an Irish writer, James Joyce, who gave the word ‘quark’ its spelling, in a line of Finnegans Wake – “Three quarks for Muster Mark!”. This may have been an unintentional contribution to the development of particle physics, but it illustrates well the wealth of sources which shape the way we see, understand and talk about science.
It is often said that ours will be the century of neuroscience, and advances in this area certainly give cause for optimism and excitement. But the humanities also have something essential to contribute to our comprehension of the nature of human consciousness or what it means to be human. The universe cannot be understood through its physical properties alone.
I am convinced that it is through leaping the boundaries that divide discipline from discipline, science from the arts and humanities, and by marshalling the diverse influences from our intellectual heritage that we can best meet the complex challenges of the future.
One great challenge lies in the rapid pace of scientific and technological development, its diffusion on a global scale, which has yet to be matched by the cultivation of critical and informed dialogues within the wider society on the impact of such developments. This, I believe, calls for some level of reintegration between science and philosophy; it requires the crafting of a wide-ranging ethical discourse in which all citizens – not just the most expert, or scientifically literate among them – are invited to take part.
This challenge is all the more pressing as the ethical issues arising from contemporary scientific and technological applications have reached unprecedented levels of acuteness. Recent developments in the life sciences, for example, give new salience to the opportunities and perils encapsulated in the old Promethean myth. The damages inflicted to our planet by climate change also raise novel ethical questions: indeed, the possibility of the total destruction of our world was not a concern of Enlightenment philosophers.
On all these questions, it is essential that we instigate far-reaching dialogues, not only between the disciplines but also, I would suggest, between Ireland and Britain. It would be so valuable to see these national dialogues expand and mature alongside the strengthening of scientific cooperation between our two countries.
In Ireland we have, in recent decades, made great strides in developing the scientific resources that will help us meet the challenges of the future and consolidate our international reputation for research excellence.
The results achieved to date have been extremely encouraging. Ireland has emerged as a leading country globally for the quality of its scientific research, notably in fields such as immunology and probiotics, nanoscience, and materials science. Our country also ranks third in the European Union for innovation output.
For a country the size of Ireland, these are no mean accomplishments. But we have not achieved these feats on our own. To advance, science requires broad horizons, a willingness to seek out new ideas and perspectives from other disciplines and different cultures.
I am glad to say that this type of cross-fertilisation is very much part of the current research ecosystem in Ireland.
Today is therefore a fitting occasion to draw attention to the scientific collaborations that currently play such a beneficial role in expanding our two countries’ shared horizon of possibilities.
I know that Science Foundation Ireland and the Royal Society are discussing the establishment of a joint programme aimed at supporting Irish scientists of outstanding potential, and I wish them well in this final phase of their discussions.
May I also commend the International Exchange Cost Share Programme, run jointly by the Royal Society and the Royal Irish Academy, which supports new collaborations between British and Irish Scientists.
Science Gallery is another example of a vibrant partnership between Ireland and the UK. First established at Trinity College Dublin, Science Gallery will, in 2016, expand its programme of creative collisions between scientists, artists, designers and engineers, to a new gallery established on the Guy’s Campus of King’s College London.
The community of scientists on our two islands has led the world in so many fields, and left such a valuable legacy for humanity. The various initiatives I just mentioned do, I hope, plant the seeds for the breaking of new grounds through renewed cooperation between Irish and British scientists in the years to come.
Today the UK and Ireland share a scientific culture and a commitment to scientific endeavour which, if framed by an appropriate ethical discourse, offers the promise of new advances and a more conscious relationship to the world we inhabit.
I am therefore delighted to have had this opportunity to visit the Royal Society to celebrate the centuries-old scientific links between our countries; to affirm and support the present nexus of British-Irish collaboration in science and research; and, in facing up to the challenges of the future, to encourage a discourse that is holistic, multidisciplinary and ethically robust.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh.
Thank you for your attention.