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The 1993 Kyoto Prize
1993
11 /11 Thu
Place：Kyoto International Conference Center
The 1993 Kyoto Prize Kyoto Prize Laureates
Lecture topics
The Joy of Engineering
Abstract of the lecture
Today our modern society is almost completely dependent upon technology. Recognition of this dependence has caused writers such as Mumford and Ellul to suggest that technology has run amok, and that steps must be taken to control it. Such writers are willing to accept much of the progress of the past. They are willing to ride in automobiles or to fly in airplanes but feel that technology has taken on a life or momentum of it own which may lead in undersirable or even dangerous directions. As a consequence, fewer of our young people are choosing careers in science and technology. I believe that engineering can provide exciting and rewarding careers for the young people who may wish to enter it now. I would like to use my own experience an example. I grew up in a small town in western Kansas, an area not known for its manufacturing skills. I attended one of the better Midwestern Universities, graduating in 1947. This was an exciting time to enter the electronics industry. Many new electronic products were being announced. The transistor was invented in that year, a development which would forever change the field. As a consequence, the field of electronics began a rapid expansion which has continued to this day. As a young engineer, I was offered opportunities to contribute to projects which would make a difference. The most important of these, of course, was the integrated circuit, which has grown to a 75 billion dollars industry, not only in the US but in Japan and around the world. This has provided me with a very satisfying career. Although my part was a small one, I have had a vantage point from which to see the progress. I can highly recommend engineering to all young people who may be choosing their life work.
Lecture topics
Between Shoreham and Downe: Seeking the Key to Natural Beauty
Abstract of the lecture
A lifelong inclination to science comes to me both via nature and via nurture from my parents. I grew up near London but my parents were returned New Zealanders, my father an engineer and my mother a doctor. They believed in a pioneer-like independence for their large family, an ethos that was quite unusual in the London-commuter middle-class milieu where we lived. They applied their ideas both in the rules they mad for their children and in their insistent non-reliance on outside services, and purchases. My childhood home was a house on the edge of country, with a large garden and access to woods and fields. It was conductive to what may have been innate interests in natural patterns and in living things. I mention my introverted, weakly social, and object-oriented nature as a child and argue that this was an important in making me become a scientist. I claim also that appreciation of beauty, which in the best case should be natural beauty, is always important in determining the line and depth of a scientist's work. From my father I learned tool use, how to design and build things, and an introduction to some intriguing but unrigorous ideas of mathematics. Following his spatial, mathematical, and can-do-somehow talents was to be of great value to me in the development of the theoretical side of my later work. Where my father built physical models to illustrate his engineering ideas, I later built theoretical ones. My models, like his, are often makeshift and amateur D also like his, they work and they produce results that could not otherwise be known. From my mother I leaned natural history, biology, and aesthetic appreciation. Specially from her I had an Extremely early introduction to the theory of evolution by natural selection, and from the moment I grasped the idea, evolution became an ever more consuming interest. I describe how I came to know of two eminent neighbors of the Victorian era who had lived within a few miles of my childhood home. One was Charles Darwin himself and the other an artist, Samuel Palmer. The latter, I found, had painted visionary, utopian versions of the landscapes that I knew well. I link these admired forbears to two sides of my interests and personality. Darwin's influence is paramount for any evolutionist and in my case I feel that I carried on almost from where he left off on the subject of social evolution. This work concerns the patterns and limitations that apply to social life in the living world generally. Palmer on the other hand represents my interest in what humans specially can expect achieve, their religious aspiration, and their ideal state of being. But for me all answers still must be based on models that, like my father's, really work. This was a challenge that I believe Palmer never met, and this failure led to his disillusion and a decline in the conviction of his art. He ended a much more ordinary artist than he began. Seen in the context of current sentiments, the challenge is indeed harsh, but it is not obvious that a switch cannot be made into a different ethos, to another set of sentiments that may entail in the long run greater human happiness and security.
Lecture topics
Life and Music
Abstract of the lecture
To respond to the wish of the organizers of this meeting I will speak of my life and work. I was born on 25, January, 1913 in a family of landowners. In 1915 my family went to Russia, where I lost my father, executed by Bolsheviks. We returned to Poland in 1918. At the age of six, I began piano lessons. At eleven, I heard the 3rd Symphony of Szymanowski, which was a revelation. At fourteen I began to study composition with Witold Maliszewski, pupil of Timsky-Korsakoff. He didn't accept my "too modern" Symphonic Variations, which I could complete only after my military service. In the Warsaw Conservatory I got diplomas for piano (1936) and composition (1937). In 1939 I took part in the war as commander of a military radio-station. The period of German occupation (1939-1945) I spent in Warsaw playing in cafes. In 1945 the Russians entered Poland. The country was under their domination for more than forty years. In 1948 the first performance of my First Symphony took place. I also composed some "functional" music (for schools, radio etc.), responding to strong needs of the devastated cultural life. I began working on my sound language. Between 1949 and 1955 was a very depressing period, during which only traditional music was performed. In 1956, however, an annual festival of contemporary music was inaugurated. It was only in 1966 that I was permitted to publish my music in England. Since then only have I been performed and known abroad. In 1963 I began to conduct publicly the concerts of my music in Europe, USA, and Australia. I explain why I haven't yet composed an opera. I discuss the important question of for whom I compose music. It is connected with the ethics of a creative artist, whose work must be compatible with what he believes in, what is the true expression of his artistic convictions. The "ideal world" is the object of the work of a creative artist. The political changes in our part of Europe have an influence of supreme importance on my life and state of mind.
