“...how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge...”

December 3, 2015 6:53 AM

The Science of Life and Death in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein [The Public Domain Review] Professor Sharon Ruston surveys the scientific background to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, considering contemporary investigations into resuscitation, galvanism, and the possibility of states between life and death.
posted by Fizz (6 comments total)

Galvanism in its day was the equivalent of today's belief that computers will become alive. It mistakes what looks to others like life with life itself.
posted by Obscure Reference at 7:43 AM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

I can highly recommend the Public Domain Review's "Selected Essays" books -- great reading, and I love supporting a project delving into the vast store of awesome humanity available to us thanks to the public domain*. I'm partway through Volume I at the moment, and Volume II is on the way.

* At least until the powers that be are able to do away with it.
posted by Celsius1414 at 8:53 AM on December 3, 2015 [3 favorites]

As much as Mary Shelley infuses her novel with many different aspects of science/technology/modernity, in my own personal reading, it always felt like Shelley was criticizing the abuse of science/technology. We have this obviously gifted Dr. Frankenstein utilizing his knowledge in the worst of ways. A person who does not take responsibility for his actions, or at least he does a bit too late. The damage has already been done. This creation is out in the world. I never thought I'd be able to connect Jurassic Park with Mary Shelley but Malcom's commentary is particularly apt with how I read this novel:

“Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.”

posted by Fizz at 1:34 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Abernethy argued that life did not depend upon the body’s structure, the way it was organised or arranged, but existed separately as a material substance, a kind of vital principle, “superadded” to the body. His opponent, Lawrence, thought this a ridiculous idea and instead understood life as simply the working operation of all the body’s functions, the sum of its parts. Lawrence’s ideas were seen as being too radical: they seemed to suggest that the soul, which was often seen as being akin to the vital principle, did not exist either. Lawrence was forced to withdraw the book in which he had published his lectures and resign the hospital post he held, though he was reinstated after publicly denouncing the views he had put forward."

Frankenstein's creature had been reanimated. So, pick whose theory applies--Abernathy's or Lawrence's. This was what Shelly's story explored. Jurassic Park, basically, was a bug hunt. We love our amusement parks, but have not much time to contemplate our souls. Returning people from death is still performed, and the lines are still pretty much arbitrary; hence the DNR forms we fill out when we have our tonsils removed. Medical advances in the past 200 years have moved the line of demarcation around a bit without shedding any light on what happens after the transition. In modern times, some still hold the idea that our earthly existence is animated by a celestial force. We are free, mostly, to cry poppycock without staking too much on that opinion. In Shelly's day questioning the soul's existence was a dangerous, if not entirely novel idea.

The cautionary element in her story was timeless, and pretty much unbound by genre, but it was the trek into unknown by science that invoked the difficult questions. After all, the existence of the soul was out of our hands, but bringing back the dead, maybe not. While being a person without a soul was horrific, the transgression was made by the scientist sticking his nose where it didn't belong that was the crime, not the hapless creature that resulted. No way could this creature be one of us. The creature was an abomination to the ignorant, torch-wielding villagers--they were pissed about the death of the child, of course, and it would seem that the larger, existential, questions were not in their purview. The creature itself thought things might have gone better if the good doctor had created for him a playmate--in truth, even Frankenstein probably wouldn't have thought to draw that sort of parallel without having the benefit of an Eden in which his children might live, laugh, love and be happy.

Shelly fell short of her duty as a novelist by failing to comment on whether the creature might have been returned to humanity by receiving some sort of dispensation from the church--after it was informed of its duties as a human, of course. Maybe she didn't want to get into the quagmire that inevitably would arise from deciding if the creature should be a Presbyterian or a Catholic.

In those days an emerging lionization of "scientism" was taking hold. In a couple of decades the scientist-wizard would settle the world's ills; at least that's how the theory would go. For her, though, rationalism and science were not necessarily synonymous. Dr. Frankenstein forgot to ask God if his experiment was a good idea. The creature itself wasn't too keen on the idea. Shelly didn't presume to know the answer, so neither did her hero, the creature.

My personal view is that the soul is a poppycock vision based on wishful thinking. Even if I were to accept its existence (and the commensurate afterlife that's supposed to bolster our petty existence), I might still prefer the version of eternity expounded by (I believe) Clemens, which posits that spending an eternity with a mob of bible-thumping religionists is but Hell turned upside down.

Her basic inquiry persists:

Interviewer: Dr. Teller, aren't you concerned about the abuse of this gadgetry?
Dr. Teller: No. What could go wrong?
posted by mule98J at 5:56 PM on December 3, 2015 [2 favorites]

I thought I’d seen a BBC documentary a year or two ago which discussed Galvani, Aldini et al. at some length, but I can’t find that now. Perhaps I’m misremembering Science Britannica - part 1- Frankenstein’s Monsters which takes Aldini’s experiment on the late Mr. Forster as its starting-point.

Reading more about Aldini led me to learn about the alarming German doctor Carl August Weinhold:

…who claimed to have brought animals back from the dead. In a series of experiments, Weinhold extracted the spinal cords of decapitated kittens, replacing them with zinc and sliver pile batteries, which generated an electrical charge. Not only did their hearts start beating but, according to Weinhold, the kittens bounded around for several minutes.

Weinhold would later propose enforced genital infibulation for all young men, an idea received with less enthusiasm than his prancing zombie kittens. (source)

posted by misteraitch at 1:15 AM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]

...headless kittens, bounding around.

Okay, this motherfucker needs his genitals infibulated.

I'll go first. Let me crank up my field phone.
posted by mule98J at 11:14 AM on December 4, 2015