Recap - Blinded by the Sun

Characters from the play 'live-sketched' by Simon during Adrian's introduction.

At our second - and last - meeting of term we discussed Stephen Poliakoff's Blinded by the Sun (1996). After dishing out the cake and drinks (not quite the picnic fare represented in the play...), Adrian provided an excellent and thorough introduction to Poliakoff, his work, and even his family.

Alongside Arcadia (1993) and Copenhagen (1998), Blinded by the Sun formed, we learned, the middle of a trio of science plays produced by the National in the 'nineties. Arguably the least well known of these plays, it is also the only one in which, as its opening instructions say, 'The time is the present' throughout. Is this best, therefore, seen as an 'unhappy state of the nation' play?

Adrian identified the key themes of the play's attempt to gain insight into the workings of academia and its relationship with wider society: how, it asks, do science departments response to the world? What does the world want from them, and what do they want from the world? What does the world reward in the sciences and what does it not reward? What do science departments themselves value and/or reward? With Poliakoff's brother a chemistry professor at Nottingham, we felt the playwright had a particular connection to these topics. Scrutiny of the current website of the Nottingham chemistry department shows its quite evident placement in relation to wider audiences, with emphases on student satisfaction and sustainable chemistry ('benign by design').

Guided by Adrian, we also thought about replication and reputations in science, with reference to the cold fusion controversy of the late nineteen-eighties. Does, as the play seem to suggest, a focus on sensational frauds miss many other forms of misconduct or betraying of ideals as part of scientific practice? At several points in the play we felt its characters expressed well the frustrations, insights, and experience of actually conducting scientific research; the different personalities involved seemed to stand in for different types (and generations) of researchers.

The discussion continued to cover everything from perpetual motion machines to detergent. In particular, we talked about several pairs of topics: pure and applied science, individual and group research, gender and careers, counterfeiting and skill, cognitive dissonance and fraud, inspiration and perspiration. A fitting conclusion to our term focussing on this pair of plays.