The Idealization of Science in Sinclair Lewis' Arrowsmith Essay

Lisa Jardine’s Ingenious Pursuits: Building the Scientific Revolution provides a comprehensive breakdown of the discoveries that defined the Scientific Revolution and the history behind them. The story of the scientific revolution truly begins with a separation between the Catholic Church and the denizens of Europe brought on by the Protestant Reformation. This separation led directly to the questioning of the church and what they deemed to be true. The growing suspicion of the church applied not only to the politics and religious views but the scientific “facts” the church was built upon. The suspicion of these scientific facts quickly grew to an open challenging of these facts, The Scientific Revolution. The Scientific Revolution is something we have all studied in our grade school years and the discoveries of people such as Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei are well documented and arguably common knowledge but Jardine’s book Ingenious Pursuits encapsulates the scientific revolution in a new light. Jardine accomplishes this by telling the stories of some of the greatest achievements of the Scientific Revolution. These stories reveal the collaborations of some of histories most brilliant minds as well as the secrecy amongst them and uncover the motives that fueled many of these accomplishments.

John M. Barry, the author of The Great Influenza, writes about scientists and the obstacles they face. He claims that scientists are explorers in the wilderness that is science. There is no charted path to go down and no one to follow. Scientists will always be uncertain, however scientists should possess certain characteristics to overcome the doubt. He appeals to our emotions to explain the necessary characteristics a scientist has to posses. John M. Barry uses anaphoras, motifs, and pathos in his definition of what scientists do.

Brilliant author, John M. Barry, once proclaimed, “Uncertainty makes one tentative if not fearful, and tentative steps, even when in the right direction, may not overcome significant obstacles… It is the courage to accept—indeed, embrace—uncertainty” (Barry 3-5 & 9-10). These quotes can be traced back to John M. Barry’s passage of “The Great Influenza,” where he writes an account about the 1918 flu epidemic that struck the world. In his account, he goes into further explanation about the rigors and fulfillment of being a scientist, and simultaneously, discusses the tedious process of their research. Ultimately, society is educated that the life of a scientist should not be absolute, but it should consist of persistence and courage. In John M. Barry’s “The Great Influenza,” the author employs innovative metaphors and unique rhetorical questions to portray scientific research.

The writer gives three specific aspects of the “Legacy of the Scientific Revolution” which stem from the ideas of absolutism. The first part of the legacy is “the increasing presence of an attitude of mechanization toward the processes of nature” which is how machinery is applied to nature to help understand it better. This was done in many ways, one example is the invention of the first telescopes. In Holland lenses of different shapes were combined by eyeglass makers to see the sky more detailed than the naked eye could see (Lewis 359). The second phrase of the legacy is “an increasing attitude of mechanization toward the creation of knowledge, enshrining the process of rationalism and empiricism that would become the hallmarks of modern

“The best among [the scientists] move deep into a wilderness region where they know almost nothing, where the very tools and techniques needed to clear the wilderness, to bring order to it, do not exist” (25-29). By referencing the need “to clear the wilderness”, Barry conjures an image of a lumberjack, who heroically conquers the wilderness to nurture the advent of civilization. In a similar manner, he claims that scientists wield axes to chop away the foliage that obscure scientific discoveries opening the gateways for unparalleled growth and innovation. Moreover, Barry continues his claim by asserting that“If the researcher succeeds, a flood of colleagues will pave roads over the path laid, and those roads will be orderly and straight, taking an investigator in minutes to a place the pioneer spent months or years looking for” (Barry 49-53). Following the back-breaking labor of clearing forests, Barry muses how the “flood” of subsequent scientists lay down the bricks to form a continuous road that civilizes and tames the unknown. In addition, Barry channels the immense power of “floods” and bestows it upon scientists; this evokes the notion that scientists possess power of equal magnitude, when well-harnessed, can transform and innovate scientific research. Thus, by utilizing metaphors as a vessel to grant powers to

Since the 17th century, the scientific method has served as a memorable procedure for its ability to characterize aspects of natural science. Its reliance on sense and reason allowed it to become the backbone of research for scientists, meant to make the unknown into something better understood and explored. Even still, this tried and true method cannot be deemed completely concrete. In his passage from The Great Influenza, John M. Barry utilizes various rhetorical devices in his process of characterizing scientific research, to demonstrate the similarities between scientists and the early pioneers.

Barry identifies the obstacles a scientist must conquer in this passage. When describing the movement of a scientist throughout their field, he uses the words “forcefully and aggressively”. The use of this diction persuades the reader of the difficult work of scientific research and the strength of scientists. The phrases “grunt work” and “tedious work” in line 37 describe the strenuous workload of a scientist. The field of scientific research can be viewed as a frontier but the author takes this comparison further. In lines 25 to 29, the scientific field is likened to the wilderness. This descriptive diction highlights the uncertainty mentioned throughout the account and emphasizes the depth of scientific research. Throughout the passage, diction is used as a tool to persuade the reader that scientific research is

These institutions, such as the Royal Society of London, were prominent social institutions that allowed for the promotion of the sciences. Henry Oldenburg, a Secretary of the English Royal Society, appreciated the “devotion to truth” of the academics of these societies and expressed the importance of friendship and communication within the scientific domain. These societies were vital to the survival and expansion of sciences and “a great aid to the investigation and elucidation of the truth” (Doc. 6). However, the immense cultural and social influence of the institutions of sharing did not include everyone.

Science is taking a step out to discover new things, to build new testable explanations. To design new products that could be beneficial to humans, it not only takes risks, but it could cost you a job. Many occupations do not compare because they lack the feeling of heroism, affection and inquiry. In “The Great Influenza”, John M Barry is describing how a scientist must function and the techniques that they use to complete their research. Through his diction, allusions and figurative language he better illustrates the work of scientist as demanding and to persuade the reader to accept his view on scientific research.

As the story progresses, Caswell’s view on science becomes clearer and readers can determine for themselves where the line should be drawn to keep society safe.

Science was used to alter the minds that thought it was uncommon and that saw it as something inappropriate in a usual conservative era, but the men in this novella took it very seriously. "I never saw a man so distressed as you were by my will; unless it were that hide-bound pedant, Lanyon, at what he called my scientific heresies. O, I know he's a good fellow—you needn't frown—an excellent fellow, and I always mean to see more of him; but a hide-bound pedant for all that; an ignorant, blatant pedant" (Stevenson 12). Eventually people started to change their minds about scientists furthermore their status started to rise. Ultimately, both character and science do not sum up class structure.

In a 1959 lecture by C.P. Snow, he expresses his beliefs and observations of the widening cultural gulf between scientists and those who study the humanities. He observes that the education system in Great Britain is specialized in such a way that it's limiting the student’s options and pushing them apart. Once a student has finished with school, the separation has divided he or she into either an artist or a scientist. Neither group thinks very highly of the other with C.P. Snow going as far as to say that “The non-scientists have a rooted impression that the scientists are shallowly optimistic, unaware of man's condition. On the other hand, the scientists believe that the literary intellectuals are totally lacking in foresight, peculiarly

In the emerging Scientific Era, which partook in the late 1700s to early 1800s, scientific discovery and investigation of the natural sciences were a “social normality” for the emerging science population. Conducted in 1801, Young’s experiment and modulus

After reading this book, I was not familiar with many things. For example, Stuart mentioned that science is a matter of taking educated guess which is basically forming a hypothesis. Once your hypothesis is tested over time, it becomes a theory. I was not familiar with that. Secondly, Stuart stated that people put too much standard in facts which is not the true aim of science, but the access to developing new questions which essentially contact the ignorance. I did not know that scientist starts at facts and search beyond the factual statement. I guess when facts fail, that is when they actually start thinking. Thirdly, scientists create a lot of questions instead of answers; I thought they have the answers most of the time.

It is illustrative of a wider cultural dichotomy that it seems simultaneously radical and conformist to the point of truism to state that “science” has been a definably romantic endeavour, in culture and practice. The heroic and transcendent in science (namely that which is seen to contribute to improvement) has obviously been endorsed and celebrated through prose, poetry and image, but few of these celebrations directly acknowledge the values of the romantic. Likewise, the surprising interdisciplinary overlap that existed before the lath eighteenth and early nineteenth century definition and division of scientific application and research, art and academia is rarely discussed. Similarly, the embrace of the subjective, the social and the highly experimental amongst earlier, scientifically inclined romantics sits uneasily with enlightenment grounded assertions that the primary scientific focus has always been the discovery of natural “rules” and applications, through pure logic and reason.