{"id":126571,"date":"2018-06-16T09:00:02","date_gmt":"2018-06-16T13:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=126571"},"modified":"2018-06-19T14:30:51","modified_gmt":"2018-06-19T18:30:51","slug":"who-gets-to-be-a-mad-scientist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/06\/16\/who-gets-to-be-a-mad-scientist\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Gets to Be a Mad Scientist?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Photograph from the soundstage of Fritz Lang\u2019s\u00a0Metropolis<\/em>.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature. <\/em>\u2014Mary Shelley,\u00a0Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Theatrical as it is, the clich\u00e9 of the mad scientist\u2014a wild-haired, goggle-eyed maniac pacing around a laboratory, operating buzzing contraptions with the help of a hunchbacked assistant\u2014reveals something important about our relationship to knowledge. At least since Aeschylus, science and technology have been bound to madness and criminality: when Prometheus rebels against Zeus, steals the \u201cfire that makes all skills attainable\u201d from the gods, and gives it to the humans\u2014together with tools, technical and scientific knowledge, language, and reason itself\u2014he \u201cis mentally straying, robbed of [his] wits, like a bad doctor who has fallen sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some two thousand years later, a different incarnation of this paradox helped give birth to modern science. Descartes, one of the founding figures of our scientific method, started out by imagining a \u201cmalicious demon of the utmost power\u201d that deceived him and confounded his mind so that he doubted everything that presented itself to his senses and his mind. \u201cI shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgement,\u201d he writes in his first Meditation<\/em>. \u201cI shall consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things.\u201d Descartes\u2019s radical skepticism, a deliberate form of madness, is the cornerstone of his method: the demon makes him doubt everything\u2014except that he doubts and therefore thinks and therefore exists. Rationalism is, then, the product of an evil genius.<\/p>\n

To this day, metaphors of insanity and normalcy are ingrained in the philosophy of science: epistemologists like Thomas Kuhn call \u201cnormal science\u201d all work that is done within an accepted paradigm. This, of course, implies that all revolutionary science is, at first, abnormal\u2014or \u201cAbby Normal,\u201d as Igor calls the brain he gets for the creature in Mel Brooks\u2019s Young Frankenstein<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

From Prometheus to Dr. Faustus, Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Moreau, Dr. Griffin, Dr. West, or Dr. Banner, mad scientists in literature have one thing common: they all challenge some sort of law. In one way or another, they \u201cpractise more than heavenly power permits,\u201d as the chorus in Christopher Marlowe\u2019s Doctor Faust<\/em> says in its final admonition. Not only do they break the rules of established paradigms\u2014their methods are never recognized as proper science by academic institutions\u2014but more important, they defy the very laws of nature. \u201cLife and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through,\u201d Victor Frankenstein says. By redefining life, matter, and even space-time, the greatest mad minds defy the basic concepts on which we build our sense of reality. The rejection of the world everyone sees in favor of an alternate reality nobody else can perceive is both one of the most commonplace descriptions of madness and a prerequisite for scientific breakthrough. And precisely because the work of these mad scientists is so groundbreaking, there is seldom legislation in place to address the ethical issues that may arise. Mad scientists operate in a legal limbo, when they are not overtly breaking criminal laws. World domination, as anyone who has watched an episode of Pinky and the Brain <\/em>knows, can be their main drive. In short, mad scientists violate institutional protocols, twist what we thought was the unbendable order of nature, or contravene, in supervillainous ways, the rule of law.<\/p>\n

Still, for all the madness, there is something at the core of these narratives that remains utterly normal: all these geniuses\u2014such as those in the list of in-network mad doctors in the preceding paragraph\u2014are white men. A Google search will yield a few marginal women mad scientists such as the protagonists of George Griffith\u2019s\u00a0Olga Romanoff<\/em> (1894) and T. Mullett Ellis\u2019s Zalma<\/em> (1895), Barbara Haggerwells in Ward Moore\u2019s\u00a0Bring the Jubilee<\/em> (1953), or Dr. Susan Calvin, the robopsychologist in Isaac Asimov\u2019s Robot series\u2014although some of these few cases are problematic. Even if they are megalomaniac enough to fit the bill, Olga and Zalma, for instance, use devices (submarines, airships, biological weapons) developed by men. Even if a few other examples may have been omitted here, the main point remains unchallenged: in a canon defined by a character that defies the establishment, that character is, in decisive ways, conservative and conventional.<\/p>\n

It is stunning that the radical literary invention that conceived of \u201cbestowing animation upon lifeless matter\u201d\u2014along with time travel, teleportation, transspecies hybridization, invisibility, death rays, light-speed vehicles, and more\u2014has, for the most part, been unable to imagine a woman scientist. The creations are outrageous; the creators, for all their madness, not so much.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

As early as the seventeenth century, however, there was Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. A self-taught scientist and philosopher, Cavendish was indefatigably prolific: \u201cIt is probable, some will say, that my much writing is a disease<\/em>\u201d (my italics). In an inscription to the University of Cambridge that prefaces one of her works, she writes, \u201cYou might, if not with scorn, with silence have passed by, when one of my sex, and, what is more, one that never was versed in the sublime arts and sciences of literature, took upon her to write, not only of philosophy, the highest of all human learning, but to offer it to so famous and celebrated an university as yours.\u201d It is true that for the most part, her writings were met with silence\u2014after the publication of one of her books, Henry More writes in a letter to Anne Conway (author of T<\/em>he<\/em> Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy<\/em>, a forerunner to Leibniz\u2019s Monadology<\/em>) that Cavendish \u201cmay be secure from anyone giving her the trouble of a reply.\u201d But more than for her extensive work on natural philosophy, Cavendish is remembered for her novel, The Blazing World<\/em> (1666).<\/p>\n

Although not exactly about a mad scientist, The Blazing World<\/em> is, in a strict sense, the first example of science fiction, and the inventions created within it, such as submarines, would later become tropes of the genre. Science<\/em> fiction<\/em> should be taken literally here, stressing the consecutive order of these two words. Cavendish\u2019s novel was published together with Observations upon Experimental Philosophy<\/em>, an ambitious speculative treatise that aspires to give a systematic and all-encompassing account of nature while engaging in open discussion with pretty much the entire Western philosophical tradition, from the pre-Socratics, Aristotle, and the Stoics to Descartes, Hobbes, and Boyle, to name only a few. Following this treatise, in the same volume, comes the impossibly whimsical and digressive Blazing World<\/em>, a narrative in the tradition of travel literature to imaginary lands\u2014Utopia<\/em>, Gulliver\u2019s Travels<\/em>, Mardi<\/em>, Erewhon<\/em>, and, above all, Charlotte Perkins Gilman\u2019s Herland<\/em> are other examples that come to mind.<\/p>\n

In The Common Reader<\/em>, Virginia Woolf writes of Cavendish, \u201cNo fears impede her. She has the irresponsibility of a child and the arrogance of a Duchess. The wildest fancies come to her, and she canters away on their backs.\u201d A quick synopsis of The Blazing World<\/em> will be enough to confirm Woolf\u2019s words. The nameless protagonist of the novel, \u201cthe Lady,\u201d is abducted by one of her suitors, who takes her on a boat with an all-male crew. A storm sweeps the vessel all the way up to the Arctic (sound familiar?), where, in a refreshing shift away from tradition, all the men, instead of the woman, die. At the Pole, the boat is \u201cforced into another World,\u201d inhabited by creatures in the shape of bears, foxes, apes, spiders, lice, worms, geese, and so on, \u201conly they went upright as men.\u201d In short order, the Lady marries the emperor of this world, obtains absolute powers, and becomes a Hobbesian sovereign of sorts. (\u201cAs it was natural for one body to have but one head, so it was also natural for a politic body to have but one governor.\u201d) With her \u201cvery ready wit, and quick apprehension,\u201d she interviews every sage in the realm, learning all about the land\u2019s culture, science, and technology, while also judging and rectifying what she hears. She even \u201ccommanded her anatomists to dissect such kinds of creatures as are called monsters [, which] would be very beneficial to experimental philosophers.\u201d In a disappointing turn of events, the Empress\u2019s scientific inquiries come to a halt, replaced by a sudden evangelizing fervor. She builds churches, preaches, and creates a congregation of women that she heads herself. \u201cAnd thus the Empress, by art, and her own ingenuity, did not only convert the Blazing World to her own religion, but kept them in a constant belief.\u201d<\/p>\n

And this<\/em>, believe it or not, is where the book gets strange. The Empress somehow manages to conjure up the spirit of the Duchess of Newcastle, the author of the novel we are reading (\u201calthough she is not one of the most learned, eloquent, witty and ingenious, yet she is a plain and sensible writer, for the principle of her writings is sense and reason\u201d). The Empress engages the Duchess as her scribe and then as her main advisor. In the end, they become \u201cplatonic lovers, although they were both female.\u201d It would be hard to summarize the long exchanges between both spirits, which range from politics and philosophy to the importance of imagination (they quite literally create worlds in their minds) and fashion\u2014the Duchess is \u201csingular both in accoutrements, behaviour and discourse.\u201d Toward the end of the novel, the Empress learns from the spirit that her native land, Esfi (a stand-in for England), is under attack. A couple of centuries ahead of the mad-sci submarine frenzy, the Duchess tells the Empress they should build \u201cships that could swim under water.\u201d Escorted by bird-men, fish-men, etc., the fleet of submarines finds a passageway back into our world and vanquishes their enemies so that Britain may become the ruler of the entire globe. The Empress returns to her husband in the Blazing World. After a long list of the imperial couple\u2019s favorite sports, dishes, dances, and music, the book comes to an abrupt end.<\/p>\n

This is, then, the plot of the fiction<\/em> that comes after the science<\/em> in Cavendish\u2019s double volume. In her preface to The Blazing World<\/em>, Cavendish supposes the reader may wonder why she would \u201cjoin a work of fancy to [her] serious philosophical contemplations.\u201d The answer is, quite simply, \u201cto recreate the mind.\u201d Cavendish starts out by separating both genres: \u201cThe end of reason, is truth; the end of fancy, is fiction.\u201d In the end, however, she recognizes that these may be complementary spheres: \u201cAnd this is the reason, why I added this piece of fancy to my philosophical observations, and joined them as two worlds at the end of their poles.\u201d Remarkably, her theory of genres is illustrated by her novel, where two worlds are joined by their poles. Here is, then, what may be the first mention of something like science fiction, prefacing a book with two female protagonists in roles of supreme power\u2014empress, demiurge, and author\u2014penned by a woman scientist.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

And yet despite such an auspicious beginning, most mad scientists turned out to be men\u2014and more specifically, European<\/em> men. One of the few characters in the Western mad-sci canon that breaks away from this rule can be found in a novel by Jules Verne. Captain Nemo\u2019s backstory appears not in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea<\/em> (1870) but in The Mysterious Island<\/em> (1874), a book where science and politics are tightly intertwined. Its implausible plot begins about two months before the end of the Civil War. Five Union prisoners escape Confederate imprisonment in a balloon that takes them to a seemingly deserted island in the Pacific, which they name Lincoln Island. In the final chapters, after having \u201cimproved\u201d the island with their stereotypically American industry and ingenuity, the castaways meet Nemo, their secret benefactor on that remote spot, who tells them his story. The son of an Indian raja, his real name is Prince Dakkar, and his sole mission in life has been to fight British imperialism and free his country from its colonial yoke. He is, then, first and foremost, Indian. Although educated in Europe, \u201cthis artist, this scientist, this statesman had remained Indian in his heart, Indian in his dreams of reclaiming one day the rights of his land, Indian in the hope which he cherished of being able someday to reestablish the rights of his country, of driving out the invaders, of restoring its independence.\u201d He was the \u201csoul\u201d and \u201corganizer\u201d of the Indian rebellion of 1857, and his defeat marks the beginning of his transformation from Prince Dakkar into Nemo:<\/p>\n

The soldier became a scientist.\u00a0On a desert island of the Pacific he established his workshop, and there he constructed a submarine ship after plans of his own. One day we will understand how he harnessed the immeasurable mechanical force of electricity for his ship\u2019s needs, on what inexhaustible source he drew to power her engines and fill her with light and warmth \u2026 He had longed to rid himself of human society, and now his desires were fulfilled. He named his submarine machine the Nautilus<\/em>, took for himself the name of Captain Nemo, and disappeared under the seas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If Nemo protects and assists the Americans, it is because he \u201clearned from them of the struggle of America against America itself for the abolition of slavery. Yes! These men were worthy to reconcile Captain Nemo with that humanity which they represented so honestly on the island.\u201d (Never mind that the Americans have imperial ambitions of their own: \u201cOur plan \u2026 is to give the island to the United States and establish a base for our navy, which would be well situated in this part of the Pacific.\u201d) Despite all the Orientalist clich\u00e9s\u2014and Verne\u2019s novel abounds in them\u2014Nemo may be the only mad scientist who truly deviates from the monopoly Europe and North America have held over this character, and for whom race and politics play such a decisive role.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

To a large extent, South American literature has followed the European model, based on the Faust\/Frankenstein stereotype. This can be confirmed with a quick glance at the mad scientists over the last century or so in Argentina.<\/p>\n

Rather than explore the possibilities of a new genre in a new country, Eduardo Holmberg, an early Argentine science-fiction author, sets \u201cHoracio Kalibang, or the Automatons\u201d (1879) in Germany (and the story reads like a bizarre translation of E.\u2009T.\u2009A. Hoffmann). A little later, Leopoldo Lugones, whose most brilliant mad-scientist stories appear in The Strange Forces<\/em> (1906), made important deviations from the most hackneyed versions of this character. One of Lugones\u2019s mad scientists\u00a0had spent his life devising, under the constant hazards of poverty, small industrial inventions, from cheap inks and coffee grinders to tram ticketing machines. Intuiting, perhaps, that he is somewhat of a genius\u2014which he plays down with an almost surly form of modesty\u2014he feels the deepest disdain for those small triumphs. Whenever someone brings them up to him, he shrugs with apathy or smiles bitterly. \u2018That\u2019s just to put food on the table,\u2019 he would simply say.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike his aristocratic or at least independently wealthy peers in Europe, this \u201cmodest sage\u201d needs side hustles to make ends meet. Lugones, however, won\u2019t let go of the Continental traits the archetype still seems to require: he takes great pains to link all his geniuses to the European tradition with numerous rather tedious erudite references\u2014and one of his mad scientists, Dr. Paulin (who studied in Krakow under Wr\u00f3blewski and found a way to distill thought into a liquid), even ends his days in a German mental institution.<\/p>\n

Roberto Arlt, with his techno-terrorist novel The Seven Madmen<\/em> (1929) and its sequel, The Flamethrowers<\/em> (1931), offers a further glimpse into what a truly Latin American mad scientist could have looked like, if only the main character had been able to overcome his existential malaise to implement any of his projects, which range from wireless transmission of energy and research into beta rays, to dry cleaning for dogs and the creation of a copper rose. In Adolfo Bioy Casares\u2019s The Invention of Morel<\/em> (1940), an inventor picks up the theme of life creation\u2014but this time in the age of mechanical reproduction. Morel designs a machine, powered by the tides, that captures and reproduces the life and very soul of its subjects\u2014at the cost of their actual lives\u2014so that their artificial projections reexperience, like the supporting characters in Groundhog Day<\/em>, the same week over and over again, always as if for the first time. Still, despite taking place on a desert island, the setting and the protagonists are almost decadently cosmopolitan and colonial: the narrator first hears of the island in India but is told that \u201cwhite people had built there a museum, a chapel, a swimming pool.\u201d The novel subserviently harks back to the canonical tradition of mad scientists\u2014the narrator\u2019s love interest is, somewhat heavy-handedly, called Faustine.<\/p>\n

Lastly, C\u00e9sar Aira offers a parody of the mad-scientist genre in his novel The Literature Conference<\/em> (1997). Typically Aira-esque in its free associations and wild narrative leaps, the book feels bizarrely akin to Cavendish\u2019s The\u00a0<\/em>Blazing World<\/em>. After solving an ancient riddle, the main character, Aira himself, finds a fabulous ancient treasure hidden by British pirates. With his newly acquired fortune, Aira, who (we suddenly learn) is also a mad scientist, sets out to fulfill his dreams of world domination with an army of clones. Unlike Victor Frankenstein, however, Aira wants to create a being that surpasses him in intelligence: \u201cIt was on this point that our Mad Scientist most differed from the stereotype of the Mad Scientist, who would typically dig in his heels with self-destructive resolve in order to maintain the central role of his own intellect, ours reached the conclusion [that] his intellect [should] be placed at the service of another intellect, his power at the service of another greater power.\u201d Aira, then, decides to clone a \u201cgenius\u201d\u2014Carlos Fuentes<\/a>. But the trained wasp that was supposed to bring him Fuentes\u2019s DNA gets, instead, a sample from his tie, and Aira ends up cloning giant silkworms. Disaster ensues. Nevertheless, for all his outlandishness and personality shifts (and despite the substantial difference from\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em> noted above), Aira\u2019s alter ego still is \u201cthe typical Mad Scientist found in comic books,\u201d a figure the narrative needs to keep in place in order to succeed as a parody.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Science and madness represent the opposite extremes of the same spectrum\u2014the zenith and the nadir of reason. But this is not the only reason why the dissonant figure of the mad scientist is appealing. In modern history, it has been science\u2019s job to define madness. And madness is too often linked to criminality, which not by coincidence is a link the figure of the mad scientist repeatedly exemplifies. It is to be expected, then, that Aeschylus\u2019s notion of a \u201cbad doctor who has fallen sick\u201d\u2014as opposed to, say, an insane accountant\u2014will complicate matters.<\/p>\n

And still, wild as this dissonance may be, the creators are seldom as challenging as their creations. The standard arguments and justifications don\u2019t apply here. You might say, Women were excluded from academic pursuits for centuries. Yes, but many mad scientists are self-taught and don\u2019t have a degree. Or, Institutions want only those who will perpetuate their status quo. True, but mad scientists are by definition anti-institutional. Or, Modernization was an uneven process that relied on exploitation, which is why most of these characters are Caucasian\u2014only they had access to advanced technology. Sure, but mad scientists are always bricoleurs and, by definition, DIY prodigies who make their own gear. Or, The most important books in the tradition were written by men, so it is only logical their protagonists should also be men. Wrong: the most influential mad scientist in literature was created by a woman\u2014who first published Frankenstein <\/em>anonymously, by the way. This freakishly unique, monstrously exceptional novel is the subject of the second installment of this essay<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Read the second installment of this essay here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Hernan Diaz is the managing editor of\u00a0<\/em>RHM. His first novel,\u00a0In the Distance<\/a>, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a rational creature. \u2014Mary Shelley,\u00a0Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus   Theatrical as it is, the clich\u00e9 of the mad scientist\u2014a wild-haired, goggle-eyed maniac pacing around a laboratory, operating buzzing contraptions with the help of a hunchbacked assistant\u2014reveals something important about our relationship to knowledge. At least […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[34404,5774,4163,34399,34400,34396,34398,34401,34397,10657,34403,34402,34395],"class_list":["post-126571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-adolfo-bioy-casares","tag-cesar-aira","tag-descartes","tag-eduardo-holmberg","tag-leopoldo-lugones","tag-margaret-cavendish","tag-principles-of-the-most-ancient-and-modern-philosophy","tag-roberto-arlt","tag-the-blazing-world","tag-the-flamethrowers","tag-the-literature-conference","tag-the-seven-madmen","tag-thomas-kuhn"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWho Gets to Be a Mad Scientist?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a canon defined by a character that defies the establishment, that character is, in decisive ways, conservative and 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