José Rizal: pioneer of non-violent revolution

Although I’ve gone to work in Manila on several occasions, it’s really only because I have connected on this current trip with some very interesting Filipinos that I’ve finally come to grips with José Rizal.

Rizal was a very early proponent of non-violent revolution. Born in 1861, he wrote and published two novels – Noli Me Tángere and its sequel El Filibusterismo – which attacked both the Spanish colonists and the grip over the people of the Catholic Church in the Philippines.

While his aim was freedom from oppression, he was clear that there could be bear-traps in the path once that had been achieved. "Why independence,” he asked, “if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?" And, of course, this pit was indeed fallen into by a later generation. His life and work were influential for both Gandhi and Nehru.

He was an extraordinary man – a polymath beyond the boundaries of possibility, it might seem, having expertise in anthropology, architecture, botany, business, cartography, drama, economics, education, engineering, essay-writing, entomology, ethnology, farming, folklore, geography, grammar, history, horticulture, journalism, lexicography, medicine, music, novel-writing, ophthalmology, painting, philosophy, poetry, political theory, psychology, publishing, satire, sculpture, sports, sociology and zoology. Having traveled the world, he amassed twenty-two languages.

Yesterday, amongst much else, I saw some of his sculpture. Very accomplished.

His final poem, written in Spanish shortly before his death, starts

Farewell, my adored Land, region of the sun caressed,
Pearl of the Orient Sea, our Eden lost…

And, celebrating his unwed Irish wife, Josephine Bracken, it ends

Farewell, sweet stranger, my friend, my joy;
Farewell, to all I love. To die is to rest.

Rizal was executed by firing squad in 1896, aged just thirty-five.

Galileo and university silos

A genius with the widest of interests, Galileo Galilei was so much more than an astronomer.

Musician, philosopher, inventor, artist, engineer, mathematician, physicist, designer and superb writer. The ultimate polymath. Einstein described him as the father of modern science. A total “renaissance man” (as they say nowadays).

The question is: what might Galileo have studied in today’s siloed university system, where narrow specialisation is the norm? A handful of universities, including City in London, now offer some exciting interdisciplinary courses, but it’s mostly the students who get the benefit of these, not really the teaching staff. There seems to be minimal communication - even between disciplines that appear to be adjacent to each other, like music and musicology.

Would he have been accepted in the first place? And if he had been, and had gone on to pursue a postgraduate path, would he have produced a quarter of what he eventually achieved?