MEDICUS FEBRUARY 2016

O P I N I O N

Insights from an unusual source

Professor Jeanette Ward Adjunct Professor Nulungu Research Institute, Notre Dame University

W here did you spend your summer holiday? I spent mine in the 17 th century. It was all Shakespeare, Salem, spice trade and shipwrecks for me. A harrowing century, especially for the west coast of Australia where the loss of both Dutch and British ships, whether naval or mercantile, was the heart-wrenching curse of an otherwise Golden Age. Greatest among the impediments to safer seafaring in that century was the inability to determine longitude with any practical precision. As a result, ships crashed into reefs and shoals invisible to the naked eye, their crew and cargo lost forever. All too often, the inherent errors of the technique of ‘dead reckoning’ to determine nautical speed, distance and location became just that. Dead. Latitude was easy. Longitude impossible. The known roll call of wrecks in the 1600s in WA included the Trial and the Batavia with

close calls for the Cygnet and the Roebuck . LONGITUDE ACT 1714 On the cusp of the next century, it was the British government that did something grand, bold and strategic in response. Confronted as it was by both the complexity of this challenge and the obvious need to stimulate but not suffocate interdisciplinary scholarship, the dawn of the 18 th century saw passage through Parliament in 1714 of the Longitude Act: An Act for Providing a Publick Reward for such Person or Persons as shall discover the Longitude at Sea. That the first Author or Authors, Discoverer or Discoverers of any such Method shall be entitled to a Reward or Sum’. This Act also required in legislation that the successful method be ‘Tried and found Practicable and Useful at Sea’.

of the 21 st century, we can appreciate this as a clear directive commitment by a visionary government determined to accelerate discovery for practical purpose. There was general consensus that the Longitude Act worked a treat. Handwringing turned into systematic enquiry, empirical experimentation and real-world trials. Government didn’t get in the way by attempting to pick winners. It simply set an ambitious yet achievable outcome of interest and waited for the winner's solution to be verified. A certain John Harrison received his payout in 1773. For the following decades, Britain as a result held an extraordinarily competitive advantage over other seafaring nations and the world was never to be the same again. AN EXCITING TIME TO BE AN AUSTRALIAN?

Even from our erstwhile sophistication

Imagine the inspiration of a

Government policy on the issues facing our country has lurched from one pole to the other. Few truly significant reforms have been enacted… As a people we seem to have lost the patience required to engage on big topics.” Michael Fullilove Third Boyer lecture, 11 October 2015 There is an important dividend for political competence ... The public and the country expect governments to govern.” The Hon Malcolm Turnbull, PM The Australian, 24-25 October 2015 Obligation and opportunity in the 21 st century