Does Technology Make Us Do It?

Dr. Schweitzer, may I introduce Dr. Frankenstein.

Images of the miracle-working white-coated scientist are embedded in contemporary western culture. The hoped-for miracles are various. Medical scientists, we believe, are on the verge of bringing us a cure for cancer, along with a vaccine for AIDS. Agricultural scientists are creating genetically modified crops whose fecundity will, they promise, save the world’s poor from starvation. Teams of biologists are working to create forms of microbial life that will save us from the dire effects of the next oil spill. Coal industry scientists promise that in ten years or so they will give us clean coal by developing a technology to sequester greenhouse gases.

That’s on the one hand. But another, less attractive, image competes for the science-and-technology niche in our consciousness. In this alternative iconography the scientist is named Dr. Victor Frankenstein, or perhaps Dr. Henry Jekyll, rather than...