Graubard, Mark 1967. The Frankenstein Syndrome: Man's Ambivalent Attitude to Knowledge and Power. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 10(3): 419-444. DOI: 10.1353/pbm.1967.0038 [Project Muse, pdf]
The production and transmission of knowledge is as old as man, since man is uniquely a culture-forming animal, and culture is necessarily transmittable. There was education long before there were schools. The young boy followed his father and learned from him, whether the family lived in a pastoral, hunting, or agricultural society. The young girl similarly was apprenticed and bonded to the mother and acquired all the knowledge needed for her unique role in the tribe. Moreover, in the community at large, excellence was always noted and appreciated wherever men had specific tasks and functions to perform. (Graubard 1967: 419)
A bit anthropocentric, excluding animal cultures (or that animals learn from their parents and community?).
That knowledge as such was highly appreciated in antiquity can best be seen from the following citation from the Roman classic, De Architectura by Vitruvius:[.|.] For in what respect could Milo of Croton advantage mankind because he was unconquered, or others who won victories in the same kind, except that in their lifetime they enjoyed distinction among their fellow-citizens? [...]Who are the men of learning whom Vitruvius singles out for special honors? (Graubard 1967: 419-420)
First time meeting mention of Milo outside of studies of pythagoreanism.
Consider this incident from the mythology of Babylonia. Ea, the god of wisdom, evolved a love for mankind and upon learning that Anu, the chief of the fellow gods, planned man's destruction by sending a flood upon the earth, decided to come to his rescue. He had taken a special liking to a Persian Gulf fisherman named Adapa and, after informing him of the coming divine wrath, urged him to build an ark. Their friendship ran deep and, in the course of their long relations, Ea revealed to Adapa many mysteries and much wisdom known hithero only to the gods. (Graubard 1967: 421)
What a neat little story that is definitely thought to be historical fact by over half of the world's population (the nominally Abrahamaic).
Incidentally, the Bible has nothing to say about man's relation to the tree of life, while mythology of Babylon does. The king-hero Gilgamesh witnesses the death of his best friend and companion in arms and, aware of the desolate existence of the dead in the dark misery of the underworld, he starts out in search for the plant of eternal life. He seeks out Adapa who had been offered by Anu this divine food and must therefore know something about it. His journey is as full of adventures as that of Ulysses, since ancient storytellers never missed an opportunity to drag in excitement and drama wherever possible. He finds his man and learns all about the deluge from him, as well as much about the plant he is after. He pursues the search and exultantly finds the divine plant. But while crossing a river, a serpent rushes at him, seizes the precious herb, and vanishes. Thus is man left mortal, and the gods retain their uniqueness. (Graubard 1967: 423)
It sounds like the Biblical retelling kept the motive of the snake but gave it another function in relation with the tree of knowledge.
That Jason should develop a thorough dislike for Medea and desert her was a foregone conclusion, and that she should rave and bluster at his ingratitude and wreak bitter vengeance upon him was also to be expected. It is this fragment that is so nobly recounted in Euripides' Medea and in Medea by Robinson Jeffers. Medea's vengeance is fully in harmony with her character and image. Aware of Jason's love for their two young boys and of his bitter decision to marry the Corinthian princess, Creusa, daughter of King Creon, their host, she cuts the throats of her own children, sends a magic garment of gold to Jason's bride which goes off in flames as it is put on and consumes the lady as well as King Creon who had come to her rescue. Such is the fury and the menace of men and women who master the great hidden powers of nature. (Graubard 1967: 429)
- Eurpides 1912. Medea. Translated by Gilbert Murray. New York: Oxford University Press. [Internet Archive]
- Jeffers, Robinson 1945. Medea. Toronto: Random House.
The Middle Ages made use at first of the ancient culture-hero-magicians such as Apollonius of Tyana, Apuleius, Alexander the Great, Moses, some special saints, and later on Merlin, and local heroes. (Graubard 1967: 431)
Of course.
Faust's ruthless lust leaves behind a harvest of searing human pains and brings death to the sweet, victimized Marguerite. Marlowe is solely concerned with Faustus' surrender to black magic. And the wages of sin are death. (Graubard 1967: 433)
A death metal band name for sure.
Beginning with the so-called Age of Reason, it became fashionable to picture the nature of man as totally determined by circumstances; the idea that it may rest upon an underlying substratum of biology and its psychic expressions was strictly taboo. This was a reasonable faith for an age of science and progress. Changes were indeed taking place in all sectors of the social and cultural horizons of western civilization which affected many aspects of western man's ideas, values, and conduct. (Graubard 1967: 433)
This new age of reason is in need of a science of human nature - ideology.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century, fascination with modern science had sent deep roots into the cultural subsoil of western Europe. Charles Darwin's grandfather, the physician Erasmus Darwin (1732-1802), was the author of Zoonomia, or the Laws of Inorganic Life published in 1794 and, later, the Temple of Nature (1803), in both of which he hinted at the possibility of the creation of life by man. The books were replete with scientific wisdom and inspired awe and confidence. (Graubard 1967: 433)
Oh wow. This could be a really neat backgroup for Stapledon. Zoonomia: Vol. 1 | Vol. 2 - only 1200 pages total. A trifle! A mere pamphlet, practically!
The hero of the story is young Victor Frankenstein, the son of a cultured and prominent citizen of Geneva, who became interested in science in his early years and pursued it with love and diligence. Young Frankenstein began with interests in Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Albertus Magnus, grappled with alchemy's philosopher's stone and elixir of life in the hope that he "could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death." (Graubard 1967: 434)
Mary Shelley was aware of "the experiments of Dr. Darwin". Some iteration of Stapledon's future men actually achieve this state and go to an island inhabited with fierce predators to contend with the possibility of violent death.
Nor was Mary Shelley alone in her attitude, because this ambivalence is part of man and his culture manifesting itself apparently at all times. Her book was destined to be only the forerunner of a stream of works oriented in the same direction and becoming shriller in tone as modern science advanced and chalked up more dramatic victories. First came the wave of optimism with its spokesmen of the calibre of H. G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon. Wells, a visionary in the realm of the impact of science on the mind and fate of man, produced such works as A Modern Utopia, Men Like Gods, and other tales in which science glowed as the savior of mankind. Stapledon's Last and First Men continued the tradition which had in fact been adumbrated by More's Utopia, first printed in 1516, and Francis Bacon's New Atlantis of 1627 which glorified the promise that science held out for mankind. Science, they proclaimed, will not only present man with illuminating and ennobling insight into the nature of the physical world, but will also expand man's well-beingt, improve the race by purging and bettering the very nature of man, put an end to war, curb the seven deadly sins, bring order into prevailing chaos, eliminated all conflict within the social web, and establish and maintain planned harmony. (Graubard 1967: 437)
That's odd. The last guy I read (Manuel 1965: 295) claimed on the contrary that Stapledon represents anti-utopianism. This mismatch might be due to Graubard's focus on science.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that Wells and Stapledon stood out merely as conspicuous peaks in a surrounding ocean of faith in the promise of science aided by reason and good will, which together would constitute the only civilized expression of enlightened self-interest. (Graubard 1967: 438)
Not sure what this passage is actually saying. They represented their time?
But again, side by side with these glorifications of science there has been produced a flock of films which express the age-old fear of peering too deeply into the secrets of nature lest man desire to master powers beyond his skill and, by tampering with forbidden secrets, bring down disaster upon himself. In numerous films, the scientist strives after a noble objective, but in the process becomes the tormented slave of his goal and commits many crimes in the sense of the end justifying the means. For example, in a film entitled The Ape, a kindly and popular physician carries on experiments in search of a vaccine against polio. (Graubard 1967: 439)
This could just as well be a motto for conservative anti-science attitudes. It is now regarded as the perversity thesis: "The perversity thesis holds that when the Left tries to produce some beneficial change, “the exact contrary” occurs; their aspirations backfire, done in by the law of unintended consequences." (McManus 2021, Jacobin)
Occasionally, a movie deals quite rationally with the problem of science getting out of hand. Such is the case in the British film, The Man in the White Suit, made in 1951. A somewhat absent-minded but imaginative young scientist employs the new knowledge of the protein molecule to synthesize a fabric that will neither soil nor wear out. Clothing manufacturers as well as organized labor in related industries are determined to suppress his invention as dangerous to society and ruinous to the well-being of many people. Science is gently mocked; and the preserving young researcher is pictured as naïve, bewildered, and charming, though not too bright in matters of practical affairs in daily life. (Graubard 1967: 440)
Sounds interesting. Having just watched Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and enjoyed it greatly, I might give this one a try. At first glance it reminds me of Heinlein's "Let There Be Light", quoted in Shaftel (1953): "Did you ever hear of celanese voile? ... It's a synthetic dress material used in place of chiffon. But it wore better and was washable, and it only cost about forty cents a yard, while chiffon costs four times as much. You can't buy it any more." (1953: 116)
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