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The 2004 Kyoto Prize
2004
11 /11 Thu
Place：Kyoto International Conference Center
The 2004 Kyoto Prize Kyoto Prize Laureates
Lecture topics
The Center of “Why?”
Abstract of the lecture
In the second half of the 1960s, when the mainstream trend was toward ever larger computers, Dr. Kay proposed the concept of the personal computer as a tool to support the intellectual work of individuals, and so initiated a paradigm shift in the computer world. Furthermore, as a pioneer in the development of the graphic user interface and object-oriented language environment, he has made a fundamental contribution to the realization of today's personal computing.
Lecture topics
Reflections on a Life
Abstract of the lecture
As an octogenarian I am happy even to be alive and still more so to be the recipient of a Kyoto Prize that celebrates the values of work, knowledge, and idealism. My contemporary cohort reached adu1thood after the Great Depression and during World War II. The Depression was a world-wide tragedy, and strongly affected my family. My parents were in their early 30's, with a new home, two young children, and rising expectations. They were suddenly faced with unemployment and the loss of their home. Their aspirations were crushed, and shifted to thoughts of a brighter future for themselves and their children. My sister and I learned not to want unattainable material things. I also developed a life-long consciousness of, and sympathy for, the underprivileged of the world. We were fortunate to have excellent schools, and parents who found underpaid employment that spared us from poverty. We had a humble home for my musically talented sister and myself, but one where the importance of hard work, education, and ethical living were emphasized. I became interested in art and inspired by literature. The teachers in my public schools revealed the scientific glories of Euclid, Mendeleev, and Newton which prepared me for the California Institute of Technology, and the privilege of studying genetics in the department of Morgan, the first Nobelist in genetics. World War II began as I was making the transition to college, and affected all of us. It was my good fortune to be sent to Medical School while in the U.S. Navy. Genetics and embryology both fascinated me and led naturally to an interest in Pediatrics. I became fascinated with the thought of combining scientific inquiry with caring for sick people. World War II ended, and I continued my training, inspired especially by my teachers in pediatrics. I found there was nothing I could imagine that surpasses the feeling of curing a child with a deadly disease like meningitis. All barriers of race, religion, or social status disappear. During my pediatric training I first encountered children with cancer, a subject of central interest for me ever since.
Lecture topics
Public Space and Political Public Sphere—The Biological Roots of Two Motifs in My Thought
Abstract of the lecture
Following the request "to speak about yourself," I present a search for biographical roots of basic theoretical orientations of my work. I am focussing on four events and challenges in subsequent periods of my life — early childhood, school age, adolescence and my adult life. (1) The human organism does not assume the specific qualities of a person until its entrance into a social space that it shares in interaction with reference-persons. Because of a deep-reaching mutual dependency of ego and alter, the human mind is shaped by the symbolic structure and content of that space. My disposition for a certain awareness of the sociality of reason and of the vulnerability of persons who are individuated only through socialization might well go back to the traumatic experience of medical interventions early in my life. (2) Starting from the social nature of man, I have later on elaborated an intersubjectivist approach to both, a pragmatist conception of language and the moral theory of equal respect and concern for everybody. Retrospectively I discover in this orientation also a reflection of those challenges I had to cope with when I entered school. Because of my linguistic handicap, I suffered from failing attempts to communicate with teachers and classmates as well as from some teasing and exclusion. (3) and (4) The most startling experience was the world-historical caesura of the defeat of the Nazi-regime and the new beginning of Germany in 1945. That event fortunately hit my generation in a morally sensitive age of adolescents and thus made us aware of our responsibility for both, overcoming misleading traditions of the past and fighting for a stable democratic future. The political turn of 1945 had, and still has, an impact on my different lives as a scholar, a teacher and a public intellectual. Without that experience I certainly would not have understood the role of a vital political communication and will-formation for democracy, nor the relevance of a sound public sphere for the emergence and reproduction of the only form of solidarity that can hold together a complex society of citizens who remain strangers for one another all their life.
