Science Bad?

Turning to Old Books to Vanquish Dr. Frankenstein's Monster

Watching the old horror films of the 1930s and 1940s, one cannot help but notice how often the scientists come to a bad end. Whether it is the obsessed Dr. Frankenstein, who discovers the secret of life, or the avaricious chemist Jack Griffin, who discovers the secret of invisibility, or the well-meaning physician Henry Jekyll, who discovers how to separate the good and evil halves of his psyche, they are generally destroyed—or at least cursed—by the fruits of their researches. In addition, many innocent bystanders die violently at the hands of the scientists' creations. But we are never left in doubt about the cause of the tragedy, for there is always a character who says: "He meddled in...