Happy, Happy Birthday
Baby-On the 200th Anniversary Of The “Birth” of Mary Shelley’s
“Frankenstein”-A Comment
A link to a 200th
anniversary discussion of Mary Shelley and her “baby” Frankenstein on NPR’s On Point.
http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2018/02/12/working-in-the-lab-late-one-night
By Lenny Lynch
We all know in the year 2018 that it is impossible to create
a human being, maybe any being, out of spare human parts, and few jolts of
electricity. Back in day 1818 when Mary Shelley (she of the thoroughbred
breeding via Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin and channeling Percy Shelley)
wrote her iconic classis Frankenstein
although I like the Modern Prometheus part better science was pretty primitive on
that count but provided an impetus to further discovery. Unlike today through
genetic engineering we have better understanding of science and medicine
although at times we need to treat science like a thing from which we have to
run. (Example, a very current example, nuclear weapons.)
Still Mary Shelley was onto something, some very worthy
thoughts about human beings, about beings, about where women fit into the whole
scheme of things if we can at the flip of a button create life. Also puts a big
crimp in the various ideas about God and his or her tasks. We know, or at least
I know, that Frankenstein aka Modern Prometheus has gotten a bad rap especially
since the rise of the cinema turned him from a misunderstood and challenged
being into a monster. Mary Shelley started something for us to think about and
now we have to try to put the genie back in the bottle.
