Toespraak van de Prins van Oranje, 28 september 2006

Toespraak | 28-09-2006

Distinguished laureates, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

First of all, I want to congratulate the laureates most warmly on being selected for the prestigious Heineken Prizes. I should also like to express my great respect for Mrs Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken, chair of the Alfred Heineken Funds Foundation.

The Dr A.H. Heineken Prizes are awarded to scientists who - and I quote - are "outstanding and a source of inspiration to others". And, needless to say, this also applies to the winner of the Heineken Prize for Art.

"Outstanding and a source of inspiration to others". The brilliant player who shows his or her team the way, achieves breakthroughs and comes up with creative solutions. People like Freddy Heineken himself.

People who can break new ground and create space for other people to use. Creative loners who nevertheless work closely with others. It sounds slightly illogical, and yet we can see, in both art and science, how this seeming paradox has borne fruit to an incredible degree. As Sir Isaac Newton famously said: "If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."

In current thinking on science and society, a great deal of time and space is devoted to addressing social issues. From my own involvement in global issues relating to water management, I can well understand why. The world urgently needs the best scientific knowledge and expertise, and I'm not just referring to technical knowledge, but to knowledge about people, governance and international relations as well. The world looks to science for help and, fortunately, the scientific community is not deaf to its appeals.

And yet, when we weigh scientific curiosity against social urgency, one thing becomes clear. However important innovation and dealing with social issues may be, if you don't have enough space to pursue scientific curiosity, to follow your intuition and to set your own agenda, the source of inspiration will soon dry up. You may still be "outstanding", but your role as "a source of inspiration to others" will be diminished.

The importance of being free to pursue independent scientific endeavour cannot be stressed highly enough. The five prestigious scientific Heineken Prizes can thus be seen as a "source of inspiration", by continuing to cherish the pursuit of independent scientific activity in search of new insights. Just as the independent pursuit of artistic endeavour is a precondition for discovering new artistic directions.

Art and science are transnational, both literally and figuratively. They are played out on the global stage, and many collaborative ventures take the form of worldwide networks. Looking at the winners of the major international scientific awards - including, of course, the Heineken Prizes - it's clear that the United States leads in many fields.

Scientists from all corners of the globe move to the US to pursue their careers for longer or shorter periods. The openness and cultural diversity of the American scientific community are a powerful stimulus to greater creativity, new successes and fresh insights. The Netherlands - and in my opinion Europe as a whole - can learn from this.

If it adopts an open and hospitable stance, both internally and externally, it can use its great cultural diversity to huge effect. I sincerely hope we shall see signs of progress in this direction in the near future.
This is the third time I have had the honour of presenting the Heineken Prizes to a group of excellent scientists and an equally excellent Dutch artist. It is a particular pleasure today to welcome the first winner of the new Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Cognitive Science. A very challenging field, not only because of its broad interdisciplinary scope, but more especially because of the subjects it covers: how we think, how we learn, what determines our behaviour, how the brain works: in short, how human intelligence functions, or doesn't function.

Might I suggest that the role of individual creativity in developing new scientific insights could also be a fascinating subject? But perhaps I'm getting carried way!

I congratulate all six laureates on gaining these prestigious prizes.

Thank you.