Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and strawman scientists

[Monzach]

So, I've started to read "The Lost World" by sir Arthur Conan Doyle once more. It has been a little while since I read it last, so I was quite surprised as to how the two scientist characters come across as huge strawmen. Basically, you have Professor Challenger who is completely self-absorbed and ready to assault anyone and everyone who isn't ready to kiss his feet and to believe his most outlandish theories on his word alone. Add to that the fact that Challenger is a domestic bully and uses "the stool of penance" to keep his wife in line (he lifts his wife atop a high shelf when she annoys him). The second scientist character in the story is Professor Summerlee. He is a little less strawmanish that Challenger, but only a little. Summerlee is also quite arrogant and self-absorbed, and refuses to admit that he could be wrong about anything. Naturally, both the scientists are also shown to be completely detached from the real world and any dangers in it, going as far as to start to bicker about the "physiognomic characteristics" of native cannibals when they hear the tribesmen's war drums in the distance.

TL;DR: The creator of Sherlock Holmes was still quite capable of using the negative tropes of his time when it comes to scientitst.

[mellenORL]

Lapsing back in to the Romantic Style for "The Lost World", which was the emotionally reactive prose most popular at that time, made Doyle a lot of money. I have a huge collection of 19th century novels of all types. The Romance type writing so popular then is a bit hard to relate to, but if done well, say by Poe, it is readable yet. I think another reason Doyle used these blatant stereotype characters in Lost was for parody, at least in his mind as he wrote that novel, knowing full well his target audience would not "get it". The book almost comes off like a Vaudville play, with lots of extra dialogue and descriptors, of course. That audience just wanted a "cracking good adventure tale", not something that challenged their intellect, as some of the Holmes stories do. Although literate people back then had a much better grasp of English and basic common sense than today's mass market 50 Shades/Twilight consuming public, they were still mostly scientifically illiterate, even by 19th century standards. With that in mind, as popular as the Holmes stories were, they did not originate as stand-alone publications. They were printed within popular magazines, which sold well regardless and created good publicity for the later published books. However, critics who preferred Romance style novels panned the Holmes stories, and a very large segment of the reading public showed no interest in his Holmes books. "Lost World" and some other books by Doyle were a way to earn some money from that large segment of readership, as they were just the right combination of free flowing fancy and romance.

In any case, there are fine novels of modern prose that would likely be almost incomprehensible even to 19th century intellectuals. These books are not so much a resurrection of Romance style, but the alternate realities and psychological thrillers by authors like Rushdie, Camus, Sartre, Ellison, etc. would be a real challenge for 19th century people to get a grasp on.

[Monzach]

You make an excellent point, mellenORL. Conan Doyle himself considered the science-fiction and detective novels he wrote as some of his "lesser" works, and felt that his historical novels were far superior. Of course, as often happens, these historical novels are almost completely forgotten these days and only Sherlock Holmes and the likes of "Lost World" remain in the public consciousness. I personally really enjoy these cheesy Victorian stories immensly, even with all the strawmen thrown about, and rank the likes of Poe and Lovecraft very high indeed in my personal library. Indeed, the only story of Conan Doyle's that I find a bit too much is "The Land of Mist", his spiritualism apology, where we have Professor Challenger once again as the straw atheist and -scientist who is only converted to "The True Faith" when his deceased wife appears to him in spirit form...

[mellenORL]

I can't remember if I've read "The Mist". Does his wife appear during a spiritualist reading or a séance? That would have been oh-so apropos for a popular novel back then.

[Monzach]

Yes, Mrs. Challenger appears during a séance which was set up for the express purpose of converting the Professor. In the end we learn that the Challengers' daughter is psychically sensitive. By that time in the story of course all the surviving members of the "Lost World" crew are true believers within the spiritualist movement. Professor Summerlee only makes a posthumous appearance, trying in vain to communicate with Challenger in an earlier séance run by the main medium, of whom Conan Doyle paints a picture that is so squeaky clean and saintly as to be frankly revolting.

[mellenORL]

Heehee. If only fundies today would learn the history of just how pervasive spiritualism was back then. They'd die of shock! Good Christians falling for the other-wordly toys of Satan muhahahaha.

[Monzach]

Oh yes, I should think that most of today's fundies would die of heart attack by the time they come to the section where the ghost of a small slave girl (whose speech is written out phonetically) tells the assembled séance about the afterlife. Including the "fact" that the spirits of the dead pass through various stages of afterlife, ascending to higher and higher "heavens" as time goes by. Oh yes, and she herself has seen and spoken with Jesus.

[TheL]

You make an excellent point, mellenORL. Conan Doyle himself considered the science-fiction and detective novels he wrote as some of his "lesser" works, and felt that his historical novels were far superior. Of course, as often happens, these historical novels are almost completely forgotten these days and only Sherlock Holmes and the likes of "Lost World" remain in the public consciousness. I personally really enjoy these cheesy Victorian stories immensly, even with all the strawmen thrown about, and rank the likes of Poe and Lovecraft very high indeed in my personal library. Indeed, the only story of Conan Doyle's that I find a bit too much is "The Land of Mist", his spiritualism apology, where we have Professor Challenger once again as the straw atheist and -scientist who is only converted to "The True Faith" when his deceased wife appears to him in spirit form...

I'd also add Bram Stoker's Dracula and Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" to that list.  I do love me some 19th-century anti-science lit, for some reason.  I think a lot of it is because it points out the very real danger of "playing God" by assuming you can change other people's lives in not-necessarily-good ways without their consent.

[Monzach]

@TheL: Oh yes, how could I forget Bram Stoker's Dracula! One of my favourite things in recent years was reading on TVTropes about the theory that miss Lucy Westenra died because of the blood transfusions by van Helsing. After all, Professor van Helsing put the blood from four different men into miss Lucy's veins in as many evenings. Quite a funny thing to think about, as a modern reader. Of course, we need to also remember the only barely concealed theme of forbidden sexuality in Stoker's Dracula. It's quite funny when you think about it, and once you start to think about the vampire's kiss as a metaphor for sex...well, I at least have quite a lot of new respect for the old Vojvod of Wallachia.

[R. U. Sirius]

In fairness to Van Helsing, blood typing hadn't been discovered at the time; they only knew that transfusions sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. That said, he does show a strong spiritualist streak, even pointing up a number of phenomena that spiritualists at the time claimed to have proven scientifically.

Also, if the multiple transfusions had been the cause of Lucy's death, wouldn't that have kept her from coming back? It's been a couple of years since I read Dracula, but I seem to remember Van Helsing saying that only those who actually die of the bite become vampires, as opposed to those who are bitten but die in other fashions.

[Monzach]

Unfortunately no. Anyone bitten by a vampire will become a vampire upon their death. That's actually a pretty important plot point, because Mina Harker, wife of Jonathan, is bitten shortly after the halfway mark of the story. This causes van Helsing to decide to pursue ol' Vlad across the continent, since the only way to save Mrs. Harker is to kill Dracula. There's of course the added benefit of immediatly saving the souls of everyone bitten by Dracula, and indeed Dracula himself.

Also, yes, van Helsing himself is a very interesting character. He shifts between science and religion quite a lot, but that only makes him more intriguing, at least to me.

[Katsuro]

...you have Professor Challenger who is completely self-absorbed and ready to assault anyone and everyone who isn't ready to kiss his feet and to believe his most outlandish theories on his word alone....Summerlee is also quite arrogant and self-absorbed, and refuses to admit that he could be wrong about anything....

In fairness to Dolye, if you read up some of the more famous names in 19th century science  a lot of sicentists back then were actually like that.  They reached a certain level in academia where their word became the word of God, regardless of the actual evidence.  Some of them set back scientific research in their fields by decades as a result.

It's a bit like when Voltaire described medical science as the art of letting nature take its course whilst keeping the patient amused.  That is absolutley untrue now but at the time he wrote that, he was kind of right.

[lord gibbon]

Just remember, the scientists of the time were motivated by religion and race. These are the people who believed Piltdown Man because he was "found" in England, and therefor "proved" that Europe was the home of humanity and not Africa. The scientific method as we know it is fairly young, and the scientists of Doyle's time were not avid followers of it.

[Witchyjoshy]

So basically, these books were anti-scientist at a time when scientists were anti-science?

[Monzach]

I guess it's not fair to use 21st century morals to mock 19th century people. I seem to remember that the celebrated Lord Kelvin himself was of the opinion that Marconi's radio waves were a hoax and that it was as useless to speculate about heavier-than-air flight as of manned flights to the Moon...