The mad scientist is one of the standard archetype of modern democratic civilization . Widespread in the pulp magazine of the 1920s and 1930s , its modern inception dates back to Mary Shelley ’s Frankenstein ( 1818 ) . But the roots of the mad scientist go much far back than Shelley , as we ’ll see .
Painting of Prometheus byElsie Russell
The Two Modes Of “ Mad ”
The mad scientist can be usefully determine as an person who carry on scientific experiments , invents something scientific , or does original scientific research , all while bear from both psychological and moral insanity . This definition excludes several bod who are usually ( if erroneously ) set as mad scientists : Circe , from Greek myth , who practices illusion , not science ; the Faust of German legend and English and German lit , who does no research or experimentation , but instead sells his soul for wizardly abilities rather than science ; and Agatha Heterodyne from Phil and Kaja Foglio ’s Girl Genius , who is not morally mad .
Historically the disturbed scientist has fall into one of two modes . The first , what literary critic have diversely label as “ Promethean ” or “ utopian , ” roughly follows the fashion model of the figure of Prometheus from Hellenic mythology : the scientist is not inherently evil , and in fact is usually portray as either a ego - give idealist or a deluded comic design . The scientist ’s disturbed skill is virtuously ambivalent and ultimately degrades the moral sensibility of the world it come in touch with . The Promethean / utopian unrestrained scientist has noble finish but fail through human helplessness , both his / her own and others ’ .
The second mode of mad scientist , and the more vernacular of the two , is what literary critics call the “ Faustian ” or “ gothic . ” In this modality , both the scientist and her noesis are virtuously blemished , and the deed of discovery — the enquiry and experimentation — is as wicked and damnatory as the self-possession of the evil noesis itself . As Victor von Frankenstein says in Chapter Four of Frankenstein , “ Learn from me , if not by my commandment , at least by my example , how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge and how much happy that man is who believes his aboriginal townspeople to be the cosmos , than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow . ” Mad scientist in the Faustian modality are opprobrious or ambitious and utilize any methods , no matter how unethical , to discover grievous knowledge .
The Earliest Influences : Faustus of Milevis and Welsh Wild Men
The more immediate and obvious model for the “ Faustian ” manner is Faust , who like the mad scientist was willing to betray his soul for baron and/or knowledge . But the source of both the Faustian myth and name , and hence the wellspring for the unhinged scientist archetype , was Faustus of Milevis . In the year 383 C.E. Faustus , then a luxuriously - ranking figure in the Manichaean religion , chat Carthage and drive home a serial of speech on Manichaeism , a dualistic , idle - versus - non-white religion which survived until the 15th one C . Augustine of Hippo ( 354 - 430 ) , later St. Augustine , was at the sentence a Manichaean but was so dissatisfied with the answer of Faustus and other Manichaeans to his theological questions that he left Manichaeism for Christianity . later on Augustine wrote an influential rebuttal to Faustus and Manichaeism , Contra Faustum ( circa 400 C.E. ) , which stray both in a markedly disconfirming twinkle . Over the next several century legion storey grew up around Faustus , stating that he had deal his individual in ordering to gain heterodox and execrable knowledge about God . The long - lose original German chapbook about Faust was based on the legends of Faustus .
Figures like Faustus , in self-will of dangerous spiritual knowledge , were common in Western popular culture for several 100 , but became less so after the tenth century and were supersede by human body in self-will of severe magical knowledge . In the 12th century the pattern of Merlin begin appearing in his mod figure . As Irish student Padraig O’Riain showed in “ A subject of the Irish Legend of the Wild Man ” ( 1972 ) , the standard adaptation of Merlin was heavily influenced by the Wild Man figure of speech of former Welsh poetry . Both the Wild Man and Merlin gave several thing to the figure of the harebrained scientist . One of the most important was the notion of mental imbalance being inexorably wedded to special , dangerous knowledge – in the shell of the Wild Man , monomania by rather than of sorcerous knowledge inevitably leading to schizophrenia or rage . The association between virtuoso and genial illness was hardly novel , having been made as far back as Aristotle ( 384 - 322 ) , who famously wrote “ no great genius has ever exist without some touch of madness . ” But unlike the earlier excogitation of the genius , the Wild Man was in possession of knowledge that was in itself unsafe .
More broadly speaking , the Wild Man and Merlin gave to the mad scientist her or his liminal condition . What O’Riain calls the Wild Man ’s “ separation from wonted or due condition ” is his ( and the mad scientist ’s ) perpetually ambiguous and line - crossing state : straddling psychological and moral saneness and insanity , bridging order and purdah , stuck between mundane and magic , and bearing a inheritance both human and supernatural ( or devilish , in Merlin ’s case ) .
This liminality and ambivalence was influential on the medieval stories about historical scientists like Roger Bacon ( circa 1214 - 1294 ) and Robert Grosseteste ( circa 1175 - 1253 ) , both important number in the history of science who became the matter of astray - ranging myth after their deaths . Like the later account about “ Virgil the Necromancer ” — late medieval stories about the Roman poet Virgil ( 70 - 19 B.C.E. ) which made him out to be , in the words of scholar John Spargo , the “ Medieval Wizard of Oz”–the myths about Bacon and Grosseteste grew obscure over metre , play down their good qualities , emphasizing their ambiguity , and pee-pee each more threatening and in self-possession of severe knowledge , skills , magic and/or science . The malefic influence comes from either heredity ( in the compositor’s case of Merlin - like figures ) or from an external reference ( whether poetic cognition or magic ) . This darken paved the way for figure like Faust and Frankenstein .
The Renaissance : Greed and Deceit
The alchemist of this era appears in one of two forms . The first is the “ mad alchemist , ” a quester - after - knowledge who is so obsessed with the idea of transforming floor metals into gold ( and thus becoming rich ) that he sacrifice his reputation , wellness , fortune and kinfolk toward attain his destination . In material life-time , this type of alchemist was common enough that practice alchemists disdain them as “ puffers ” who foolishly and avariciously sought for gold rather than insight and spiritual improvement .
The 2nd form was the “ cheat alchemist . ” This version is as obsessed with making amber as the sick alchemist , but rather than move through his own personal chance , he finance his experimentation with other people ’s money . The chicane alchemist employ simple alchemical trick to get a someone gold - crazy , and then has that person finance the cheat alchemist ’s experiments . After the aim has black market out of money , the cheat alchemist selects a novel pigeon for plucking .
To the religious mind – which is to say , well-nigh everyone during the Renaissance – both the demented alchemist and the betray alchemist embody sins : the mad alchemist , greed , and the cheating alchemist , misrepresentation . But beyond that was the fear that the alchemist had success at the transformation of matter , even if it was not gilded . To the medieval mind and to a large grade to the Renaissance mind , the manipulation and translation of matter was the end of God ’s origination – no little affair to the Christians of the Renaissance .
The 17th Century : The Astrologian and Prospero
Increasingly during the 16th century the fictitious alchemist was shown to be strain to create not just for corporeal goodness but also the “ elixir of life , ” the key to constant salutary wellness and immortality . During the seventeenth century the alchemist easy disappear from satires , with the miser and the gamester becoming the fancied vehicles for condemning greed and deceit . Alchemy became popular among the civilize classes , with raw philosophers ( the scientist of the geological era ) stating that the transmutation of affair was at least theoretically potential . But the pursuance of the elixir of biography remained condemned . member of the Royal Society of London were agile to state that science could not explain the mysteries of Creation , and Isaac Newton , in his Principia ( 1713 ) , attribute the ultimate cause of the laws of movement to God — that is , something not discoverable by skill . Even the most educated scientists would yield the possibility of the transformation of matter but believe that there were limit to what humans could and should discover .
Different figure with what we would now think of as having a scientific orientation course replace the alchemist as the chief disturbed scientist figure . In John Webster ’s The Duchess of Malfi ( 1612 - 1613 ) , a stage set of eight lunatic are brought in to terrorize the nominal Duchess . One of the lunatic is an “ Astrologian ” ( astronomer ) , whose two most salient lines are “ Doomes - day not get yet ? I ’ll pull it neerer by a perspective , or make a glasse , that shall place all the humanity on fervency upon an heartbeat ” and “ If I had my glasse here , I would shew a sight should make all the womanhood here call me mad MD . ” ( To Webster ’s audience a “ doctor ” was anyone skilled in a branch of learning , whether medicine , law , education , or astronomy ) .
The Astrologian is threaten in a way that former unbalanced scientist figures had not been . The danger posed by the Astrologian lies in the discovery of something which exist before his discovery of it and would stay on to survive after his death . The dangers pose by Faustus of Milevis and the various alchemists were limited and would terminate with them – what the Astrologian find oneself with his telescope ( “ glasse ” ) would not . Too , the Astrologian ’s threat is peaceful , while the alchemist et al . needed to be active ( transforming subject , etc ) to be dangerous to their butt . This sort of passive - but - unlimited peril would prove to be uncommon in later on frantic scientist figures .
Another number who proved influential on later mad scientists was Prospero , from William Shakespeare ’s The Tempest ( 1610 - 1611 ) . Prospero is no more a scientist than Faust , of course – Prospero is a white magician . But Prospero ’s hubris , his social isolation , and his mastery of dangerous ( if not blasphemous ) powers all appeared as part of mad scientist narratives in the same way that Faustus of Milevis ’ look on soul - selling did . As well , Prospero , and the Tempest , were also the rootage of the motif , made democratic in the pulps and B - grade science fiction cinema of the 1930s , forties , and 1950s , of the hero fall in lovemaking with the mad scientist ’s daughter .
eighteenth Century : The First True Mad scientist
During the seventeenth century skill and scientist were treat with some degree of regard , but this changed during the eighteenth C , when the deference was replaced with vary stage of derision , disdain , mistrust , and contempt .
The eighteenth hundred was largely the century of Isaac Newton , who though dead by 1727 was venerated throughout the one C . But even Newton was often cast as a brainy thinker go unhinged through too much purdah and too much pride . The professing of scientist came to be regarded as requiring so much solitude and so much concentration that it inescapably produce eccentricity and eventually madness . Coupled with this in the pop stereotype of the scientist was the idea that mastery of a field or bailiwick would led to a personnel casualty of contact with reality , whether moral , social , or fabric , so that the scientist would ( agree to the individual author ’s preference ) become a buffoon , a dupe , or Mad .
Nor were the sciences nontaxable from this intervention . Variously , scientific discipline became an innately limit by-line because of human flaws and our inability to get the picture God ’s noble-minded design , the arrogant pursuit of forbidden knowledge , and something which will result in people believing that the world is completely mechanistic and miss God .
The figure of the alchemist gained renewed popularity in fiction during the eighteenth century . But the portrayal of chemistry and the alchemist changed . The cheating alchemist was portrayed as a wide-eyed criminal , while the mad alchemist , now a “ philosopher of nature , ” was depict as being obsess with knowledge rather than morals and organized religion . truthful alchemy was portray as a apparitional pursuance , in hunt of God , while “ wrong alchemy ” was portrayed as the narrow-minded - minded hunt for material ( scientific ) knowledge . A further twist was the portrayal of the mad alchemist who actually succeeded in come up the philosopher’s stone of living or a surefire method for creating atomic number 79 , only to discover that their success in produce long aliveness or limitless riches only made the more unhappy . Typical of this last was the titular fiber in William Godwin ’s medieval novel St. Leon ( 1799 ) , a homo who is given the mystery of amber - qualification and eternal life , only to find that both do nothing but ruin his life and others ’ . More traditional , and straight - forwardly iniquity , alchemist did not all vanish ; in Antoine Galland ’s transformation of “ The Story of Hasan of El - Basrah ” ( 1704 - 1717 ) , the Arab alchemist Hasan is shown to be fleeceable and foolish , while the Iranian alchemist who kidnaps Hasan is “ a lewd and filthy villain ” who ritually murders Muslims every year .
The Laputans of Jonathan Swift ’s Gulliver ’s Travels ( 1726 ) , though credit by Darko Suvin in The Metamorphosis of Science Fiction ( 1979 ) as “ the first ‘ brainsick scientist ’ in SF , ” are more foolish than unrestrained , and their schemes , though clever , are visionary : extracting sunbeams from cucumber “ to warm the breeze in raw inclement summer , ” reducing “ human excrement to its original food , by separating the several voice , removing the tincture which it receive from the gall , making the odour exhale , and scumming off the saliva , ” feeding colored flies to spiders in ordering to produce colorise silks , and so on .
Less innocuous is Mathésis , in Christopher Smart ’s “ The Temple of Dulness ” ( 1745 ) . In the poem the goddess Dulness has taken captive Sophistry , Microphile ( a satire of the microscope - obsessed scientist ) , Atheism ( a irony of the atheist scientist ) , and Mathésis . Mathésis is a “ ogre , chesty and vain ” who “ bluster that she can all mysteries excuse , ” who tried ( but fail ) to soar into the skies with Newton , and who now creates “ dawdling trinkets ” and “ gewgaw toys . ” Mathésis may be the first mad scientist to forge widget , but what this passage punctuate is her futility : for all her capabilities she is a prisoner who only creates “ trifling gewgaw ” and “ gewgaw toys ” rather than something effective .
Much worse as mad scientist were Jacob Heinrichssohn , from Prussian satirist Heinrich Ludwig von Hess ’ Juno Abortans ( 1760 ) , and Almani from de Sade ’s La Nouvelle Justine our Les Malheurs de la Vertu ( 1797 ) . Both of these were significant . Jacob Heinrichssohn is the first modern vicious doctor ( a subset of the mad scientist ) , and Almani is the first modern mad scientist .
Juno Abortans is a satire of the animalcular possibility of facts of life , or “ preformationism , ” wide put frontwards in the eighteenth century , which check that petite , perfectly - formed homunculi , call “ animalcules , ” existed inside each sperm and were ready to boom once deposited in a womb . Heinrichssohn , who claims to have written a twenty - volume biography of legendary German rogue and prankster Til Eulenspiegel , convey a serial of experiments on his home maidservants . He uses a “ cylindrical , catoptrical , rotundo - concavo - bulging simple machine ” to roll up their “ animalcula , ” artificially bang up the women using the machine , and then uses another machine to have abortions in the women . Heinrichssohn believe he has discovered the cure for immortality thanks to his political machine , and can “ heal ” death . Heinrichssohn is shockingly amoral and absolutely hardhearted about his victims .
La Nouvelle Justine , De Sade ’s sequel to his Justine ( 1791 ) , has in its third book a passage in which de Sade , in Sicily , is enthralled by the destructive index of the volcano Mt. Etna , whose 1669 eruption was popularly ( but erroneously ) think to have been enormously destructive to property and human life sentence . De Sade is approached by a chemist , Almani , who share de Sade ’s enthusiasm for sadism and has discovered the secrets of nature ’s destructive powers . Almani has spent twenty age creating artificial earthquakes , hurricanes , and volcano , and pour down average mass with them , and he offers to help de Sade . Together the two build unreal volcanoes on Sicily , finally killing 25,000 Sicilians .
Both Heinrichssohn and Almani are significant firsts , but neither were influential – Juno Abortans was obscure and La Nouvelle Justine , though scandalous , was little - read . In the story of brainsick scientist Heinrichssohn and Almani occupy the same position that the proto - police procedural Richmond : scene in the Life of a Bow Street Runner ( 1827 ) does in the story of mystery fiction : potentially pregnant , but neither imitate nor influential . The role of the first influential mad scientist was filled by Victor von Frankenstein , who I ’ll plow in the 2nd part of this essay .
Jess Nevins is a librarian , pulp fiction historian , and comic record book annotator . He also writes cyclopedia . you’re able to happen out moreon his blog .
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