The Ireland that emerged after 1922 didn't nurture science . . .

LordSutch

"Professor David Mc Connell explains to Miriam O'Callaghan that he feels that the Ireland that emerged after 1922 didn't nurture science" . . .

Relevant section between 29 Minutes & 31 minutes > http://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A10088625%3A1475%3A25-11-2012%3A

David explains to Miriam that he feels that the Ireland that emerged after 1922 didn't nurture science, but this situation has improved in recent years. Both explain to Miriam how important it is to do open ended scientific research as often obscure and purely academic pursuits can lead to breakthroughs in knowledge that profoundly effect all of society.

A very interesting two minutes of Radio (re 1922) that many paople might not be aware of.

Manach

Whilst I'd said that Science funding as been poor in Ireland, missing from the rhapsodies of praise that the interviewee heap on abstract science per se was missing the element of cost. Research is a money sink, especially to a new country struggling after a bitter civil war. Economic reality would dictate resources would be better spend trying to stop the hemerging of the country by emigration than winning brownie points by promoting "cosmopolitan and open" pure science.

Peregrinus

Manach wrote: »

Whilst I'd said that Science funding as been poor in Ireland, missing from the rhapsodies of praise that the interviewee heap on abstract science per se was missing the element of cost. Research is a money sink, especially to a new country struggling after a bitter civil war. Economic reality would dictate resources would be better spend trying to stop the hemerging of the country by emigration than winning brownie points by promoting "cosmopolitan and open" pure science.

Yes, there's a lot of things that Ireland didn't do after 1922, and the principal reason was that the country was dirt-poor after centuries of exploitative and bad government. In 1925 a quarter of the population of Dublin lived in accommodation where there was one room or less per family. Faced with social challenges of that kind, the notion of massive government funding of pure research in TCD and UCD was not a very realistic one.

LordSutch

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yes, there's a lot of things that Ireland didn't do after 1922, and the principal reason was that the country was dirt-poor after centuries of exploitative and bad government.

Surely the the professor is saying quite the opposite, as science had been funded as good as anywhere else in the world up until that point, but was then abandoned from 1922 right up until the early 60s . . . Why? because the new state was broke, and the primary effort of the new Irish State was to make Ireland more Irish, to make the people speak & concentrate on speaking the Irish language, and to make sure there was a clear distinction & seperation between Ireland, Britain and the rest of the world. Science was open and worldly, while the New Irish State was designed to be the very opposite! so the good professor says . . .

Those two minutes (29m-31m)about 1922 are very enlightening.

pedroeibar1

There is no doubt that a lack of cash was the cause.

In the first half of the 1900s the Republic was an agricultural country; it missed the Industrial Revolution and consequently never had a capital goods industry, so the spin-off scientific research was not in high demand. Emphasis was on farming and food production – e.g. investment in and building a sugar industry dates to Carlow in 1926 followed by the Sugar Production Act in the 1930’s. Infrastructural improvements had to be paid for, Ardnacrusha and later Inniscarra followed by rural electrification. There also was the consideration of the Land Annuities which were a huge drain on Government revenue until Dev stopped them – they had fallen to (a still sizable) one eight of total revenue by the 30’s but were higher before that. Cash had to be raised for huge rehousing developments - e.g. in Dublin almost 2,000 houses were built at the sea-ward end of Griffith Avenue at a cost of about £650 each and most were sold on leasehold at an average price of £428. That was just a £400k loss on one estate alone, but the capital cost still had to be funded.
'Concrete' projects had priority for funding, so the money simply was not around for projects that did not have immediately visible results or were seen as somewhat esoteric.

Even in McConnell’s TCD prior to 1922 I cannot offhand think of much ‘pure scientific’ research being done here – yes, some was done by ‘NUI’/TCD graduates but it mostly was a personal interest or as a part of their professional work in industry rather than in academia – (Beaufort, Boyle, Coffey, Joly, Parsons, Stoney, , Etc.)

Peregrinus

I'm not aware that the British state was doing much to fund scientific research in Ireland pre-1922. In the rather rudimentary university funding that existed at the time, TCD did badly, because it was seen as a very wealthy institution with less claim to government support than newer, and less-well-endowed, institutions in Britain. (At one time, TCD owned something like 1% of the land of Ireland, which was an enormous estate.)

Land purchase converted TCD's landed estate into a vast holding of land bonds and similar securities, and galloping inflation during and after the Great War eroded the value of that substantially. The result was that TCD faced a signficant financial crisis in the 1920s. So did many British universities, but the British government had the means to increase university funding while the Irish government really did not. In a country where more than half of the primary schools had no indoor toilets, grants for universities attended by a tiny minority of the privileged middle classes really were not a politically realistic proposition. And whatever funding was going was weighted towards the NUI, which was much poorer than TCD (a kind of reverse discrminiation, I suppose) and of course much more politically in favour - seen as much more relevant to the needs and aspirations of the new state.

LordSutch

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

There is no doubt that a lack of cash was the cause. In the first half of the 1900s the Republic was an agricultural country; it missed the Industrial Revolution and consequently never had a capital goods industry, so the spin-off scientific research was not in high demand.

Thank you for your very informative post, but does not professor McConnell suggest in the Radio clip that there was no problem with the funding of science right up to 1922, when he claims the funding of & teaching of science was on par with anywhere else in the world.

Then all of a sudden as the State took over in 1922 the funds were cut off & put elsewhere, righ up until the 1960s . . . . .

Peregrinus

LordSutch wrote: »

Thank you for your very informative post, but does not professor McConnell suggest in the Radio clip that there was no problem with the funding of science right up to 1922, when he claims the funding of & teaching of science was on par with anywhere else in the world.

Then all of a sudden as the State took over in 1922 the funds were cut off & put elsewhere, righ up until the 1960s . . . . .

Yes, but it's important to note that the Free State in 1922 had much less money to spend that the previous British administration in Ireland had had, so expenditure cuts in some areas were inevitable. Furthermore the Free State had areas in which it signficantly increased expenditure - primary education, rural electrification - so the expenditure cuts in other areas had to be even steeper. The British had a strategic interest in scientific development - they had a large manufacturing sector, high-tech by the standards of the day, plus they were substantial exporters of what would now be called intellectual property. None of this was relevant to the Free State; their expenditure priorities were different because they were seeking to meet different needs.

Manach

In context, Ireland did not actively have a policy to drive out scientists. The comparators I'd use would be the Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
The former drove out the Jewish Scientists and were highly suspect of certain areas of physics deeming it a "Jewish Science". The latter, besides having a tendency to shoot under-performing engineers, embraced Lamarckian evolution as a science that was clearly in keeping with Marxist theory and diverted precious resources trying to pass on traits from one-generation to another of crops/animals in the wastes of Siberia

robp

Peregrinus wrote: »

I'm not aware that the British state was doing much to fund scientific research in Ireland pre-1922. In the rather rudimentary university funding that existed at the time, TCD did badly, because it was seen as a very wealthy institution with less claim to government support than newer, and less-well-endowed, institutions in Britain. (At one time, TCD owned something like 1% of the land of Ireland, which was an enormous estate.)

Land purchase converted TCD's landed estate into a vast holding of land bonds and similar securities, and galloping inflation during and after the Great War eroded the value of that substantially. The result was that TCD faced a signficant financial crisis in the 1920s. So did many British universities, but the British government had the means to increase university funding while the Irish government really did not. In a country where more than half of the primary schools had no indoor toilets, grants for universities attended by a tiny minority of the privileged middle classes really were not a politically realistic proposition. And whatever funding was going was weighted towards the NUI, which was much poorer than TCD (a kind of reverse discrminiation, I suppose) and of course much more politically in favour - seen as much more relevant to the needs and aspirations of the new state.

I suspect science funding was far less strategic in most nations back then. I am sure there is variation in different fields but I am pretty sure its accepted that in fields like botany and zoology Ireland was shooting above its weight prior to 1922. I'm not sure if this was related to British support as such. These areas certainly saw a dramatic deterioration after 1922. The pragmatic limitation of money has being mentioned but I wonder if there was influence by negative attitudes towards these areas as irrelevant preserves of the wealthy. Maybe those attitudes have been overstated.

Peregrinus

robp wrote: »

I suspect science funding was far less strategic in most nations back then. I am sure there is variation in different fields but I am pretty sure its accepted that in fields like botany and zoology Ireland was shooting above its weight prior to 1922. I'm not sure if related to British support however. These areas saw a dramatic deterioration after 1922. The pragmatic limitation of money has being mentioned but I wonder if there was influence by negative attitudes to these areas as irrelevant preserves of the wealthy. Maybe those attitudes have been overstated.

Good point. What may well have happened was not a collapse of government support for research in these areas, but the erosion of the class which had supported them. TCD wasn't the only institution adversely affected by land purchase, followed by inflation; the entirel landowning class of Ireland was, and it was this class, or a section of it, which had interested intself in science. (The observatory at Birr Castle, anyone? The work of the RDS?) And their financial woes were exacerbated by a loss of confidence in their own identity and their place in the new social and political order that arose after 1922.

LordSutch

Peregrinus wrote: »

What may well have happened was not a collapse of government support for research in these areas, but the erosion of the class which had supported them. TCD wasn't the only institution adversely affected by land purchase, followed by inflation; the entirel landowning class of Ireland was, and it was this class, or a section of it, which had interested intself in science. (The observatory at Birr Castle, anyone? The work of the RDS?) And their financial woes were exacerbated by a loss of confidence in their own identity and their place in the new social and political order that arose after 1922.

1922 was a watershed moment when science was deliberately abandoned by the new Free State government in favour of more "Irish pursuits".

Click on 25 mins, 30 seconds > > > http://www.rte.ie/radio/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A10088625%3A1475%3A25-11-2012%3A

Thank you Mr De Valera :cool:

pedroeibar1

LordSutch wrote: »

Thank you Mr De Valera :cool:

Blaming Dev is in today’s terms like blaming Enda for not wiring the entire country with fibre optic for broadand. I’m not into either defending or doing down Dev, but what really is your point?

There is general consensus that lack of cash was the primary reason. Post 1922 Ireland economically was on its knees and was trying to become self-sufficient; people of Dev’s generation lost aunts, uncles and grandparents in the Famine, many relatives still lived in abject poverty, so a food industry and social housing were viewed as critical.

David McConnell suggests that another reason was to be ‘more Irish’ and there was a ‘sinn féin’ attitude, a claim that has a measure of normality and probably truth and about it – all new countries try hard to establish new national identities. That task was particularly important to Ireland, as we had such a wealthy and overpowering neighbour.

It would appear that McConnell does not like Dev, and when pushed by O’Callaghan (referring to Dev’s creation of the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies) said he never understood it and it was ‘an aberration’. Clearly that is pejorative, as Dev was a mathematician of note and was highly regarded for his work in his favoured field of quaternions. Read about it here , about half way down. http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/De_Valera.html

Jolly Red Giant

The Irish Free State post-1922 was very conservative and reactionary in all aspects of life and society. The lack of investment and interest in science is hardly surprising.

Milk & Honey

Science had been on the primary school curriculum until 1922. It was removed to facilitate the teaching of Irish. Most industry in Ireland in 1922 was Protestant owned. They had reasons of their own for not investing. There was a worry they might be nationalised or driven out of the country.The commercial semi states were set up because there was a dearth of private sector capital. In that scenario it is hardly surprising that scientific research was down the list of priorities.

steddyeddy

LordSutch wrote: »

Surely the the professor is saying quite the opposite, as science had been funded as good as anywhere else in the world up until that point, but was then abandoned from 1922 right up until the early 60s . . . Why? because the new state was broke, and the primary effort of the new Irish State was to make Ireland more Irish, to make the people speak & concentrate on speaking the Irish language, and to make sure there was a clear distinction & seperation between Ireland, Britain and the rest of the world. Science was open and worldly, while the New Irish State was designed to be the very opposite! so the good professor says . . .

Those two minutes (29m-31m)about 1922 are very enlightening.

I'm going to have to take issue with the source to a certain extent. Mc Connol has spoken out before about science and it's role in the new state. Also Trinity and it's proponents have spoke out about Trinity's loss of influence since the foundation of the Irish state.

I'm a science post grad student and I dont think the Irish state oppossed science. I think they had more important priorities to think of at the time. Ireland has produced great scientists and will continue to do so.

pedroeibar1

I’ve dipped into Ferriter’s book on Dev -quotes taken from:
page 305 –
...............De Valera had been steeped in the cultural revival.............and its attendant emphasis on the Irish language..........asked .....which event he thought would have the most profound effect on Ireland's progress in the years ahead he answered..................‘Restoration of Irish as the ordinary spoken language.The Irish language was the bond which effectively preserved us as a distinct nation through all the vicissitudes of the past and is its best guarantee of preservation in the future’ (Dev quoted in New York Journal Oct 1957) ..............He (Dev) also stated on a number of occasions that the aim of restoring the Irish language as a spoken language would, if it were necessary to make a choice, take precedence over the policy of unification.

Page 308
..............The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies established in 1940 was regarded as a ‘landmark of its kind’ where Erwin Schrodinger became Director of the School of Theoretical Physics ...............a result of deValera using office to promote his favourite subjects ..............(DIAS) established despite the opposition of Fine Gael TDs who believed that it would have a negative impact on the universities........De Valera took his post as Chancellor of NUI .............a position he held from 1921 to 1975.........He was also very well disposed to Trinity College Dublin and gave money for the repair of the college’s historic buildings...............he did not allow party politics to to interfere with matters academic and [quoting Donal McCartney] ‘he set aside pennies from a poor state and an impoverished people for the cultivation of things of the mind’.

---

It seems conclusive to me that Dev’s attitude to education was heavily influenced by limited means coupled with his wish for the restoration of the Irish language & culture (e.g. the superb work of the Folklore Commission established by him). It is clear that he was not biased against science and he was supportive of academia in a non-partisan way.