Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
'thermic engine', forerunner of a nuclear power plant, which can precipi-
tate a new industrial revolution. The scientist-hero Campbell uses this
power to enforce world peace and cooperation. Such benign use of
physical power was later characteristic of the pulp science fiction maga-
zines
Amazing Stories
,
Astounding Stories,
and
Marvel
of the 1920s and
'30s.
(b) The transmutation of metals to gold was superseded by the prom-
ise of producing artificial diamonds and then by the discovery of radio-
active elements and industrial processes with immense profits out of all
proportion to outlay. Our contemporary equivalent is the use of biologi-
cal processes to create complex end-products more efficiently and cheap-
ly than from
in vitro
chemical reactions, but with considerable scope for
potential accidents and unforeseen problems.
(c) In place of elixirs for eternal youth we have been offered herbal
remedies from tea fungus and garlic to Manchurian mushrooms and
gingko, magnetism, positive ions and, more recently, anti-oxidants,
botox, testosterone, and hormone replacement therapy.
(d) Our strategies to cheat death include ever-new miracle drugs, or-
gan transplants, stem cell grafts, and injections of blood stem cells.
(e) Superseding the preoccupation with homunculi, twenty-first
century cloning techniques, artificial insemination, genetic engineering,
embryo transplants, surrogate parenting, and reproductive material pro-
duced from the DNA of somatic tissue are highly sought after by those
prepared to outlay the immense cost.
All have been greeted with a combination of exultation at the possi-
bility of overcoming human limitations and fear of unscheduled conse-
quences and socio-moral dilemmas.
(iv) The most radical and widespread literary criticism of science
emerged in the nineteenth century as part of the Romantic reaction
against the European Enlightenment. It was characterized by an uncom-
promising rejection of rationalism, mechanism, reductionism, and scien-
tific materialism as necessary and sufficient explanations of the world
and, in particular, of human experience. In contrast to the Cartesian
dream that reason, epitomized in mathematics, would simplify and ulti-
mately resolve all problems, the Romantics argued for something much
more than mechanism - for a metaphysical or spiritual dimension beyond
