Science And Culture

The Tánaiste's first major pronouncement on science policy made last week at the Royal Irish Academy raised surprising and unexpected…

The Tánaiste's first major pronouncement on science policy made last week at the Royal Irish Academy raised surprising and unexpected issues. Ms Harney expressed a startling new ambition - to place science at a central position within the State's cultural ethos.

The challenge, she suggested, was "whether science will assume a central place in our culture". The term culture has many meanings but one populist interpretation relates to Ireland's great achievements in shaping the modern novel, in drama, painting, music and poetry. We immediately recognise our contribution to world culture through these media.

Her wish now is that we also begin to recognise the creative contributions made to world scientific culture and we already have an admirable track record in this sphere. In her keynote address she raised the notion that it was time for us to take pride in our scientific heritage - past and present. She used "civic science" to describe this new perspective, a term she borrows from Dr Neal Lane, the US President's assistant for science and technology who in meetings with the UK parliament's Select Committee on Science and Technology, referred to "civic scientists".

The Tanaiste's view of what civic science means is clear - it is a science "engaged with, and invited into, the national dialogue", a science "responsive to the public and worthy of the public trust". It is a public acceptance of the central position that Irish science should hold in our understanding of cultural achievement.

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Certainly there is no shortage of great Irish men and women who contributed at the highest levels to world scientific culture. Robert Boyle is a seminal figure in chemistry, William Rowan Hamilton and George Boole were great Irish mathematicians and E.T.S. Walton shared the Nobel physics prize for being the first to split the atom.

In her speech the Tánaiste referred to the great Irish astrophysicist, Agnes Mary Clerke, born in Skibbereen and an international name in scientific annals. There is no shortage of Irish women who made key discoveries in the sciences, however, such as Jocelyn Bell Burnell, central to the discovery of those most unusual astronomical bodies, quasars.

We already have a deep and rich scientific heritage here that too often is left out of any discussion of Irish creativity and culture. This productive vein is being added to by some of the finest scientific minds in the world who today populate our universities, research centres and institutes.

Sadly, Ms Harney will have an uphill battle making us accept this cultural milieu as our own and something to be cherished at least as much as Irish literature and music.