In proposing the health of our two guests of honour, I’ll try to keep it brief. It
has been rightly said that brevity is the sister of talent, and the soul of lingerie.
The occasion for tonight’s dinner is the first Simonyi Lecture, which took place
yesterday evening. The Simonyi Lecture will be an annual event, at least for the
duration of my tenure, paid for through a donation by me to the New College
Development Fund. Where the Simonyi Professorship is in Public
Understanding of Science, my hope is that the Simonyi Lectures will attempt to
mediate, within Oxford, between the sciences and those subjects which, for
want of a better word, are sometimes call the Arts. I couldn’t think of a more
appropriate lecturer to inaugurate the series than Dan Dennett. Last night he got
us off to exactly the right sort of start.
Michael Lockwood characterised Dan’s philosophical persona as “Ghostbuster
Extraordinaire”. He certainly is that, but he is, of course, much more. He is a
scientist’s philosopher. He has a gift – rare among philosophers – for
phrasemaking, which makes him accessible to lay people. He is a leading light
of the movement which John Brockman has called The Third Culture –
scientists and scholars who communicate with each other via the medium of
books that nonspecialists are also able to read with enjoyment. When we hear of
an “intuition pump”, or the distinction between “cranes and skyhooks” we
quickly understand what is meant, and we want to read on.
Anybody who writes a book called Consciousness Explained is going to have a
hard time living up to the title. Dan certainly comes close, as Charles Simonyi
and I agreed at breakfast this morning. Whoever gives next year’s Simonyi
Lecture will also have a lot to live up to. I’d welcome suggestions.
The publisher’s blurb on the cover of his book of collected essays,
Brainchildren, says “If anyone can claim to be the Leonardo of the new
Renaissance, Dennett can.” By a pleasing coincidence, I wrote the following in
the Preface to my latest book: “Computer software is driving a new renaissance,
and some of its creative geniuses are its benefactors and simultaneously
renaissance men in their own right.” I was speaking, of course, about Charles
Simonyi. He is one of the world leaders of the computer software business, and
the computer software business is one of the most exciting and dynamic in the
world.
He is also a most generous benefactor. It is entirely characteristic of him that, in
drawing up the rubric for the Simonyi Professorship, he eschewed mean-spirited
legalistic language, and refrained from wrapping his intentions in red ribbon for
the years to come. Instead he wrote a personal letter to the future, setting out his
wishes in clear and imaginative English. I conjecture, and certainly hope, that
this is more likely to secure his wishes in the future than any amount of lawyer
talk.
It is incredible to think that I am now in my fourth year as the Simonyi
Professor. I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel in this position, and therefore
how grateful to Charles for his generosity. Not just on behalf of myself, but on
behalf of the university for it is, I don’t need to remind you, an endowment in
perpetuity to a university with which Charles had no previous connection. In
perpetuity means that we only have to put up with me for another ten years
before we get a new Simonyi Professor.
But Charles has also, during that time,
become a really good personal friend to
Lalla and me. And a good colleague, for
we talk a great deal about science and the
world of the mind, and I find myself
continually learning from him, and
sharpening my arguments in discussion
with him.
I think of Charles as a sort of intellectual
James Bond. He lives life to the full, and he won’t mind my saying that he lives
it in the fast lane. He loves gadgets and fast cars, pilots his own helicopter and
his own jet planes, both the supersonic and the ordinary kind. But the
conversation you are likely to have with him in the helicopter or the speedboat
is not at all what you would expect from James Bond. It is much more likely to
be about the Nature of Consciousness or the Singular Beginning of Time; the
Principle of Free Speech, or the hope for a Grand Unified Theory of Everything.
Charles has now stayed with us in our home four or five times, and it is always
a delight to have him. We have visited Seattle slightly less often, mainly
because of our relative lack of Lear Jets and Falcons. But we did attend his
memorable house warming-party in his unprecedentedly memorable house.
Villa Simonyi is one of the most imaginatively planned buildings I have ever
seen, the glass walls abutting at unbelievable angles, the ultramodern
architecture the perfect backdrop to the Vasarely paintings and the wall to wall
computer screen inside.1
We unfortunately had to miss last year’s party for his 50th birthday, but it was
possible to imagine what it was like, and attend it in spirit, in the form of a little
verse that I composed in honour of the occasion. I should explain that this
happened to coincide with the publication of my book, Unweaving the Rainbow,
which is about Keats and Newton, science and poets.
Never mind about John Keats,
Or Newton’s scientific feats.
Forget your William Butler Yeats,
William Wordsworth, William Gates.
Never mind about unweaving:
Here’s a man beyond believing.
Here’s a man so smart and swift he
Penetrates Mach 2 at fifty!
1
I had occasion to mention this in a poem that I wrote for Charles’s pyjama party, which I have
unfortunately lost and can recall only this couplet:
There’s the finest champagne, and the best from the deli
(The walls are of glass, when they’re not Vasarely).
And that’s not all he’ll penetrate . . .
(Even Windows 98
Is not beyond his understanding.)
Happy take-off. Happy landing.
See his supersonic plane go –
Vanishing right through the rainbow!
It has been Lalla’s and my privilege to have both Charles and Dan staying with
us together for the past couple of days. To have either Charles or Dan under
your roof is an intellectual experience to be treasured. Put the two together, and
you really understand the meaning of “the whole is greater than the sum of the
parts”. I hope they’ll both be back.
Let’s drink their health. Charles Simonyi and Daniel Dennett.