PCA: Literary Presentations of Science

“On the Cusp of Modern Science: Frankenstein and Prometheus Unbound”
Kelli Gardner Bell, Saint Louis University

This would have been a live blogging of the session, if I had been able to get an internet connection.

This is both an attempted distillation of the ideas from my thesis and a fishing trip, said Ms. Bell. 🙂

On the cusp of modern science:
Galileo Galilei apparently dropped rocks from the Tower of Pisa to test gravity.
Later Sir Isaac Newton “discovered” gravity
from “A Victim of Gravity” School House Rock 1978

Saturday Morning Cartoons:
The Saturday morning cartoons of my generation (She’s young.), misrepresent science, but introduces the scientists. The cartoons encourage the Myth of The Dark Ages and show the cultural ways that we present how science was discovered, developed, etc.

When we think about current perceptions of science –essay written in 1943, a view that already existed in early modern (Knox?), we see that we think earlier ages created nothing. However this is incorrect. The people of medieval Europe invented the scientific method, spectacles, clocks, windmills, and developed other things such as better building techniques, water mills, and agriculture (including three-crop rotation). However, we don’t know the names of the people responsible for these advances. Because we cannot name them, we ignore them.

Very interesting but I can’t keep up. Would love to have a copy of her work. I think science and rhetoric is a good topic for me to teach in rhetoric. So I would really like to have more stuff to present. I may ask her to send me a copy.

From Shelly’s novel a plethora of consumer presentations…
Single work of literature can influence our culture in a way that science has not.

The Frankenstein Monster:
iconic film images Boris Karloff in Universal Pictures: 1931, 1935, 1939
Rocky Horror Picture Show

We focused on the creation, not the scientist.
Creation myth for science = Shelly’s book
Creation myth for the Industrial Revolution.
showed visuals of Ind Rev
Philip James de Loutherbourg, 1801, “Coalbrookdale by Night”

creation myth for a scientist, classical education splitting into humanities and science

Our attitudes have not changed with time. We neglect the cumulative nature of knowledge. We think of calendars, astronomy, etc as anomalies while science is modern only. This is not true. Science is definitely an accumulation.

This quote seems particularly apropos to her discussion: “If I have seen further than others,” wrote Sir Isaac Newton, “it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”