The Tánaiste, Mary Harney, recently addressed the Royal Irish Academy at the launch of the Irish Council for Bioethics. She highlighted the importance of science to the economy, pointed to our proud scientific heritage and invited science to join literature and music at the centre of cultural life.
Such sentiments, emanating from high political office, are music to the ears of scientists and, particularly, to people like myself, who are endeavouring to promote the public understanding and appreciation of science.
To excite public engagement with science is much easier said than done, as extensive international experience has shown. One powerful reason is that science is intrinsically less accessible than music or literature.
Science explains how the natural world works, but its findings often conflict with common sense and intuition. Our ordinary observations tell us that Earth is flat and motionless, for example, but science tells us that it is a sphere that spins rather rapidly on its axis and circumnavigates the sun each year.
To understand science, we have to go beyond commonsense conclusions based on ordinary observations, and this requires effort. But even if one works at it, most of the conclusions of science must be accepted on the basis of authority. Indeed, science is now so vast and complex that even scientists have to accept advances outside their own areas on the basis of authority.
The word science comes from the Latin scientia (knowledge) and scire (to know). Western culture has traditionally viewed knowledge as dangerous, and science is knowledge arrived at by a somewhat unnatural mode of thought.
Literature in its limited treatment of science has given a poor opinion of it. In the Book of Genesis we read that God warned Adam and Eve: "You may eat the fruit of any tree in the garden except the tree that gives knowledge of what is good and what is bad. You must not eat the fruit of that tree; if you do you will die the same day."
Biblical scholars tell us that "knowledge of what is good and what is bad" means knowledge of everything.
Science is knowledge of how the natural world works and, as such, is value free. Modern technology is the use of science to make or to do useful things. Technology is not value free and, unfortunately, the knowledge produced by science does not come with instructions about the ends to which it should be applied.
SCIENCE has little or nothing to say about morality and ethics. Decisions about how to use scientific knowledge should be made democratically, by society at large. Scientists have a special responsibility, however, to put into the public domain any new knowledge with the potential to affect our lives.
Probably the best-known example of an ethical dilemma about the application of science was the development of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project. Its development and use were political decisions. Should scientists have co-operated? This was a difficult decision for any decent scientist to make.
On the one hand, the weapon was awesomely powerful and had an unprecedented killing potential. On the other hand, the Nazis were trying to develop an atomic bomb and, if they succeeded before the Allies, would win the war and rule the world. Many of the scientists on the Manhattan Project must have chosen their work as the lesser of two evils.
An ethical debate now centres on the morality of human cloning. The Raelian sect claims to have already sponsored the successful cloning of several humans. Mainstream scientists have scoffed at its claims, pointing out how unlikely human cloning remains given the difficulties encountered in cloning sheep.
Species differences are important, however, and a procedure that is difficult to achieve in one species can be readily achieved in another.
Scientists have long known how to freeze and recover bull's sperm, for example, but for many years were unable successfully to freeze pig's sperm.
It would be very wrong to clone humans at present. Every child ever born - assuming humans have not yet been cloned - has been a genetic mixture of his or her parents and was conceived through union of sperm and egg. A clone is a genetic copy of a single parent.
To produce children by cloning would be an enormous change and we must debate the implications for a long time before making any decision.
The argument made most frequently to justify human cloning is that the procedure can give a child to someone who is unable to have one by any other means.
This presupposes an inalienable right to have children regardless of circumstances. I don't think there is such a right. I can understand the longing to love and raise your own child, but there are limits to how far we can legitimately go to satisfy this longing.
If sexual methods fail, adoption is always an option. If adoption is not available, there is no shortage of other people to love and care for.
• William Reville is associate professor of biochemistry and director of electron microscopy at University College Cork