In 1831, Mary Shelley published an updated version of Frankenstein where she recontextualized the novel in her introduction and added long, religiously remorseful passages from Victor. These changes attempt to erase some of the controversy surrounding ideas present in the 1818 edition of the novel. By doing so, the discussion surrounding Frankenstein and its participation in relevant social and cultural discussions was limited.

      Marilyn Butler addresses this issue using context from the history of science in her landmark article, “Frankenstein and Radical Science”. Specifically, she links the ideas of the 1818 version to the “vitality debate” between physician John Abernethy and his student William Lawrence. Through a series of public exchanges, those scientists argued about one of the key questions facing science in the early 19th century “What is ‘Life’?” Lawrence served as the physician to Percy Bysshe Shelley during the peak of the vitalism debate occurring between Lawrence and his former mentor John Abernethy. Butler notes that there “cannot be much doubt that the group were speaking of the vitalist debate” when participating in the infamous ghost story contest that led to Frankenstein due to the conversations recorded in the journals of those authors (307). Frankenstein also came under public scrutiny due to Lawrence’s controversial writings and subsequent censorship, as “after publication text and author were subjected to outside pressures which have little to do with aesthetics, and make it hard to say that it was she who changed her mind” (Butler 304). These outside pressures come directly from the ideas and writings of William Lawrence’s heavy influence on the novel that were largely erased in the 1831 revisions. The influences of the vitalism debate and what powers life are central to the creation of the Creature in the novel. Butler argues that Frankenstein’s previous education and attitudes “suggest the position of Abernethy”, and he “seems to know too little science rather than too much” due to his use of some undescribed actions to bring the creature to life (307). This places Frankenstein firmly within the context of the debate on vitalism that has continued to be a topic of research and debate for literary critics.

      In this paper, I explain the significance of the vitalism debates on Romantic-Era literature in light of the scientific revolution. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions concept of paradigms in conjunction with Steven Shapin’s The Scientific Revolution will shed light on the history of science, particularly during this time period. I then read Frankenstein in light of these contexts as a participant in the conversation surrounding both the vitality debates and the history of science as a whole.

      Sharon Ruston explains the vitality debates and their significance with the Shelleys in her book, Shelley and Vitality. Abernethy argued that “Life did not depend on the organization of the body but existed as a material substance ‘superadded’ to the body” (Ruston 10). He believed in a vital principle separate to the body itself that diminished over time. Defending these views from a moral standpoint, Abernethy argued that belief in his theory would be able “to produce virtuous, honourable, and useful actions” (45). On the other hand, Lawrence defended the idea of “Life as simply the working operation of all the body’s functions, the sum of its parts” (11). The organization of the physical form made up all that was necessary to produce life—nothing more. Lawrence believed “empiricism was the only means by which life could be analysed” because life is “inherently and essentially mutable” (9). Only the use of evidence and scientific practices could successfully answer the question of what life is, unlike Abernethy’s reliance on morals and texts from authority. The two used different methods. Without a mysterious superadded principle that could insinuate a soul and a divine Creator, Lawrence’s scientific position was easily labeled atheist and dangerous to society. Lawrence was forced into “retracting his ‘infidel opinions’” in 1819 (Ruston 65). These retracted opinions were reflected in the 1818 text of Frankenstein, which led to Shelley’s rewrites.

      Following Ruston, literary scholars have more fully investigated the role the concepts of the vital have played in establishing Romantic-Era literature. For example, Denise Gigante in her book, Life: Organic Form and Romanticism, explores the Romantic-Era obsession with the concept of life in relation to how it impacted the form of literature of the time period. Gigante argues that vitalism should be seen “as a context for making sense of the life contained in the poetry of the time, at the level not only of content but also of form” (45). The influence of the vitalism debate formulated the way texts were thought of and created. Without that vitalising power the Creature in Frankenstein is just “an assemblage of parts that do not add up to organic unity in mulëity—an awkward creature” (Gigante 26). While the Creature is still awkward upon its quasi-birth, it is the awkwardness of a child with new limbs rather than a collection of parts that do not coincide.

      Packham notes that by analyzing the vitalism debate as seen through literature we can “explore how a language of vital animation is present beyond scientific and physiological discourses, in a range of cultural, political and literary domains” (3). The belief in a higher power or superadded principle extended the Vitality debate of the 19th century which in turn created a surge of literature from informed novelists trying to figure it out themselves. This thread of vitalism emerges through the “Romantic theories of nature” focused on continued existence through an intangible force (1). Vitalistic metaphors’ appearance in literature reflects literature’s role in the conversation between the sciences and society as a whole.

      To discuss Frankenstein and the vitality debates in full, we must also recognize the impact of Sir Humphrey Davy. Davy’s experiments with electricity were used by Abernethy to support his arguments for a superadded principle of life. Electricity also happens to be the way most film adaptations interpret the life entering the creature. Davy, the historical counterpart of the fictional Waldman, believed “that vitality could be distilled into a chemical preparation” (Ruston 36). The idea that life could be created artificially fuels Frankenstein’s goals. Davy asserted that “material powers are made subservient to the purposes of life” (38). It would make sense then why Frankenstein believed he could use the material powers of science to create a life unnatural to this world.

      Davy did not only participate in science, however. Christopher Lawrence notes that “Davy used chemistry to ask and answer questions about the material and spiritual constituents of the universe and thus about the nature of life and mind” (222). By attempting to answer these metaphysical questions, Davy entered into a field normally designated to the humanities. We know that he “wrote verses and romances and jotted down his metaphysical speculations” (214). More than just a chemist, Davy was a writer of the Romantic period, even if his nonscientific works are less well known. Lawrence argues that “Davy fashioned Romanticism to bring about a new order of things” (227). He played a major role in the shaping of society and the literary community through his efforts in the sciences as well as his connections with popular writers. Partially due to the vitalism debates and Davy’s publicized science, the literature of this time period painted “a romantic vision of a vital organic universe, harmonized and unified, was central to its resistance of the fracturing of knowledge into distinct, technical disciplines” (Packham 9). This resistance to distinct categories of knowledge is reflected in the attitudes of Frankenstein’s professor M. Waldman’s ideas that tending to one area of expertise would make

Frankenstein “a very sorry chemist” (Shelley 36). With this strong connection between the fictional Waldman and Davy, we can see the scientific influences on Victor as well as Mary Shelley herself.

      Davy’s A Discourse, Introductory to a Course of Lectures on Chemistry explores the importance of chemistry and its role in society. In its relationship to other branches of science, chemistry “has greatly contributed to increase their perfection, and to extend their application” (Davy 215). Yet he still warns us against moving past our limitations in its study. Davy argues that the human brain’s “desires are beyond its abilities; its different parts and organs are not firmly knit together, and they seldom act in perfect unity” (222). The organizational theory of life that Lawrence would propose would almost require a unity between the body’s structure to produce life. Lawrence’s position could be seen as “the adoption of wild and dangerous theories, by ambitious or deluded men, may throw a temporary opprobrium on literature” that Davy warns against (222). Instead, he argues that science “must be always more or less connected with the love of the beautiful and sublime” (224). The sublime connects us with something larger than ourselves, like Abernethy’s superadded principle rather than Lawrence’s idea of the organization of the body alone being sufficient. Davy also emphasized the importance of learning from the past’s emphasis on morals and religion as “man informed through beneficence of the Deity, by science, and the arts” will be more beneficial to society (220). Lawrence sought to reject the roots of the vitalist debates and use pure reason, but that would mean a theory tainted by aspects of materialism and atheism. Davy did not believe that the total rejection of pre-revolutionary science would benefit modern science as “the future is composed merely of images of the past, connected in new arrangements by analogy, and modified by the circumstances and feelings of the moment” (221). Davy and the new paradigm still value historicism and morality when considering theories.

      Thomas Kuhn, in his notable book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, defines the context of a paradigm shift in the sciences. A paradigm “is an object for further articulation and specification under new or more stringent conditions” (Kuhn 23). The paradigm encompasses the important problems, methods, and standards that constitute normal science. Kuhn argues that “Paradigms provide scientists not only with a map but also with some of the directions essential for map-making. In learning a paradigm the scientist acquires theory, method and standards together” (109). By doing so, the paradigm provides scientists with everything they need to do scientific research and further flesh out the paradigm. Paradigms create “rules that limit both the nature of acceptable solutions and the steps by which they are to be obtained” (38). These limitations qualify what counts as science and provide a form of validity to answers that fall within the parameters of the paradigm. As a result, normal science will “attempt to force nature into the preformed and relatively inflexible box that the paradigm supplies” (24). Due to the relatively strict nature of paradigms, information that lies outside of the accepted realm of belief will be forced back into the paradigm if at all possible. If it cannot be explained by the paradigm, that information is considered to be an anomaly. When too many anomalies emerge, scientific revolutions happen and a second paradigm that encompasses the anomalies will form. During this period of revolutionary science, “Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm’s defense” (94).

      Abernethy and Lawrence operate under the same paradigm, but Lawrence attempts to add something new to the paradigm. He begins a shift to strict empiricism without the historicism the current paradigm uses. It is possible for an individual to be experiencing this shift through embracing
certain aspects of the new paradigm before encountering a conflict that forces them to choose one or the other. To understand the actual significance of Lawrence, Abernethy, and the prevailing paradigm of vitalism, it is necessary to see how the vitalist debates were related to larger questions associated with the period following the scientific revolution, as Steven Shapin does in his book, The Scientific Revolution. Shapin begins the novel by acknowledging that we should “display knowledge making and knowledge holding as social processes” (9). Kuhn’s paradigm theory aligns with this concept of socially-constructed and accepted knowledge. The scientific revolution would “radically unsettle existing philosophical schemes” of the limits of human knowledge (20). While it was previously reasonable to state the supernatural as an explanation for phenomena, revolutionary scientists began to “discredit the legitimacy of occult powers” (42). This rejection of the unexplainable set science on the path of empiricism. Instead, the new, modern science called on individuals to “rely not on the testimony of humans but on the testimony of nature” (69). This shift to physical evidence led to the problematization of much of natural philosophy’s purely rhetorical arguments. Experiments emerged to find “‘what actually happened in nature’ when observed in specific ways and in specific times” (90). This gathering of physical evidence contributed to Lawrence’s rejection of Abernethy’s superadded principle as outdated and not defensible from an empirical standpoint.

      Instead, supporters of the new empiricism movement believed “neither sense nor reason alone could suffice to make natural philosophical knowledge” (93). The Book of Nature must be both observed and reasoning applied to those observations to understand the natural world and how it operates. Shapin acknowledges Boyle’s argument that science “had been hindered by” outside influence, be it religion or politics, influencing the science performed or the conclusions being made (106). Thus began the strive towards objectivity in the scientific realm. The role of science became to “represent what is in the natural world, not what ought to be” (162). These representations were then publicized to allow the general public into the realm of science. However, non-science related changes to society, such as the discovery of the New World, the invention of the printing press, and the protestant reformation,“eroded the authority and the effective scope of institutions that had regulated human conduct” (124). In order to maintain this sense of authority, government funded institutions such as The Royal Society and The Royal Institution emerged to channel scientists into researching problems in which the government was invested.

      The scientific revolution changed the way science was done and expanded the footprint of science in society. It did not, however, solve every problem. We might have understood human bodies better, but we still did not understand human beings and what made us alive. These questions remained up to speculation. This speculation fell to authors, such as Mary Shelley. When considering Frankenstein under the light of the scientific revolution as a whole, Victor’s mentors serve as signposts for different phases of this transition. His early education in the writings of philosophers such as Paracelsus represent a natural philosophy that existed prior to the scientific revolution and its ideals. M. Krempe exemplifies the other extreme. The transitional period in between these two, the actual revolution, can be seen through the ideas of Frankenstein’s favorite professor, M. Waldman.

      The natural philosophers that Victor read did not have the same ideas of science that emerged during the scientific revolution. Paracelsus and his contemporaries used rhetoric rather than experimentation in order to make bold claims about how the world works and the ability of humans to exert power over nature. Victor attributes his interest in “raising ghosts or devils” and the ability to “render man invulnerable” to his reading of these authors (Shelley 28). The

supernaturally miraculous was the goal. Unlike the limitations to human knowledge that Davy and other modern scientists proclaimed, the pre-revolution natural philosophy defended that “the immensity of man that he is greater than heaven and earth” (Paracelsus 119). There were no limits placed on what man could learn and create with enough effort. As a result, Victor held a “contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy” as he found them too mundane and limited (Shelley 34). Victor’s paradigm before attending university held a very different perspective on what questions could be answered than that of modern science.

      Additionally, Paracelsus continually referenced ideas that would be cast aside as the supernatural by his successors. Paracelsus references an unseen matrix from which the “world was born” (87). This matrix is presented with no empirical evidence or backing. Paracelsus just presents it as fact. He also asserts that “the body attracts heaven” (95). This supernatural attraction reflects the “occult powers of sympathy, attraction, and repulsion” between bodies that most post-revolution science would reject entirely as unscientific and superstitious (Shapin 42). The teachings of Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa begin Victor in a paradigm of pre-revolution science that he would continue to operate under until attending the university at Ingolstadt.

      Immediately prior to traveling to Ingolstadt, Victor’s father begins his abandonment of Paracelsus’s paradigm and transition into that of the modern era. Lightning strikes a tree outside of the Frankenstein vacation home that inspires Victor to investigate it further. M. Frankenstein, glad to have his son abandon the “sad trash” he had been reading, introduces Victor to the methods of modern science (Shelley 27). He does so by constructing “ a small electrical machine, and exhibited a few experiments” (29). The experimental investigation and gathering of empirical evidence are integral to the paradigm of modern science. By introducing his son to these methods, M. Frankenstein “completed the overthrow of Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus

Magnus, and Paracelsus” in the mind of his son (29). This abandoning of the practices of his previous mentors while remembering their goals and ideas would be the first step into the new, modern paradigm for Victor.

      M. Waldman provided a Davy figure that could transition Victor from his early roots in the alchemical philosophers to the science and chemistry of the modern era. Waldman did not ridicule Victor for his previous education, instead acknowledging that it was to those ideas that the new paradigm “were indebted for most of the foundations of their knowledge” (36). The new paradigm arises out of the old one, and Waldman acknowledges this in his lectures. Like Davy, Waldman maintains the connection to aesthetics and the sublime that existed before the scientific revolution. Victor credits Waldman’s teachings with his “ardent and eager” interest in chemistry (38). Waldman’s focus on the historicism aspect of the revolutionary paradigm helped Victor to embrace the changes he was encountering. As a result, it would be the teachings of Waldman, and by extension his real world counterpart Davy, that lead Victor in his scientific endeavors.

At the university, Victor would also encounter the post-revolution chemist, M. Krempe. Krempe fully endorses the ideas of the new paradigm while taking them a step further. He insists that “every instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost” (34). The teachings of the old paradigm no longer apply for Krempe. There are new parameters for questions, new methods, and new standards for what is considered science. The attitudes of Krempe reflect those of William Lawrence. Lawrence believed the works of Abernethy and his supporters “was outdated” and no longer viable, much like how Krempe denounced Agrippa and Paracelsus (Ruston 11). Krempe then immediately begins indoctrinating Victor into this updated science, even if Krempe’s original meeting did not put Victor “in favour of his doctrine” (Shelley 34). Flipping to the immediate other side of the revolution proves to be difficult for Victor. Krempe, like Lawrene, worked on leaving behind the cumulative nature of science and philosophy that the paradigm embraced for a more pure empiricism.