The Morality Of Science Essay, Research Paper

The Morality of Science

Lesley Hubbard

June 14, 2000

There are two parallel narratives in Mary Shelley? s Frankenstein, ? one of trying to detect the secret of life and the other of coercing nature to open her secrets to adult male ( Neal ) . ? This novel can be looked by uniting those two narratives into a subject of the scientist who seeks to play God and what happens to him in his quest to make life from decease. When looking at the book in this respect, ? the reader discovers the dangers inherent in withstanding the natural order, ( Neal ) ? and the possible effects of scientific find.

Victor Frankenstein, fascinated with scientific geographic expedition in the physical universe, embarked upon an experiment that everlastingly changed his life and that of his household and friends. During his surveies away from place, Victor unwisely decides that he will play God. ? I will open up anew manner, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the universe the deepest enigmas of creative activity ( Shelly p. 47 ) . ? ? What lies behind Frankenstein? s scientific undertakings is evidently an effort to derive power ( Damyanov ) . ? Victor devotes himself to his undertaking of making life from decease for a period of two old ages without one time sing the deductions of the consequence of his experiment. ? Thoughtless Victor built in no safety controls, no device to guarantee that merely good actions would be performed ( Neal ) . ?

? Shelley warns us of the unsafe division between the power-seeking patterns of scientific discipline and the concerns of humanists with moral duty, emotional Communion, and religious values ( Damyanov ) . ? Victor invested so much selfish attention and clip into his creative activity and ne’er thought of the deductions of his success. As if about seeing into the hereafter, Shelly gives us a? warning to see the concluding effects of scientific geographic expedition and experiment ( Neal ) . ?

Neglecting all moral deductions of his creative activity, Victor completes his work. Victor ne’er imagined that his success would make horror alternatively of joy and immortality. ? It was a drab dark in November that I beheld the achievement of my labors ( Shelley P. 56 ) . ? ? How can I depict my emotions at this calamity, or how represented the wretch whom with such infinite strivings and attention I had endeavored to organize ( Shelley P. 56 ) ? ? Even when Victor came to the realisation that his success in making his being had become an abomination, he took no duty in seeking to rectify his actions or take attention of the animal.

? Victor emulated God? s actions when he created the being ( Neal ) . ? He had hoped? a new species would bless me as its Godhead and beginning ; many happy and first-class natures would owe their being to me ( Shelly p. 52 ) . ? Unfortunately for Victor, the exact opposite resulted. Victor was responsible to his creative activity as a male parent is to a kid, but merely tried to get away the animal? s misery. The animal has been left to his ain devices to either become portion of society, or to populate entirely in concealment, agony, and hurting.

Victor awoke the twenty-four hours after witnessing his animal come to life in a atrocious signifier and in happening the animal had disappeared, fundamentally goes on with his life. Frankenstein does non take on the moral duty of rectifying his black creative activity until old ages subsequently when it returned to him

.

Old ages after the animals? birth, ? he has learned to talk and compose, and sets out in hunt of Frankenstein ; his Godhead, his male parent. He has discovered that no adult male will handle him with any self-respect or compassion or love and desires to happen this from his Godhead. After recognizing that he can non retrieve these feelings from Frankenstein, the animal requests that Victor create another being ; a female signifier of himself, a true comrade. When confronted by the animal, Victor seems to recognize for the first clip the moral deductions of what he has done. ? Wretched Satan! You reproach me with your creative activity ; con, so, that I may snuff out the flicker which I so negligently bestowed ( Shelley P. 96 ) . ?

The animal, besides recognizing how incorrect Frankenstein had been in his effort to go God, exclaims to him, ? How daring you sport therefore with life? ( Shelley p.96 ) ? ? Victor finally agrees to make a female comrade for his animal. While working on her creative activity, Victor becomes more acquainted with the moral deductions of his work and destroys the new comrade. ? Might he non gestate a greater abomination for it when it came before his eyes in the female signifier? ( Shelly p. 160 ) ?

When the animal discovers what Frankenstein has done he swears retribution and hatred to his Godhead and his household. Frankenstein, who has become a awful muss of an single by this point, still tries to happen felicity, despite his creative activity, and besides swears to free the universe of his monster. ? Frankenstein has sought this limitless power to the extent of taking the topographic point of God in relation to his creative activity ( Damyanov ) ? and it has perfectly ruined him. Frankenstein egotistically endeavored to play God without sing that the consequence could probably hold a negative impact on world.

? Shelley? s message is clear ; a morally irresponsible scientific development can let go of a monster that can destruct human civilisation itself ( Damyanov ) . ? Victor learns this lesson, but excessively tardily. He has already lost his household, his best friend, his married woman and his support. As he says while associating his narrative, ? Learn from me, if non by my principles, at least by my illustration, how unsafe is the skill of cognition, and how much happier that adult male who believes his native town to be the universe, than he who aspires to go greater than his nature will let ( Shelly p.36 ) . ?

Shelly? s moral lesson in her fresh applies greatly to science today with all the progresss in engineering and marvelous finds in scientific discipline, the deductions of experiments and creative activities must be exhaustively investigated. At the clip the narrative was written, it would hold been impossible that these evens could hole any truth or possibility of world. Now, the possibilities are far excessively existent and the deductions could ensue in the terminal of civilisation, as it is now known.

Plants Cited

Shelly, Mary. Frankenstein. Ed. Maurice Hindle. London: Penguin Group,

1992.

Damyanov, Orlin. ? Technology and it? s unsafe effects on nature and

human life as perceived in Mary Shelley? s Frankenstein and William

Gibson? s Neuromancer. ? hypertext transfer protocol: //www.geocities.com/Paris/5972/gibson.html

Neal, Patricia A. , Ph.D. ? Mary Shelley? s Frankenstein: Myth for Modern

Man. ? hypertext transfer protocol: //htserver.shc.edu/www/Scolar/neal/neal.html