Mètode Science Studies Journal ISSN: 2174-3487 [email protected] Universitat de València España Haynes, Roslynn SCIENCE AND LITERATURE. ARE THE KNOWLEDGE WARS FINALLY OVER? Mètode Science Studies Journal, núm. 5, 2015, pp. 131-138 Universitat de València Valencia, España Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=511751360019 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative MONOGRAPH MÈTODE Science Studies Journal, 5 (2015): 131-138. University of Valencia. DOI: 10.7203/metode.82.3563 ISSN: 2174-3487. Article received: 14/04/2014, accepted: 30/04/2014. SCIENCE AND LITERATURE ARE THE KNOWLEDGE WARS FINALLY OVER? ROSLYNN HAYNES Since alchemy fi rst challenged the authority of the Church, the relative status of specialized, scientifi c knowledge and high culture has been hotly contested. For centuries writers, as champions of culture, have retaliated against the claims of science by satirising its practitioners as being either evil, obsessive and possibly mad, or foolish and inept inventors whose experiments continually misfi re. Examples of both these groups are discussed in their historical context. Around the end of the twentieth century a new genre designated «lab-lit» appeared. In this scientists are portrayed not as stereotypes but as ordinary people, pursuing science as they might any other profession within a life context and engaged with the ethical and sociological problems it involves. Reasons for the emergence of lab-lit are considered. Keywords: scientist stereotypes, lab-lit, alchemy, knowledge, power. When C.P. Snow, British chemist and author of eleven knowledge – on the one hand, traditional high culture novels, coined the phrase «The Two Cultures» as guarded by the learned few and for centuries associated the title for his 1959 Rede Lecture, he was intent on with the Church; and on the other the «special pointing out the defi ciencies of the British education knowledge» that was the province of those trained in system which, he believed, favoured the humanities, the «black arts» of alchemy and, later, in science. especially the classics, to the detriment of scientifi c Pope John XXII’s condemnation of alchemy subjects. He also insisted that in 1317 (Duncan, 1968) was there was alarming ignorance primarily about contested by each group of even the most «WITH FEW EXCEPTIONS, authority, an attempt to suppress basic elements of the other this subversive power that was THE VAST MAJORITY disciplines, scientists never independent of kings, priests having read a Charles Dickens OF FICTIONAL SCIENTISTS or generals. This «special novel and humanities graduates ARE DEPICTED AS EITHER knowledge» was, and still is, having no understanding of even INEPT AND FOOLISH, seen as both more diffi cult to simple scientifi c terms (Snow, OR ILL-INTENTIONED acquire and more infl uential in 1959). Despite the widespread what it promised to accomplish. AND OBSESSIVE TO THE debate the lecture evoked, little Disregarding ecclesiastical changed. Most scientists were, POINT OF MADNESS» condemnation, clients from all by necessity, too immersed in social strata visited alchemists research to read anything other in secret, lured by hopes of the than the journal articles in their immediate discipline, wealth, power and longevity that alchemy professed and non-scientists were deterred by the language of to offer through the philosopher’s stone that would specialization in any but popular accounts of recent allegedly turn base metals into gold; an «elixir of scientifi c research. youth» to cure illness, counteract ageing and even However, the rift was much older and deeper than confer immortality; the unlimited power of perpetual Snow suggested. Having a foot in both disciplines he motion; and the generation of a homunculus. may have been unaware of the 500-year-old enmity Before we dismiss as foolish these promises of existing between the champions of two kinds of alchemy it is well to refl ect that modern science offers MÈTODE 131 z MONOGRAPH i f Crossroads x a remarkably similar list of attractions, appealing a to greed by generating valuable resources; to the desire for longevity with anti-ageing compounds; and offering «free» power, sequentially identifi ed as m electricity, solar, wind and nuclear power. And while we may no longer yearn for a homunculus, we are no less eager to produce life by artifi cial means, for our own ends, on our terms and in our own time. Such promises appeal to the most basic human weaknesses and desires – greed, vanity, manipulation, hubris and the desire for power. Despite its allure, alchemy was also regarded with suspicion, not merely because of the Church’s caveat. Entering an alchemist’s laboratory with its strange equipment, strange smells, bubbling concoctions, the arcane symbols of Hermetic tradition and the fi gure of the alchemist was no doubt an intimidating experience, as depicted in Joseph Wright of Derby’s The Alchemist in Search of the Philosopher’s Stone Discovers Phosphorous (Figure 1). Alchemy was feared as much as it was desired and this mistrust still attaches to the Pandora’s box of science. Instances of disasters associated with seemingly wonderful scientifi c «break-throughs» remain clear in recent memory: Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, increasingly frequent environmental disasters, the unforeseen side-effects of medical and cosmetic drugs and procedures, or the socio-ethical problems of genetic engineering. There has been ample ammunition for humanists to launch against science and through the centuries writers of fi ction have drawn on it to frame a counter-weapon, a cluster of myths denouncing such specialized knowledge. A central element in this on-going feud over contesting forms of knowledge is the fi gure who represents science. A detailed study of such semiotic characters from the medieval alchemist to the modern scientist indicates that they can be categorized within Derby Museum and Art Gallery a small number of stereotypes: the arcane alchemist; Figure 1. Joseph Wright of Derby. The Alchemist in Search of the the foolish virtuoso or later, the unsuccessful Philosopher’s Stone Discovers Phosphorus, 1771. Oil on canvas, inventor; the unfeeling scientist remote from human 101.6 × 127 cm. Entering an alchemist’s laboratory with its strange concerns; the adventurer transgressing boundaries; equipment, weird smells, bubbling concoctions, the arcane symbols of Hermetic tradition and the fi gure of the alchemist, the idealized, wise scientist; the obsessive researcher undoubtedly proved to be an intimidating experience. determined to pursue a project whatever the cost; the helpless scientist who has no control over his intellectual property (Haynes, 1994). Of these «THERE HAS BEEN AMPLE AMMUNITION seven stereotypes, only one, the idealised scientist, FOR HUMANISTS TO LAUNCH AGAINST is unambiguously complimentary, the adventurer SCIENCE AND THROUGH THE CENTURIES being a qualifi ed hero who appeared only rarely WRITERS OF FICTION HAVE DRAWN and for short intervals, notably in the novels of Jules ON IT TO FRAME A COUNTER-WEAPON, Verne. The idealistic scientist-rulers of Francis Bacon’s utopia New Atlantis (1626) govern with wise A CLUSTER OF MYTHS DENOUNCING benevolence, voluntarily suppressing any knowledge SUCH SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE» 132 MÈTODE z MONOGRAPH Crossroads f i x potentially detrimental to the society, and the death amoral and ruthless in achieving his ends. In most of Isaac Newton in 1727 elicited celebratory odes cases he precipitates a wave of retributive events, a depicting Newton, who had produced a comfortingly enacting our darkest nightmares that new, dangerous predictable model of the solar system, ascending to knowledge may trigger disastrous consequences or heaven to discover the (very) few astronomical facts be deliberately misused. The mad scientist’s literary m he might have overlooked. After World War I there ancestors are Dr Faustus, Victor Frankenstein, Dr were again some utopian novels advocating that Jekyll, Dr Moreau, Griffi n the Invisible Man and a scientists become the rulers of a world state to avoid host of others that can be multiplied many times if future wars; and in mid-career H.G. Wells produced we include fi lm. Indeed, Mary Shelley’s character some bland utopias organized on scientifi c lines by Frankenstein has become an archetype in his own unconvincing characters. right, his name code for any experiment that misfi res, such that his relationship with his ■ HISTORICAL DEPICTIONS creation has frequently become, OF SCIENTISTS in popular misconception, one With these few exceptions, of complete identifi cation: the vast majority of fi ctional Frankenstein is the Monster. scientists are depicted as Andrew Tudor calculated that either inept and foolish, or mad scientists or their creations ill-intentioned and obsessive had provided the villains or to the point of madness. Both Figure 2. The parodic characterization of the monsters in one-third of horror these formats represent in part scientist mocks those with the ambition of fi lms produced between 1931 a counter-attack by humanists becoming powerful scientists. Their failures and 1984 and that scientifi c or attempting to «answer back» represent the schadenfreude of the author, psychiatric research produced a sort of retaliation for the pretence of to the powerful individuals