Comparing Science and Religion in Frankenstein, Dr....

The Struggle Between Science and Religion in Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Metropolis From Frankenstein to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Metropolis, the mad scientist is one of the modern worlds most instantly recognizable and entertaining cultural icons. Popular cultures fascination with demented doctors, crazed clinicians, and technologically fanatical fiends have dominated the major motifs of popular literature and film for most of the 20th century and this fascination will continue into the 21st century. An archetypal outcast, the mad scientist represents all that modern culture holds mysterious and fascinating, intriguing and sinful, and, to say the least, romantic. Popular culture has completely desensitized the†¦show more content†¦All are examples of scientists who, though labeled as mad, are curious seekers of information who hope to increase knowledge and understanding, or who are working under the guise of the salvation of a few (when really, mad scientists are really working for no one but themselves) but eventually becomes the damnation of all. This Lovecraftian theme is seemingly reminiscent of all mad science: The most merciful thing in the world...is the inability of the human mind to correlate all [of] its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality...that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.(Lovecraft) In the 19th century, the Romantic rebellion against scientific rationalism-reintegrating notions of science with the mystery and