Seeing further: the story of science & the Royal Society — 2 MARGARET ATWOOD

1. 1. Margaret Atwood argues that the archetype of the mad scientist in fiction originates from Jonathan Swift's satire of the Royal Society in Gulliver's Travels.
2. 2. Swift's projectors are not wicked or demented but suffer from tunnel vision, prioritizing their theories over common sense and human welfare.
3. 3. Many of Swift's absurd experiments, like extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, have since been realized in earnest, such as vitamin D from cod liver oil.
4. 4. Swift's satire targets not experimentation itself but experiments that backfire due to obsessive disregard for observed experience.
5. 5. The mad scientist trope split in the 19th century into a comic 'nutty professor' line and a tragic, sinister line exemplified by Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Moreau.
6. 6. Swift's Struldbrugs, who are immortal but age eternally, represent the dark side of the human desire for immortality, a theme that recurs in later mad scientist stories.
7. 7. Atwood argues that science is a morally neutral tool, like a hammer, that can be used for good or ill depending on human desires.
8. 8. A contemporary art-science project, 'Victimless Leather', a coat made from living animal cells, echoes Swift's Grand Academy experiments by forcing ethical questions about life and death.
9. 9. The central question of Gulliver's Travels—'What is it to be human?'—is answered partly by our ability to imagine and create fictions about mad scientists, which may help keep real scientists sane.