On 4 November 1818, a scientist stood in front of the corpse of an athletic, muscular man. Behind him his electrical equipment was primed and fizzing with energy. The scientist was ready to conduct a momentous scientific experiment. - P6
Mary Shelley’s debut novel Frankenstein created more than just a monster. It was the start of a new literary genre – science fiction. But Mary Shelley’s science fiction owes a lot to science fact. Written at a time of extraordinary scientific and social revolution, her novel captures the excitement and fear of new discoveries and the power of science. - P6
‘But these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or the crucible, have indeed performed miracles.’ Mary Shelley, Frankenstein - P9
The ideas and concepts explored in Frankenstein – science, life, responsibility – were at the forefront of philosophical and public debate in the century preceding the book’s publication. - P10
Immanuel Kant, a prominent German philosopher of the time, defined Enlightenment in 1784 as ‘mankind’s emancipation from self-imposed immaturity, and unwillingness to think freely for oneself’. - P10
The Shelleys were known to deplore the slave trade, and Frankenstein has been interpreted as a comment on slavery through examining the treatment of a race of humans visibly different to those around them. - P12
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen gave greater freedoms and protection to people of different faiths, black people, homosexuals and women. Though it was never implemented it has influenced liberal democracy globally. - P12
Firstly, experimentation and experience came to be seen as valid methods of producing knowledge, as the limitations of the Greek tradition of advancing knowledge by well-constructed arguments became apparent. - P13
Secondly, Isaac Newton, and others, had shown that processes such as movement could be explained in purely mathematical terms. - P13
Thirdly, the Enlightenment was an era of instrumentation. Devices, gadgets and gizmos of increasing complexity and accuracy were being designed, built and utilised. In Newton’s mechanical universe, God was either a mathematician or an instrument maker. - P13
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