Frankenstein and Science

Chapter 1 psychiatric hospital Christa Knellwolf and Jane Good every When Evelyn Fox Keller wrote that Frankenstein is a bosh for the premier measure and fore or so(prenominal)(prenominal) closely(predicate) the consequences of male ambitions to co-opt the procreative function, she took for given an interpretive consensus amongst late twentieth-century critical approaches to the bracing. Whilst the themes had been failed as considerably more tangled than we had earlier thought, Fox Keller concludes the major baksheesh remains sooner candid. The consensus top executive be characterised a secondary more intimatelyly than this as a persuasion that the fabrication is more or less masculinity and scientific hubris and has led to an eradicateuring use of the title as a proverb for the dangerous potential of the scientific over-reacher It was in this vein that Isaac Asimov coined the term the Frankenstein multifactorial to describe the theme of his robot stories in the 1940s, and The Frankenstein Syndrome is the title for a exhibition of essays on genetic engineering publish in 1995. This army takes a rattling different approach to the novel, thinkking to reopen the question of how scientific discipline and scientific ambition be portrayed in the story by offering a telescope of diachronic perspectives, based on detail accounts of aras of scientific noesis that are relevant to it. Frankenstein was publi neglect in 1818, in a cultural and political climate fraught with contrary ideals. The editors of this show take it for granted that a succeederful die hard of literature is ever overdetermined and that it is neither viable nor desirable to formulate a precise and determinate interpretation of any take shape of fiction.The wealth of debates and controversies that were going on at the time when bloody shame Shelley wrote Frankenstein make it an urgent task to provide a lay in which these discourses can be heard once again . If we see carefully for the contextual arguments into which the assessment of the benefits and dangers of a in the rawborn-fashioned discovery were embedded, we whitethorn energise to relinquish the assumption (implicit in Fox Kellers line and explicit in the majority of late twentieth-century interpretations) that this is a novel with an anti-Promethean message.In doing so, we can gain a more complex understanding of the cross-fertilisations in the midst of revolutionary politics and the frolics of scientific geographic expedition. Of course, non every scientist subscribed to radical politics. But considering that most scientists investigating completely unseasoned areas of interest had very little sense of w present their discoveries would tercet them, questions rough their consequences were uppermost in peoples minds.In the late eighteenth and betimes nineteenth centuries, Utopian cerebration around the considerable social benefits do possible by scientifi c innovation was a office staffful force for good. Advances in 2 Christa Knellwolf and Jane Good all in all anatomy, chemistry, galvanising energy, engineering and the geographic expedition learnings were saving lives and creating vast overbold economic possibilities, in like manner giving rise to nearly of the darker forms of clement exploitation associated with the industrial revolution. An healthy appraisal of these consequences required the kind of analytical vision that strikes us in Frankenstein. The end of the eighteenth century is a turning point oft called a second scientific revolution, which Patricia Fara sees as characterized by innovative levels of confidence in the commercial and social impact of scientific rese bowingh. 3 One of the definitive influences on this cultural change was Erasmus Darwin (17311802). Darwin was a gauge larger than conduct a pragmatist and idealist, a prolific writer of succulent verse, a polymathic inventor and a medical practiti oner with an uninhibited skeleton to experiment on his patients.As co-founder and recruiting sergeant for the Lunar Society from the 1760s, he presided over the most formidable agenthouse of scientific talent in eighteenth-century England. 4 Members included Josiah Wedgewood (173095), Mathew Boulton (17281809), Joseph Priestley (1733 1804) and James Watt (17361819). They made break done discoveries in steam power, chemical manufacture, optics, geology and electrical energy. 5 The driving enthusiasms for their world came from the prospect of its contiguous application in industry and commerce.If steam power was the most moneymaking field of research in terms of its immediate industrial impact, electrical energy was revolutionary in a more comprehensive and spectacular way. It was electricity that epitomized the Promethean spirit of the age and the the Statesn articulatesman and inventor Benjamin Franklin (170690) who snatched the lightning from the vault of heaven and the scept er from tyrants, and came to symbolize all that was most inspiring more or less it.In a now famous letter written in 1787 and intercommunicate simply to Doctor Franklin, America, Erasmus Darwin addressed him as the capaciousest national leader of the present, or perhaps of any century, who spread the happy contagion of intimacy among his countrymen and delivered them from the house of bondage, and the scourge of oppression. 6 The declamatory verve of this new scientific rhetoric inspired future generations. bloody shame Shelleys father, William Godwin (17561836), prise Erasmus Darwin and shared his ideals.Her m opposite Mary Woll rockcraft (1759 97), an incisive social analyst with a passion for the advance of knowledge, developed her avouch style of Promethean statement in praising the revolutionary quest for a new order of sharp demeanor But the irresistible energy of moral and political sentiments of fr motional a century, at last kindled into a glaze the lighten up r ays of truth, which, throwing new light on the mental powers of man, and giving fresh climb up to his suiting faculties, completely 7 undermined the strong h elders of priestcraft and hypocrisy.Introduction 3 Darwins verses were a strong influence on the early writings of Percy Bysshe Shelley (17921822), except the Shelleys and their circle were of a new generation who had to come to terms with the more horrific legacies of revolution in France, and with the reign of virulent backlash politics in England. The backlash began violently, with the gathering of perform and King mobs who targeted those associated with all forms of new knowledge and ideas.Joseph Priestley was the subject of a campaign of universal vilification, which culminated in the trashing of his lore lab in July 1791, on the second anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. The intellectual climate in 1818, when Frankenstein was published, was fraught with political agendas and Mary Shelleys place in it ine luctably to be understood in relation to the allegiance of ideals and principles that bound her to her parents (to whom the novel is dedicated) and to a peer group in which the charismatic influence of Shelley and Byron were paramount.A reading of the novel as simply anti-Promethean, which has been fashionable with most of the twentieth century and especially through the influence of some womens liberationist critics in the 1980s and 90s, fails to take account of the implications of anti-Promethean views for someone in Mary Shelleys cultural circumstances, and of many of her own overt pronouncements. To a womens rightist in Wollstonecrafts era, the idea that b anile discovery and the quest for compound tender-heartedity power was against the interests of women would have been anathema. In the romanticist compass point, Prometheus was the hero of all those who sought liberation from oppression. In many respects, Frankenstein criticizes an attitude towards knowledge that came to be identified with the depth. Subsequent views have either eulogized its grand achievements or condemned its megalomaniac aspirations. neither of these approaches has shed light on the broad palette of different approaches to the analyze of nature. In order to understand the full complexity of the diaphragm we, therefore, neediness to distance ourselves from a simplistic retrospective view that the skill was a period with a homogenous agenda about technological submit and the advancement of knowledge.The eighteenth century was no doubt dominated by monolithic movements that alterationd and moderneised philosophical theories at the same time as planting the seed for the shared values of a re publican and prosperous society liberated from the shackles of superstition. Scholars like Ian Hunter have convincingly argued for the existence of multiple wisdoms, whose agendas emerged from strongly conflicting ideas about the nature and get of human existence as single(a)s and m embers of society. The layising influences of the age of Enlightenment tend to be upheld as key achievements. Although it is honest to say that the period radically curbed the Churchs direct influence on civic matters, the secularisation of public administration was unable to undermine the Christian foundation of europiuman society. It is straightforward that some members of the Enlightened intelligentsia embraced atheistic principles, besides this was by no nub a general development. So, it is 4 Christa Knellwolf and Jane Goodall ossible to subdivide the multiple Enlightenments into the division of the empirical rationalists, on the one hand, and those who explore arcane and occult matters, on the another(prenominal). Here it has to be noted that it is a response to the weakening of the power of the Church that lay investigators could encroach on its traditional prerogatives when they examined aspects of psyche, mind and instinct and, by doing so, rejected the idea that th ose parts of the human being which were traditionally described by the term sense should be excluded from empirical, physiological analysis.Importantly, though, scientific discipline bridges the divide amid sober empiricism and attempts to subject metaphysical issues to the scrutinising eyes of logical analysis. The hybrids amidst rationality and metaphysical speculation, called into existence by the crossovers surrounded by these dickens types of intuition, are a fertile backdrop to kickoffal Frankensteins introduction to the world of science. The locations of Frankenstein have been chosen with utmost care. succeeders birthplace in geneva positions him in the stronghold of Calvinism.At the same time, it alludes to the fact that Jean Jacques Rousseau (171278) returned to this small republic on Lake Geneva as a refuge from the vices of France. Another meaning(a) mountain for the geological formation of master keys mind is Ingolstadt, a Bavarian town with a deep founded university (1759) that adopted progressive principles and aimed to achieve social reform. Ingolstadt became famous passim Europe in the early 1780s for a feature brand of Enlightenment the order of the Illuminati who describe themselves simply by the Latin word for Enlightenment.It is authorized that Frankenstein does not contain any direct references to the Illuminism, or its founder ten Weishaupt (17481811), but it is telling that the dates of Waltons letters to his sister, 17, refer its action back to an anonymous time of the eighteenth century. It therefore seems to be fair to conclude that the pursuit of superhuman objectives must be located in the ten dollar bill before the French Revolution, when all of Europe was intoxicated with a steery ferment of reformatory ideas and utopian visions.Weishaupt had been educated as a Jesuit but rejected this rigid form of Catholicism and became the first layman to be appointed for the chair of canon law at the University of Ingolst adt (1773). The contribution to the intellectual life of his university, though, was not sufficient for him. Sharing Victor Frankensteins immense craving to better the lot of mankind, he embarked on negotiations with the Freemasons. His unyielding temper applyed such a rapprochement difficult, so that he founded a new secret society, which was, however, modelled on this society. The joint efforts between Weishaupt and Adolf von Knigge (175296) guaranteed the spacious success of the new society between 1780 and 1782. Disagreement between the two leaders, a colossal with public scandals and denunciations that the society was aiming for political sedition preferably than the advancement of human welfare and scientific knowledge, micturated serious suspicions. In 1787, the Bavarian government went so far as to forbid it under penalty of terminal. Introduction 5The stated goals of the society of the Illuminati were to mend society through the conclusion of sensibility and the pra ctice of scientific research. These objectives were shared by most modern-day intellectuals and it, therefore, attracted the preeminent lights of German intelligentsia, including Johann Wolfgang Goethe (17491832), Johann Gottfried von Herder (17441803) and Friedrich Nicolai (17331811). They joined as a means of dedicating themselves to an organised study and cultivation of human nature.The initiatory oath of new members of the order revolves around humanitarian principles I profess, and as well pledge, that I entrust eagerly grasp every opportunity of serving humankind, impart improve my knowledge and willpower, and will make generally useable my utilitarian recognitions, in so far as the welfare and statutes of this particular society will demand it of me. 10 While pursuing similar goals as the philosophes, a group of French intellectuals dedicated themselves to the compilation of comprehensive information about the arts and the sciences to be collected in the one reference wo rk of the Encyclopedie (175172). 1 The group of intellectuals around Denis Diderot (171384) and Jean DAlembert (171783) aimed to spread knowledge as a means of breaking down privileges and abuses by church and nobility, which is why they advocated a strictly empiricist approach to science. While Weishaupt admired these spokespeople for reason and rationality, his own society embedded the practice of rationality and benevolence in an atmosphere of ritual.He also combined his commitment to pioneering scientific exploration with the exploration of the more esoteric borderlines between material and non-material phenomena. The emotional symmetry to his practice of reason and rationality, for instance, consisted of the adoption of classical names for all members of the society. Weishaupt called himself Spartacus and Knigge was Philo. Weishaupts taste for secrecy led him to refer even to places by pseudonyms, capital of Greece, for instance, standing for Munich and Thessalonica for Mannhe im.The veil of mystery also provided a cover for some serious agitations for the elaboration and propagation of a new popular theology and the gradual establishment of a universal democratic republic. 12 It was also a fertile environment for the observation of phenomena of psyche and intellect. Although Weishaupt and Knigge are not directly recognisable in Shelleys imaginary film of Ingolstadt, there are some show links between the crown of Illuminism and the novels scientific culture.A striking coincidence is that the overbearing vision of scientific progress expressed by Professors Krempe and Waldheim positions them in the decade of the 1780s, which was also the time when Antoine de Lavoisier (174394) ousted the long-established belief that combustion was a process that released phlogiston a colourless, tasteless and weightless substance believed to be present in every object as a latent principle waiting to be released.Lavoisier demonstrated the inconsistencies of the phl ogiston theory in 1783 and published his own theories in 1789, demonstrating that preservation of mass is a fundamental principle not just in mechanical physics but also in chemistry. Lavoisier, importantly, proved the viability of valued 6 Christa Knellwolf and Jane Goodall approaches to chemical processes, including respiration and other vital processes of the human frame. 13 In Frankenstein the clash between the old and the new theories is pitched as a contrast between the modern masters and ld alchemists. 14 afterward Krempes scornful response to Victors interest in their exploded systems (29), the benevolent Waldman explains that these were men to whose indefatigable zeal modern philosophers were indebted(predicate) for most of the foundations of knowledge (31). The key figures in the alchemical tradition mentioned in the novel Albertus Magnus (c. 120680), Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (14861535), and Paracelsus (Theophrastus von Hohenheim, 14931541) do not simply fea ture as scholars who made groundbreaking contributions to the history of science.Once he has lost his fascination for the old alchemists, Victor Frankenstein rationalises his attraction to their ideas as a craving for boundless brilliance (30). Prior to studying at Ingolstadt, he describes his early quests for the philosophers stone and the elixir of life, and goes on to flesh out the moment of success what glory would suffice the discovery, if I could banish disease from the human frame, and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death (23).If he has really studied the writings of these authors, he must have a more complex understanding of the symbolic qualities of key alchemical concepts, like the philosophers stone. The text of the novel is quiet about whether he ever pondered the capacity of this most cherished of substances to enable a unfathomed union between self and world. We can, therefore, only speculate if he was ab initio attracted to the authors of alchemical deeds because they embraced a holistic view of nature, which foregrounded strong resemblances between physical and metaphysical phenomena.It should also be noted that many scholars who broadly belong in the alchemical tradition explored the borderlines between mind and matter. strike investigations of topics as diverse as social deviance, the origin of the Devil, the true skills of magicians, disconsolate and white magic, witchcraft, and the power of poisons and remedies are collected in the work of Johann Weyer, Agrippas most great(p) disciple. 5 If stripped of its religious-demonic framework, Weyers insight into the psychology of delusions, obsessions, sexual deviance, as puff up as a whole range of ailments that would come to be classified as sick diseases during the Romantic period, is rightfully remarkable. It, therefore, is no surprise that Romantic writers had a certain penchant for the works of the old alchemists. Mary Shelleys father, William Godwin, himself embarke d on a declare-length study entitle Lives of the Necromancers (1834),16 in which he assessed their true achievements in a strictly secular light.As a stolid rationalist, Godwin must have wanted to peaceful his periods enthusiasm for what he would have described as irrational obfuscation. Interest in the principles of life the nervous system, the psyche and the soul however, provides a connection between Weishaupts Illuminati, the modern masters and the old alchemists. But as is illustrated by the fact that Weishaupt fell into general note while Lavoisier came to be hailed as the founder of modern chemistry, the line between respectable pursuits and politically and otherwiseIntroduction 7 suspect explorations of the non-material aspects of human existence was easily crossed. 17 Nowhere was this boundary more extravagantly confused than in the dramas of intellectual adventure conceived by Coleridge, Goethe, Shelley, Byron and other leading poets of the Romantic movement, in whos e imaginative company Mary Shelleys story was conceived. * There were strong elements of the uncanny about many of the scientific experiments that caught the public imagination during the first two decades of the nineteenth century.The legacy of Luigi Galvani (173798) was continued through the work of his nephew Giovanni Aldini (17621834), who in 1803 experimented on the corpse of a criminal recently executed at Newgate, to macabre effect. Electrical charges caused one eye to open, the legs to jolt and the hand to raise itself as if in greeting. In the same socio-economic class, Aldini published a series of descriptions of his experiments, including some work on severed heads The first of these decapitated criminals being conveyed to the apartment provided for my experiments, in the neighborhood of the place of execution, the head was first subjected to the galvanizing action.For this purpose I had constructed a pile consisting of a hundred pieces of silver and zinc. Having moist ened the inside of the ears with salt water, I formed an arc with two metallic wires, which, proceeding from the two ears, were applied, one to the summit and the other to the bottom of the pile. When this communication was established, I observed strong contractions in the muscles of the face, which were writhed in so irregular a manner that they exhibited the appearance of the most horrid grimaces. The action of the eye-lids was exceedingly striking, 18 though less certified in the human head than in that of an ox.But for the precision of its research lab detail, this reads not unlike a scene from Mary Shelleys novel. At the other end of the vitalist spectrum from the prospect of reanimation was that of spontaneous generation. In the same year as Aldini was engaging in his grisly, jaw-dropping work at the gallows, Erasmus Darwins imaginings were all light and life And quick contraction with ethereal flame Lights into life the fibre-woven frame Hence without parent by spontane ous birth lift the first specks of animated earth. 19The most notorious experiments in spontaneous generation were those conducted by Andrew Crosse (17841855) at his house in the Quantock hills in 1836, long after the publication of Frankenstein, but a diary entry by Mary Shelley indicates that she and Percy Bysshe Shelley attended one of Crosses early lectures in capital of the United Kingdom on December 28, 1814. Crosse spoke and gave demonstrations on the topic 8 Christa Knellwolf and Jane Goodall of electricity and the elements, describing in detail his methods of directing lightning currents in order to employ their power to generate light and motion. 0 The early nineteenth century was a time when the magic and mystique of science was crossing paths with an accelerating succession of immediately useful discoveries, and it was impossible to determine which of a range of mind-boggling prospects might hold up an actuality. The industrial revolution was in its most intensive phas e. Human mobility was intensify beyond all previous imagining, and concepts of geographic distance were correspondingly transformed.Richard Trevithick (17711833) construct the first passenger steam carriage in 1801 and his steam locomotives were revolutionizing encumbrance transport from 1804. In 1807 the first steamship passenger service to America was introduced. In 1816 the Leeds-Liverpool canal was completed. Work and productivity were likewise accelerated, with doubleedged consequences, as the pop out of manufactured goods grew exponentially, but so did the burden on those whose lot it was to die hard the dark satanic mills. 1 A succession of riots and a growing movement of organized protest were features of this timespan, leading up to the peckerwoodloo put to death in Manchester in early 1819. William Wordsworth, reflecting in 1814 on the transformations he was witnessing, tried to express twain sides of the account I grieve, when on the darker side Of this great ch ange I look and there behold much(prenominal) enthral done to nature as compels The indignant power to justify herself Yea, to penalise her violated rights, For Englands bane. And et I do jump for joy, Casting reserve away, exult to see An intellectual mastery exercised Oer the blind elements a purpose given, A perseverance fed almost a soul Imparted to brute matter. I rejoice, Measuring the force of those gigantic powers That, by the thinking mind, have been compelled To serve the will of feeble-bodied man. 22 Mary Shelley was part of the Romantic movement, socially and intellectually, and her view of science was accordingly influenced by the heightened perspectives of her contemporaries.Her protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, is a figure torn between the two kinds of vision expressed here by Wordsworth, and there are no easy conclusions to be reached about the inherent values and dangers of his enterprise. * Introduction 9 The main objective of this collection of essays is to b ring to life the challenges and complexities of science as they are reflected in the novel. We have, therefore, brought together contributors who can offer readings of Frankenstein in light of the most relevant areas of the periods scientific knowledge.Rather than centralisesing exclusively on the individual fields of enquiry which were to establish themselves as the core disciplines of modern science, this book is based on a broader understanding of science. On the one hand, it reminds the modern reader of the controversial aura of, for example, early studies in electricity, and on the other hand, offers a glimpse of the fluid boundaries between pioneering explorations of nervous diseases and esoteric speculations about the existence of analogical resemblances between mind and matter.The scientific advances of the Romantic period could not have been as farreaching and rapid without related efforts to disseminate the new knowledge amongst a wide spectrum of interested parties. Wom en and clawren, in particular, became a essential target audience for the numerous publishers attempting to profit from the ever-rising interest in inventions and new insight into the secret workings of nature.Publications about the people, wolfs, plants and landscapes encountered by naval expeditions were a similarly popular topic of interest. Owing to William Godwins own conflict in the market of scientific popularisation, Mary Shelley learnt about her periods technological advancements and scientific theories from her earliest years. Much of the knowledge she acquired as an devouring(a) young reader with an early penchant for writing was filtered through to her via scientific popularisations and textual hybrids between fact and fiction.Patricia Fara opens this collection of essays with an overview of scientific publications written for a lay audience and available during Mary Shelleys formative childhood years. Considering that early nineteenth-century women could still only r eally enter the history of science as readers, illustrators and translators, Ludvig Holbergs novel about Niels Klims journey through a subterranean world (1742) encouraged its female readers to feel at home in the spaces between fact and fiction.Holbergs novel, along with Jonathan alerts Gullivers Travels (1725), which demonstrated a similar preoccupation with modern-day science, is a revealing early fancy about the imaginary exploration of alien spaces, mingled with an analysis of double standards and the social objectives behind scientific ventures. Eighteenth-century novels about scientific innovation are, therefore, shown to provide an important foil for Mary Shelleys imaginative portrayal of a scientific hypothesis. The next chapter, written by Judith Barbour, offers detailed insight into the precise nature of the knowledge disseminated hrough the Juvenile subroutine library? a serialised encyclopaedia published by William Godwin after 1807. Not surprisingly, the class of a writer, publisher and bookseller teemed with intellectual debates about the rationale and implications of new systems of scientific categorisation. Such discussions enthusiastically explored the Linnean order of plants along with other attempts to revise the long-established great chain of being, a rigid hierarchy that delegate a place to all hold beings and embraced beings as diverse as mites and slugs, on the one hand, and God and his angelic 0 Christa Knellwolf and Jane Goodall vassals, on the other. 23 Attracting young men with radical sentiments or otherwise unconventional attitudes, Godwins home was also a hub for discussions about the social changes made possible by the secular perspective of present-day(a) science, disencumbered by the crippling notions of mainstream morality. Controversies about mankinds purpose were considered in light of, for instance, Georges Buffons (170788) accounts of the resemblances between the human physical frame and that of apes and other pri mates.The young Mary was, therefore, immersed into a heady intellectual climate that encouraged her to speculate about the reforming potentials of contemporary science. Percy Bysshe Shelley, an influential figure in her fathers circle of helps, was intrigued by the roaming imagination of the young Mary so much so that the equalise decided to elope in 1814.The early dialogues between the precocious child and the already established writer were to grow ever more intensive and, as Barbour argues, inspired the striking momentum required for transforming Marys fantasy about an artificially created being into a speculative drama about the consequences of contemporary science. In the late eighteenth century, the understanding and construe of space began to change in response to the accumulation of a vast bulk of new information about the geography of far-flung places.In parallel with this development, unprecedented efforts to grasp the secrets of the human mind, psyche and soul probed into the home(a) spaces of human existence. It goes without saying that the attempt to map and chart the phenomena of the mind could not follow equally objective principles. As Christa Knellwolfs chapter explains, the inability to befool an objective map made it difficult to proceed. However, it also provided scope for imagining a vastness of imaginary space that reflects the minute infinities revealed by contemporary microscopes.At issue, however, are not the microscopic dimensions that will be the concern of twentieth-century microbiology, but the limitless nature of consciousness and imagination. The parallels between inner and outer space bears special salience for the setting of Frankenstein The immense distances traversed, particularly in its news report frame, position the novels eponymous hero in both an emotional and a geographic desert. The impossible spaces of the narrative and physical setting of the story, then, raise questions about whether the uncompromising reali sation of ideals and absolutes is achievable for an ordinary human being.Contemporary debates on the sanctity of human life are a key concern of Frankenstein. Anita Guerrinis chapter argues that early nineteenth-century debates about vivisection were motivated not only by the nascent sensitivity towards the sufferings of animals, but also responded to long-standing, scrupulously motivated attempts to ban experiments that pried into the mysteries of life human and animal. The discovery and description of the nervous system, however, critically depended on the possibility of observing the physical locations of pain.Like Frankenstein himself, prominent scientists in the field found it difficult to cope with the gruesome aspects of vivisection and were uncertain about whether they had a right to proceed with their research. Audiences were still eager to attend public Introduction 11 performances in anatomy but antivivisection debates shed important light on the contested public perce ption of anatomical-medical experimenters. Francois Magendie (17831855) a French anatomist who regularly performed public dissections in order to demonstrate the bodys sensory functions as a case in point, who illustrates a growing discomfort with the scientists wish to spy ever more incomprehensiblely into the borderlines between life and death. So a further parallel between the real and fictional scientist emerges as an urgent concern of the novel, consisting of the fact that neither the real nor fictional scientist were horrified by the gruesome environment of the funereal house or sufficiently awed by the idea that a dead human body was the receptacle of a recently departed soul.Frankensteins creature is frequently referred to as a monster. While this trite stump fails to grasp the problems implicit in contemporary fantasies about the perfectibility of the human body and mind, it also ignores the fact that the monster posed enormous problems for the taxonomies of comparati ve anatomy, which is why teratology the scientific explanation of the existence of monsters emerged as an influential branch of contemporary science.Diverging significantly from the characteristics identified by received definitions of a particular species, Melinda Cooper argues that the nature and purpose of these alternative life-forms posed endless problems and questions. Were they simple variants of the normal representatives of a species, were they a sign that the health of a species had been undermined, or were they indications of special transformations waiting to manifest themselves in the imminent future? Such questions need to be raised in regard to Frankensteins so-called monstrous creation.Their relevance is further documented by the fact that debates about the problematic role of the monster must have occurred between the Shelleys and their friend William Lawrence (17831867), a leading figure in the controversy over whether the origin of life was the consequence of m aterialist or vitalist principles. As regards the philosophical conception of Frankensteins creature, the context of teratological controversies opens up a new understanding of the novels analysis of the origin and meaning of different forms of life.Allan K. Hunters focus on an evolutionary perspective leads to a very different instructive approach, exploring the social and political implications of the creatures life course. The evolutionary theories at issue here are those of Erasmus Darwin, whose untempered admiration for the revolutionary energies come up in America and France fed into his hypothetical modelling of the future state of life forms. Hunters essay examines the claim that Enlightenment science enabled new view of the human condition that comes into existence between a distant past and a distant future, and whose endless transformations generate cultural anxieties about the approach of a new evolutionary phase. Seen through the lense of Darwins revolutionary optimi sm and Godwins doctrine of perfectability, the creature is endowed with otherworldly learning abilities, extreme powers of endurance and a body size that makes him rife in any physical contest. Yet he is also commutable into a force of chaos and a generator of cyclic violence.His creation as a manufacturing process is thus a provocative materialization on the culture of 12 Christa Knellwolf and Jane Goodall manufacturing innovation in England at the time. These tensions and provocations are revealed in the novels controversial reception, which also illustrates a growing anxiety in England about the nebulous and excessive tendencies of French thought, compared to face pragmatism. With our taken-for-granted attitude towards electricity, it is a challenge for twenty-first-century readers of Frankenstein to appreciate the imaginative potency of electrical researches in the Enlightenment period.Mary Shelleys novel capitalizes on the dramatic cultural and psychological impact of elec trical discovery as well as its immediately spectacular manifestations. Amongst her contemporaries, electricity was regarded as a life science or, more than that, as the science of life itself. Ian capital of Mississippi emphasizes that the most popular and spectacular forms of electrical experiment involved human and animal bodies. Such experiments promised to unlock forces of unlimited potential that might change the flock of the species, effecting a transformation of human being in metaphysical as well as material terms.When unseen electrical forces were made to cause visible objects and bodies to move, or emit sparks, or to attract other objects towards them, this created a meeting point between the perceptual frameworks of science and animism. Through Galvanic experiments in which the corpses of recent gallows victims were made to dance, these forces are specifically think with the fantasy of reanimation. The agonies of conscience experienced by VictorFrankenstein also reflec t the strength of debates surrounding researches into electricity which, from an orthodox religious point of view, were dangerously impious, because to reveal those things in creation that were hidden from the human senses was to transgress divine intention. If the designer had wanted them to be known, He would have made them evident in the first place. Against this view, there was the Newtonian defence that the study of nature, with the purpose of revealing the workings of God to man, is essentially pious because it enables fuller human admiration of divine perfection.The unashamed atheism of the Shelley circle, and their embrace of Prometheus as the greatest of mythic heroes, prompted a move away from defensiveness to the lyrical celebration of bold discovery. However, Jackson suggests that in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley is offering a more troubled view of scientific aspiration. Joan Kirkbys analysis of the spiritualist ideas underpinning the story of Victor Frankenstein brings up the question of what was regarded as a science in the early nineteenth century.Mesmerism combined elements from the knowledge domains of astronomy, electricity and magnetism, with interpretative frameworks belonging to the practices of clairvoyance and spiritualism. Major philosophical thinkers such as Immanuel Kant (17241804) and Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 1860) interested themselves in the front line of spirits, and many of the works of eighteenth-century scientific writers include serious commentary on the permeability of the boundary between life and death. Leading spiritualists of this time, as Kirkby points out, were also leading scientists.Emanuel Swedenborg Introduction 13 (16881772) was led by his sophisticated interests in anatomy and the composition of matter to enquire into the specific location of the connecting point between body and soul. In this light, the anatomical work of Frankenstein, determined by an impassioned commitment to dismantling the boundary betwee n life and death, takes on heightened implications. The themes of the novel can also be seen as closely linked with those of Percy Shelleys major poems, in which a view of matter itself as spirit is xpounded with powerful conviction. The culture of collecting was one of the most significant forms of public engagement with the earthy sciences in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. As Christine Cheater observes, some of the tensions played out in the novel are reflections of larger cultural tensions exemplified in the design and precaution of collections. Victor Frankensteins adventures take him from the extremes of confinement, working day and night in his domestic laboratory, to some of the wildest and most remote landscapes of the world.Similarly, the quest for scientific trophies could lead to travels around the globe but also to the experience of confinement amongst the obsessive and personalised clutter of the cabinet of curiosities. There were tensions, too, be tween the curiosity driven projects of the private collectors or virtuosi and the growing commitment to expertise and professional specialization, with its legal tender demands for greater exclusivity in the management and accessibility of collections.Cheater compares the careers of Ashton Lever (172988) and outhouse Gould (180481) as exemplars of this transition and the tragic personal costs it sometimes entailed, suggesting that the pitch-dark conclusion of Victor Frankensteins enterprise shares some symptomatic elements. scientific fictions about the existence of different forms of life did not begin with Mary Shelleys Frankenstein. Stories embraced in long-standing speculations about whether there are other worlds and, if so, what their inhabitants might look like, date back at least to Bernard le Bovier de Fontelles (16571757) scientific popularisation of Cartesianism.While early fantasies about the appearance of beings living outside or beneath the surface of the earth demon strate little alarm about the implications for their own world, Mary Shelleys novel adds a decisively worrying twist to the theme. Sharing the planet with another species that is their own equivalent (or even superior) may be a prospect for which human nature is not ready, though in her later novel The break Man, Shelley envisaged a world evacuated of the human species as a place of profound metaphysical emptiness. This work points towards a tradition of bleaker fictional renditions of the future.By the end of the nineteenth century, apocalyptic fantasies dominated the imagination of writers, such as H. G. Wells, disenchant about the promises of science and their periods irresponsible treatment of natural resources. Mary Shelleys Frankenstein is often read as a work that stands at the beginning of such dark visions about the barbarities resulting from a science that is used in the service of megalomaniacs wishing to control the world rather than as a tool for the spread of Enlight enment ideas and values. It is time to reengage with the novel as a work 14Christa Knellwolf and Jane Goodall that is filled with the energies of scientific aspiration, as well as misgivings about human failure to realise it. Notes 1 Evelyn Fox Keller, Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death Essays on Language, Gender and Science (London Routledge, 1992), p. 49. Anne K. Mellor probably offers the most fully developed of such readings in Mary Shelley Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters (London Routledge, 1988). See Isaac Asimov, Robots, computers and fear, Introduction to Machines That Think (Harmondsworth Penguin, 1983), p. 1 Bernard E. Rollin, ed. The Frankenstein Syndrome Ethical and Social Issues in the ancestral Engineering of Animals (Cambridge Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995). Patricia Fara, An Entertainment for Angels (Cambridge Icon Books, 2002), p. 22. Desmond King-Hele, Doctor of Revolution The Life and title-holder of Erasmus Darwin (London Faber & Faber, 1977). Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men The Friends Who Made the Future, 17301810 (London Faber & Faber, 2002). Erasmus Darwin, letter to Benjamin Franklin, 29 May 1787 in American Philosophical Society collection of Franklin written document XXXV, 70 quoted in King-Hele (London Faber & Faber, 1977), p. 79. Mary Wollstonecraft, An Historical and Moral View of the radical and Progress of the French Revolution, in Mary Wollstonecraft, Political Writings, ed. Janet Todd (Oxford Oxford Univ. Press, 1994), p. 292. Ian Hunter, Rival Enlightenments accomplished and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early forward-looking Germany (Cambridge Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001). For a historical background of eighteenth-century freemasonry, see Margaret Jacob, Living the Enlightenment Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (New York Oxford Univ. Press, 1991). For a etailed historical analysis of Illuminism, see Richard van Dulmen, Der Geheimbund der Illuminaten Darstellung, Analyse, Dokumentation, trans. Christa Knellw olf (Stuttgart F. Frommann, 1975), p. 159. Denis Diderot and Jean DAlembert Le Rond, eds, LEncyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire raisonne des art et des sciences (Paris Le Breton, 175172). For a discussion of the cultural context and objectives of the philosophes, see David Garrioch, The party of the Philosophes, in The Enlightenment World, eds Martin Fitzpartick, Peter Jones, Christa Knellwolf and Iain McCalman (London Routledge, 2004), pp. 2641. Compare the entry for Illuminati in the Catholic Encyclopaedia online accessed 10 October 2007. Antoine Lavoisier, Traite elementaire de chimie, presente dans un ordre nouveau et dapres les decouvertes modernes, 2 vols (Paris Chez Cuchet, 1789 repr. Bruxelles Cultures et Civilisations, 1965). Mary Shelley, Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus The 1818 Text (Oxford Oxford Univ. Press, 1993), p. 30. All further references are from this text and are cited parenthetically. 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Introduction 15 5 Johann Weyer, De praestigiis daemonum, trans. John Shea, in Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the metempsychosis (Binghamton, NY Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1991 1583). 16 For the details of Godwins study, see Lives of the Necromancers or, An Account of the Most gamey Persons in Successive Ages, Who Have Claimed for Themselves, or to Whom Has Been Imputed by Others, the Exercise of sorcerous Power (London Frederick J. Mason, 1834). 17 Also compare Robert Darnton, Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France (Cambridge, MA Harvard Univ.Press, 1968) and Auguste Viatte, Les sources occultes du romanticism, illuminism, theosophie, 17701820 (Paris Champion, 1965). 18 John Giovanni Aldini, An account of the late improvements in galvanism, with a series of curious and interesting experiments performed before the commissioners of the French theme Institute, and repeated lately in the anatomical theaters of London (London 1803). Extracts from this document available online at accessed 10 October 200 7. 19 Erasmus Darwin, The Temple of Nature (London J.Johnson, 1803), Canto II, iv, lines 24651. 20 Peter Haining, The Man Who Was Frankenstein (London Frederick Muller, 1979), pp. 5663. 21 William Blake, Jerusalem quoted from Literature Online accessed 10 October 2007. 22 William Wordsworth, The Excursion, Book 8, pp. 243 and 244 quoted from Literature Online accessed 10 October 2007. 23 For a historical overview of the concept, see A. O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being A Study of the History of an motif (Cambridge, MA Harvard Univ. Press, 1948).