This book would make a perfect Thomas Davis lecture series, and if RTE radio has any sense, they'll snap up both it and its forthcoming companion volume on Irish medicine. Certainly the topics deserve a wide audience, and at the very least this book should be read by anyone at all interested in Irish history or science. There is increasing interest internationally in the cultural and colonial factors that shape science. It is no longer held up as a pure and absolute activity, independent of social, political or cultural influences, and Ireland makes for an interesting case study.
History books tell us, if they mention science at all, that Irish science saw something of a flowering in the 19th century, albeit confined to the Protestant Ascendancy, and that the romantic nationalist movement had no time for the practical men (and occasionally women) of science and industry. Thus, 20th- century Ireland celebrates only its writers, artists and musicians. This book, proceedings of a conference held at Armagh in 1994, explores (and sometimes explodes) these accepted tenets.
The 10 contributors from Ireland and elsewhere include historians and philosophers, scientists and engineers. Some of the essays are general overviews, others focus on individual case studies. The mix works well (though I found the style of some of the essays hard going), and the result is thought- provoking.
That there was a scientific flowering here in the 19th century seems clear. Indeed, David Attis relates how William Rowan Hamilton, arguably Ireland's greatest scientific genius, worked hard to establish Irish credibility on the international scientific stage, believing that an improved reputation would greatly benefit the country.
From a biographical survey James Bennett calculates that the majority of Irish scientists and inventors of the time were from the Protestant Ascendancy, mostly middle-class professionals, with few members of the aristocracy or working class and, he found, no women. One striking difference between Ireland and Britain was the many scientific professionals here, compared with the amateur "gentlemen of science" there, possibly because science here was controlled by public institutions like the Geological and Ordnance Surveys.
There were Catholic scientists - among them Sir Robert Kane, an eminent man in many fields during the mid-18th century, and one of the first Catholic graduates of TCD - but they were a small minority.
Hugh Torrens relates the fascinating story of the Irish mining engineer, James Ryan (c. 1770-1847), who invented a new boring device. Ryan's device could also be used to vent toxic gases from mines, at a time when mining disasters were almost commonplace.
Yet the device was never really accepted in England, partly because it was expensive and few people valued the extra information it provided. As for safety, the establishment preferred Sir Humphrey Davy's lamp, even though its merit was questionable and fatalities rose after its introduction. Torrens argues that a major factor in all this was Ryan's Irish origin.
Sean Lysaght explores other questions of nationalism, arguing that the "cultural revival" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was not as anti-science as is often claimed: these years also saw tremendous interest in Ireland's natural history, culminating in the Royal Irish Academy's Clare Island survey led by Robert Lloyd Praeger. But as Lysaght also notes, that survey's publications were complete by 1915, the end of an era in other ways as well.
Nicholas Whyte considers another aspect of nationalism: the question of where scientific collections should reside - at Dublin, or with the British museum in London? The examples he cites (the "Tyrone trilobite" and the "stateless crustacea" which went to London, and Joseph Wright's fossil collection which came to Dublin), all involved much scheming by curators and collectors for personal and political reasons.
Interestingly, the book's cover features the great Birr telescope. Its mirror has long been with the London science museum, though the Birr restoration project hopes it might one day come home. Plus ca change?
Mary Mulvihill edits the monthly magazine, Technology Ireland