Discourse Series: 'There’s so much to know': Post-pandemic reflections on the human thirst for knowledge and its value and utility

As the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic draws to a close, we turn to consider what can be learned from our experience and management of this dreadful outbreak, with its tragedies and triumphs, the better to prepare for future emergencies. This discourse argues that there are different and deeper lessons to be learned, and suggests that this recent shock raises wider questions about how well equipped we are to address the existential challenges we face: climate change, biodiversity loss, widening inequality, political polarisation, and accelerated technological change.

While our response to the pandemic is, with some justification, seen as a victory for science, this elides over our thin understanding of the human and social components of community or population responses to crises that require individual sacrifice now for collective benefit in the future. Equally, it exposes our limited knowledge of the conditions under which a population might be willing to be guided by expertise in their choices and actions, or to engage with, accept, and implement complex sociotechnical solutions.

The central argument in this discourse is that the human attribute that best prepares us for future challenges and catastrophes is the fundamental desire to know, to explore and to endure, the curiosity that compels us to grasp what is beyond the frontier of current understanding in all departments of knowledge, the need to know what is on the other side of the threshold. The eclectic results of our curious exploration, and the diversity of expertise that it institutionalises in our society, best prepare us to imagine a sustainable future, seize opportunity, navigate difficulty, and cope with adversity. This proposition is approached in from two directions. First, it is argued that the vivid expression of curiosity in childhood betrays the evolutionary and survival advantage it confers. Second, a pragmatic argument is made that the science, knowledge and talent that served us well during the pandemic had its roots in curiosity-driven research.

The discourse concludes that our societal priority must be to support curiosity and talent across all areas of human endeavour, and at the same time learn to collaborate and engage better and more deeply across different crafts and disciplines. It is legitimate to ask: to what end this curiosity? It is reasonable to answer that it is an end in itself, or that it is essential to our humanity, or that it might benefit our economy, our society, or our planet. However, the sources of these latter benefits can only be traced in retrospect, and projections of future benefit may be a poor guide to current exploration. The proposal is made that that the principle of promoting of an open and just society may help direct our curiosity, and the exploitation of its fruits.  

Our Speaker:

Philip Nolan MRIA earned his degrees in Physiology (1988) and Medicine (1991) at University College Dublin (UCD) and was subsequently awarded a PhD in Physiology for his research on the control of breathing and the cardiovascular system during sleep. He is an accomplished researcher, with interests in physiological signal processing and control systems, and publications in the leading journals in the field. He joined the academic staff of the Department of Human Anatomy and Physiology at UCD in 1996, winning President’s Awards for both Research and Teaching. He was appointed Director of the UCD Conway Institute for Biomolecular and Biomedical Research in 2003, before becoming Registrar and Deputy President at UCD in 2004, where he led an institution-wide reform of the undergraduate curriculum, the UCD Horizons programme, and was responsible for access and widening participation, postgraduate studies, international partnerships, and library and information technology services.

In August 2011, Professor Nolan was appointed President of Maynooth University. Early in his tenure he established a new strategy for the University in its research, teaching and engagement activities, which saw unprecedented growth and diversification of teaching and research, and a doubling of the research capacity of the University. He has contributed to important developments in higher education in Ireland, specifically in reforming the transition from second to third level, in widening participation in higher education, and in promoting equality and diversity.

He has more recently been centrally involved in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, as a member of the National Public Health Emergency Team, chairing its disease modelling subgroup. He is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. Professor Nolan took up the role of Director-General of SFI on 17 January 2022.

Respondent:

Hannah McGee MRIA is Deputy Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI).

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