Book Review

From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the scientist in western literature

N Engl J Med 1995; 332:1241-1242May 4, 1995

Article

From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the scientist in western literature
By Roslynn D. Haynes. 417 pp. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. $55 (cloth); $19.95 (paper). ISBN: 0-8018-4801-6 (cloth); 0-8018-4983-7 (paper).

“Literary intellectuals at one pole — at the other scientists. . . . Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension.” That is how C.P. Snow characterized the relation between the two groups that this book concerns. Roslynn Haynes, an English professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia, views things from the literary pole, and her ambitious survey is clearly written and impressively detailed (with 58 pages of footnotes plus a 30-page bibliography). The definition of literature has been stretched to include a few films, and we get almost as much coverage of the history of science as we do of science in literature. Haynes does not discuss physicians and medicine, but science and medicine are so intertwined today that any study of the one is intimately relevant to the other.

Haynes sees six recurrent stereotypes: the obsessed, maniacal scientist; the stupid virtuoso (like the absent-minded professor); the unfeeling, inhuman scientist; the heroic adventurer; the helpless scientist who loses control; and the idealist. The main theme is fear. Early on it is fear of science's threat to the established, theological view of the universe. Later, it becomes fear of the power of science itself, whether used intentionally for evil purposes or simply as a monstrous force that escapes all control.

If you want to get away from the scientific literature for a foray into that other culture, this is the book for you. It is a fascinating cruise through literary history from Aquinas to Zola, from Asimov to Wordsworth. The many capsule summaries can be bland. I wish the author had included more of her spicy asides about sexism in science and literature. (It is one proclivity the two cultures share.) This history includes a discussion of Francis Bacon, whose optimistic utilitarianism saw the basis of science as located neatly within God's laws, so that the advancement of knowledge about nature would necessarily lead to greater good. Isaac Newton became revered as a national treasure as the scientist-genius who explained that order and harmony are inherent in a universe that includes God.

In the literature of the past two centuries there are relatively few descriptions of the scientist as hero. One such example is Bram Stoker's gothic horror story Dracula (1897), in which a professor saves England from the vampire hordes. But even in this instance, it is Count Dracula and not Professor Van Helsing who became a household word. Again and again, Haynes refers to Mary Shelley's 1818 story of Victor Frankenstein, the isolated, emotionally crippled scientist who is driven to pursue knowledge but instead produces an uncontrollable monster. Haynes presents the story as showing that a reductionist, mechanistic view of humans may permit scientific discovery, but it cannot cope with evil and cannot comprehend morality. Scientists have had to live down Shelley's portrayal ever since.

In the post-Hiroshima era the awesome power of science is unquestioned. Can we control it and use it for good? Our literature and films are full of the possibilities of evil. In part this is so because scientists, literary intellectuals, and everyone else on the planet must face the consequences together. But in part this is so because evil makes for great entertainment, as we know from Doctor Faustus and Dr. Strangelove.

Edward W. Campion, M.D.