Academics From Ireland

"The Achaeans of north Greece, which was later to be called Thessaly, seem to have been the great sea-adventurers of the heroic age. With this country were connected the memories of early Greek exploration of the Euxine, in the legend of the ship Argo. And to the Achaeans of Thessaly we must probably refer the earliest notice which preserves the Achaean name in a historical document. An Egyptian writing tells us that they came in company with other peoples "from the lands of the sea" and invaded Egypt in the year 1229 B.C., when Memptah was king. But the great achievement which made the Achaeans illustrious was one in which southern and northern Greece combined—the expedition against Troy."

"Most beliefs about nature and man, which were not founded on scientific observation, have served directly or indirectly religious and social interests, and hence they have been protected by force against the criticisms of persons who have the inconvenient habit of using their reason."

"Science has been advancing without interruption during the last three of four hundred years; every new discovery has led to new problems and new methods of solution, and opened up new fields for exploration. Hitherto men of science have not been compelled to halt, they have always found ways to advance further. But what assurance have we that they will not come up against impassable barriers? ...Take biology or astronomy. How can we be sure that some day progress may not come to a dead pause, not because knowledge is exhausted, but because our resources for investigation are exhausted... It is an assumption, which cannot be verified, that we shall not reach a point in our knowledge of nature beyond which the human intellect is unqualified to pass."

"The doubts that Mr. Balfour expressed nearly thirty years ago, in an Address delivered in Glasgow, have not, so far, been answered. And it is probable that many people, to whom six years ago the notion of a sudden decline or break-up of our western civilisation, as a result not of cosmic forces but of its own development, would have appeared almost fantastic, will feel much less confident to-day, notwithstanding the fact that the leading nations of the world have instituted a league of peoples for the prevention of war, the measure to which so many high priests of Progress have looked forward as meaning a long stride forward on the road to Utopia."

"Some people speak as if we were not justified in rejecting a theological doctrine unless we can prove it false. But the burden of proof does not lie upon the rejecter. I remember a conversation in which, when some disrespectful remark was made about hell, a loyal friend of that establishment said triumphantly, "But, absurd as it may seem, you cannot disprove it." If you were told that in a certain planet revolving around Sirius there is a race of donkeys who speak the English language and spend their time in discussing eugenics, you could not disprove the statement, but would it, on that account, have any claim to be believed? Some minds would be prepared to accept it, if it were reiterated often enough, through the potent force of suggestion."

"Polybius is not less express than Thucydides in asserting the principle that accurate representation of facts was the fundamental duty of the historian. He lays down that three things are requisite for performing such a task as his: the study and criticism of sources; autopsy, that is, personal knowledge of lands and places; and thirdly, political experience."

"Not long after his (Justinian) accession, he reaffirmed the penalties which previous Emperors had enacted against the pagans, and forbade all donations or legacies for the purpose of maintaining "Hellenic impiety,"...by making the profession of (Christian) orthodoxy a necessary condition for public teaching Justinian accelerated the extinction of "Hellenism." ... This event had a curious sequel. Some of the philosophers whose occupation was gone resolved to cast the dust of the Christian Empire from their feet and migrate."

"Writing the history of the present is always a very different thing from writing the history of the distant past. The history of the distant past depends entirely on literary and documentary sources; the history of the present always involves unwritten material as well as documents. But the difference was much greater in the days of Thucydides than it is now."

"The image," says C. Day-Lewis in The Poetic Image, "is a method of asserting or reasserting spiritual control over the material." And he makes a very suggestive definition of what the critics have called "pure poetry" as "poetry whose meaning is deliberately concentrated within its images."

"I have found the one great man in these lands - his name is Cecil Day-Lewis."

"Day-Lewis was a handsome man, in dress something of a dandy (in the best sense) and with a similar taste in such things as motor cars. In first coming into a room he might give the impression of austerity , but quite soon the mask would relax into its attractive lines of humour. He was, in fact, no mean anecdotalist, often against himself, at one time he had an hilarious story of catching his own dental plate before it could fly into the stalls after an impassioned end to a poetry reading."

"I have had worse partings, but none that so Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly Saying what God alone could perfectly show — How selfhood begins with a walking away, And love is proved in the letting go."

"I am absolutely sure Cecil’s poetry is underrated. He persists in the mind."

"So feast your eyes now On mimic star and moon-cold bauble: Worlds may wither unseen, But the Christmas Tree is a tree of fable, A phoenix in evergreen"

"Put out the lights now! Look at the Tree, the rough tree dazzled In oriole plumes of flame, Tinselled with twinkling frost fire, tasselled With stars and moons"

"Shall I be gone long? For ever and a day To whom there belong? Ask the stone to say Ask my song."

"Who will say farewell? The beating bell. Will anyone miss me? That I dare not tell — Quick, Rose, and kiss me."

"Nigel's six feet sprawled all over the place; his gestures were nervous and little uncouth; a lock of sandy coloured hair dropping over his forehead, and the deceptive naïveté of his face in repose gave him a resemblance to an overgrown prep. schoolboy. His eyes were the same blue as his uncle's, but shortsighted and noncommittal. Yet there was an underlying similarity between the two. A latent, sardonic humor in their conversation, a friendliness and simple generosity in their smiles, and that impression of energy in reserve which is always given by those who possess an abundance of life directed towards consciously-realised aims."

"Do not expect again the phoenix hour, The triple-towered sky, the dove's complaining, Sudden the rain of gold and heart's first ease Traced under trees by the eldritch light of sundown."

"They who in folly or mere greed Enslaved religion, markets, laws, Borrow our language now and bid Us to speak up in freedom's cause."

"It is the logic of our times, No subject for immortal verse— That we who lived by honest dreams Defend the bad against the worse."

"Tempt me no more, for I Have known the lightning's hour, The poet's inward pride, The certainty of power."

"Is it birthday weather for you, dear soul? Is it fine your way"

"It's hard to believe a spirit could die Of such generous glow"

"John Desmond Bernal (1901-1971) was undoubtedly the most important of the "Western" scientists who, during the twentieth century, accepted the Marxist view of social development. He did more than "accept" it: he tried to sketch the whole history of science from a Marxist viewpoint; he wrote a number of articles explicitly expounding his view of the relation of Marxism to science; and from his student days he played an active role in Communist politics. He has been criticised: during his lifetime, for too readily accepting official Soviet policy, whether relating to society or to science; since his death, for having been too ready to hope that his vision of the use of science for human ends could be implemented by capitalist societies; and at all times, for an allegedly simplistic faith in science as the salvation of mankind."

"The extent of his faith in science can best be described as religious devotion. He comments himself: 'The same type of mind that would now make a physicist would in the Middle Ages have made a scholastic theologian.'"

"For Bernal the humanistic and the scientific dimensions were one. His vision of the sort of future that science could make possible for mankind was in total contrast to that of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Full automation, nuclear energy, and cybernetics could bring a fuller realisation of human potential. His futuristic sketches grew increasingly better grounded as his Marxism matured, making the society of the future set out in The Social Function of Science far more plausible than the one set out in his earlier work, The World, the Flesh and the Devil. His sense of history was sweeping, stretching back into the ancient past and shooting forward into the coming future."

"He idealized science not just as knowledge but in a political sense too, believing that the management of human affairs could also be more scientific by virtue of being socialist. He was thus particularly inclined to accept the claims of Soviet Marxism to represent science in general, and to accord it the same degree of respect."

"I remember excitedly buying a boxed set of 4 books, Science in History by John D. Bernal (Pelican, 1965), when I was an undergraduate. At the time I was an amateur Marxist and Bernal’s work was an encyclopaedic analysis of science and society from a Marxist point of view. I was delighted to learn that Bernal was an Irishman who had spent a brilliant career at the leading edge of UK science, making many notable contributions."

"Never had Frederick Engels' famous notion of 'scientific socialism' been treated so literally."

"The theme which constantly recurs is the complex interaction between techniques, science, and philosophy. Science stands as a middle term between the established and transmitted practice of men who work for a living, and the pattern of ideas and traditions which assure the continuity of society and the rights and privileges of the classes that make it up."

"[T]he centre of interest... lies in natural science and technology because... the sciences of society were first embodied in tradition and ritual and only took shape under the influence and on the model of the natural sciences."

"Science, in one aspect, is ordered technique; in another, it is rationalized mythology. Because it started as a hardly distinguishable aspect of the mystery of the craftsman and the lore of the priest... science was long in establishing any independent existence in society. Even when it did find its own... adepts in medicine, astrology, and alchemy, these formed, for many ages a small group parasitic on wealthy princes, clerics, and merchants. It is only in the last three centuries that science has become traditionally established as a profession in its own right, with its specific education, literature, and fellowship."

"The progress in science has been anything but uniform in time and place. ...In the course of time the centres of scientific activity have been continually displaced, usually following rather than leading the migration of the centres of commercial and industrial activity. Babylonia, Egypt, and India have all been the foci of ancient science. Greece became their common heir, and there the rational basis... was first worked out. There was little place for science in Rome and none in the barbarian kingdoms of western Europe. The heritage of Greece returned to the East from whence it had come. In Syria, Persia, and India, even in... China, new breaths... came... in a brilliant synthesis under the banner of Islam. There they underwent a development which... was to give rise to... modern science."

"[S]cience has so changed its nature over... human history that no definition could be made to fit."

"[T]radition links us with the revolutionary science of the Renaissance... we can distinguish... four major periods of advance. [1] [C]entred in Italy... the renewal of mechanics, anatomy, and astronomy with Leonardo, Vesalius, and Copernicus, destroying the authority of the Ancients in their central doctrines of man and the world. [2] [S]preading to the Low Countries, France, and Britain, beginning with Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes, and ending in Newton, hammered out a new mathematical mechanical model of the world. [3] [C]entred in industrial Britain and revolutionary Paris, opened... areas of experience... as... electricity... It was then that science could help... with power, machinery, and chemicals, to transform production and transport. [4] [T]he scientific revolution of our own time. ...[T]he beginning of a world science, transforming old and creating new industries, permeating every aspect of human life. ...[N]ow... we find science directly involved in the violent and terrible drama of wars and social revolution."

"[T]o seek to discover how the advance of science had altered the whole frame of human thought, it would... be necessary to go back through the great controversies of the Renaissance about the Nature of the heavens, and... to the Ancients, without whose theories the controversies would have no meaning. There was nothing... but to attempt to trace the whole story from the... origins of human society. This involved a parallel study of all social and economic history in relation to the history of science... [T]here seemed some excuse for making a first attempt to sketch out the field, if only to stimulate, through... omissions and errors, others more leisured and qualified... No attempt is made here to present a chronologically uniform picture."

"In science men have learned consciously to subordinate themselves to a common purpose without losing the individuality of their achievements. Each one knows that his work depends on that of his predecessors and colleagues, and that it can only reach its fruition through the work of his successors. In science men collaborate not because they are forced to by superior authority or because they blindly follow some chosen leader, but because they realize that only in this willing collaboration can each man find his goal."

"It was my purpose to emphasize... to what extent the advance of natural science has helped to determine that of society... not only in economic changes... by the application of scientific discoveries, but... by the effect of the general frame of thought... [N]othing less would be adequate than a complete reevaluation of the reciprocal relations of science and society."

"It would be as one-sided to assess the effects of science on society as of society on science."

"At different stages in the educational process different changes are required. In schools the chief need is for a general change in the attitude towards science, which should be from the beginning an integral part and not a mere addition, often an optional addition, to the curriculum. Science should be taught not merely as a subject but should come into all subjects. Its importance in history and in modern life should be pointed out and illustrated. The old contrast, often amounting to hostility, between scientific and humane subjects need to be broken down and replaced by a scientific humanism. At the same time, the teaching of science proper requires to be humanized. The dry and factual presentation requires to be transformed, not by any appeal to mystical theory, but by emphasizing the living and dramatic character of scientific advance itself. Here the teaching of the history of science, not isolated as at present, but in close relation to general history teaching, would serve to correct the existing atmosphere of scientific dogmatism. It would show at the same time how secure are the conquests of science in the control they give over natural processes and how insecure and provisional, however necessary, are the rational interpretations, the theories and hypotheses put forward at each stage. Past history by itself is not enough, the latest developments of science should not be excluded because they have not yet passed the test of time. It is absolutely necessary to emphasize the fact that science not only has changed but is continually changing, that it is an activity and not merely a body of facts. Throughout, the social implications of science, the powers that it puts into men's hands, the uses they could make of them and those which they in fact do, should be brought out and made real by a reference to immediate experience of ordinary life."

"The present aristocracy of western culture, at the very moment when it most clearly dominates the world, is being imitated rapidly and successfully in every eastern country."

"Hogben's Science for the Citizen would be an admirable text-book for such teaching."

"As the scene of life would be more the cold emptiness of space than the warm, dense atmosphere of planets, the advantage of containing no organic material at all, so as to be independent of both these conditions, would be increasingly felt."

"The psychology of a complex mind must differ almost as much from that of a simple, mechanized mind as its psychology would from ours; because something that must underlie and perhaps be even greater than sex is involved."

"[The goal of efficiency was] a system in which all relevant information would be available to each research worker in an amplitude proportional to its degree of relevance."

"If science were communism, was it also not possible that communism could itself become a science?"

"The central industry of modern civilisation, tending, because of its control over materials, to spread into and ultimately incorporate older industries such as mining, smelting, oil- refining, textiles, rubber, building, and even agriculture in respect to fertilizers and food processing."

"There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learnt to separate them. Desire, the strongest thing in the world, is itself all future, and it is not for nothing that in all the religions the motive is always forwards to an endless futurity of bliss or annihilation. Now that religion gives place to science the paradiscial future of the soul fades before the Utopian future of the species, and still the future rules. But always there is, on the other side, destiny, that which inevitably will happen, a future here concerned not as the other was with man and his desires, but blindly and inexorably with the whole universe of space and time. The Buddhist seeks to escape from the Wheel of Life and Death, the Christian passes through them in the faith of another world to come, the modern reformer, as unrealistic but less imaginative, demands his chosen future in this world of men."

"The problem [of specialization] is essentially that of communications to an army in action. After a rapid advance communications become disorganized, and there is a temporary halting until they are again in working order."