They were mad, of course. Or evil. Or godless, amoral, arrogant, impersonal, and inhuman. At best, they were well intentioned but blind to the dangers of forces they barely controlled. They were Faust and Frankenstein, Jekyll and Moreau, Caligari and Strangelove - the scientists of film and fiction, cultural archetypes that reflected ancient fears of tampering with the unknown or unleashing the little-understood powers of nature.
InFrom Madman to Crime Fighter, Roslynn D. Haynes analyses stereotypical characters - including the mad scientist, the cold-blooded pursuer of knowledge, the intrepid pathbreaker, and the bumbling fool - that, from medieval times to the present day, have been used to depict the scientist in Western literature and film. She also describes more realistically drawn scientists, characters who are conscious of their public responsibility to expose dangers from pollution and climate change yet fearful of being accused of lacking evidence.
Drawing on examples from Britain, America, Germany, France, Russia, and elsewhere, Haynes explores the persistent folklore of mad doctors of science and its relation to popular fears of a depersonalized, male-dominated, and socially irresponsible pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. She concludes that today's public response to science and scientistsmuch of it negativeis best understood by recognizing the importance of such cultural archetypes and their significance as myth. From Madman to Crime Fighter is the most comprehensive study of the image of the scientist in Western literature and film.
List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Evil Alchemists and Doctor Faustus 2. Bacon's New Scientists 3. Foolish Virtuosi 4. Newton 5. Arrogant and Godless 6. Inhuman Scientists 7. Frankenstein and the Creature 8. Victorian Scientists 9. The Scientist as Adventurer 10. Efficiency and Power 11. The Scientist as Hero 12. Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know 13. The Impersonal Scientist 14. Scientia Gratia Scientiae 15. Robots, Androids, Cyborgs, and Clones 16. Pandora's Box 17. The Scientist as Woman 18. Idealism and Conscience Conclusion Appendix Notes Bibliography Index
""In this update, Haynes has extended her purview to accommodate the growth in scholarship on science and popular culture, especially in the area of film, which has occurred in the twenty years since the publication of the first edition... Anyone wishing to design a course on science or the scientist (however he or she may define these terms) in literature, cinema or popular culture, set either in a single era or over a span of time, could easily get away with using this new volume as a one-stop shopping catalogue for primary sources.""
