ana (1576), Gerard Dorn’s De naturae luce physicaex Genesi desumpta (1583), Francisco Valles’ Desacra philosophia (1587), Andreas Libavius’ Deuniversitate et originibus rerum conditarum con-templatio singularis (1610), Conradus Aslacus’Physica et ethica Mosaica (1613) and Jan AmosKomensky’s Physicae ad lumen divinum reforman-dae synopsis (1633) contributed significantly toboth natural investigations and biblical hermeneu-tics, often in strong competition with traditionalscholastic accounts. Jan Baptiste van Helmont’sgroundbreaking oeuvre can be seen as anothercharacteristic product of this tradition. In his essayon Robert Browne’s notion of seminal principles,Kevin Killeen stresses the importance of Augus-tine’s doctrine of seminal reasons in De genesi adliteram, a model of both hexameral literature andbiblical hermeneutic applied to natural philoso-phy. Irving A. Kelter concentrates his analysis onCornelius Valerius’ Physicae seu de naturae philo-sophia institutio (1567). Valerius (1512–1578),professor of Latin at the University of Louvain,argued that the world had been created, that therewas no essential difference between celestial andearthly matter, no soul permeated the world, andnatural movements were governed by divineprovidence rather than material determinism.Reliance on biblical and patristic sources meantfor Valerius the demise of Aristotelian physics.Kelter argues that in many respects Valerius’ caseis not different from Cardinal Robert Bellarmino,who in his 1570–1572 lectures at the University ofLouvain criticised traditional scholastic doctrinessuch as the existence of ether and celestial spheres.What is more, Bellarmino’s views concerning thefluidity and corruptibility of the heavens wereaccepted by his fellow Jesuits.Volker R. Remmert argues that, long before the
Galilei affair, Jesuit astronomers and theologians
emphasised the interplay of biblical exegesis,rational demonstrations (rationes necessariae)and empirical proofs (manifesta experimenta) as asource of authoritative knowledge. The mostrenowned case is Christoph Clavius’ commentaryon John of Sacrobosco’s De sphaera (1581) andOpera mathematica (1612), but Remmert alsorefers to Nicolaus Serarius’s commentary of theBook of Joshua (1609), Juan de Pineda’s Com-mentariorum in Iob libri tredecim (1600), BenitoPereira’s Commentariorum et disputationum inGenesim tomi quatuor (1591–99) and Jean Lorin’sIn Acta Apostolorum commentaria (1605). Amongthe biblical loci that became matter of intensedebate as a result of new astronomical discoveries,Remmert focuses on 2 Kings 20:8–11, Joshua10:12 and Genesis 15:5. Remmert points out thatmore research needs to be done in two directions: asystematic study of the defining features of Jesuitbiblical exegesis and, on a more specific level, aninvestigation of the relevance of biblical exegesis inJesuit science.Finally, the reader may be interested to know
what biblical loci are examined in the book. Here isa summary list: Genesis 1 (the Mosaic account ofcreation); Genesis 11:1–9 (Tower of Babel);Job 37:18 (hardness of the celestial spheres); Job38 (the foundations of the earth); 2 Kings 20:8–11(sun reversing its course); Joshua 10:12(sun standing still); Psalm 19:3–4 (the heavensdeclare the glory of God); Daniel 12:4 (thebeginning of a new era based on the progress ofknowledge); Matthew 18:3 (becoming little chil-dren as a requisite for being admitted to thekingdom of heaven); 1 Corinthians 10:4 (Wisdommade flesh); Revelation 9:2–5 (locusts and theirsymbols).
The Warburg Institute Guido Giglioni
Frankenstein’s Science. Edited by Christa Knellwolf and Jane Goodall. Pp. x, 225, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2008,$99.95.
Christa Knellwolf is a Visiting Professor of Englishand Cultural Theory at the University of Konstanzand an Adjunct Associate Professor at theAustralian National University. Jane Goodall is aProfessor with the Writing and Society ResearchGroup at the University of Western Sydney,Australia. Together they have edited a text thatseeks to reopen the question of how science andscientific ambitions are portrayed in Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein. This is the only book-length studythat contextualizes this novel into contemporaryscientific and literary debates. The essays arewritten by leaders in their fields and provide new
scholarship into areas of science and pseudo-sciencethat generated fierce controversy in the earlynineteenth century: anatomy, electricity, medicine,teratology, Mesmerism, quackery, and proto-evo-lutionary biology. While Frankenstein is often readas a cautionary tale on the dangers of scientificexperimentation, several essays contend that withinthe period in which it was written, experimentersand radical thinkers viewed science as the herald ofsocial innovation that would counter the backlashin the aftermath of the French Revolution.Patricia Fara begins the volume with an essay
concerning women and the scientific literature of
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the nineteenth century; Fara overviews the variouspublications that Mary Shelley may have beenexposed to in her education, and which in part mayhave furthered her imagination. Judith Barbourfurthers this exploration of what Shelley may haveread by offering detailed insight into the contentsof the Juvenile Library, a serial encylopaediapublished in 1807; Barbour contends that thevarious controversies about mankind’s purpose,which were documented in the Juvenile Library,fuelled her speculations regarding the potentials ofthen-contemporary science. Knellworth’s owncontribution documents the difficulty of trying tomap and chart the phenomena of the mind in thattime period.Anita Guerrini discusses then-contemporary
debates about the sanctity of life, and argues thatearly 19th century debates about vivisection werein part motivated by an attempt to explore thedepths of the mysteries of life. Melinda Cooperexplores the linkage between the book by Shelleyand the furthering of the budding science ofteratology (i.e. the study of defects). Joan Kirbyanalyzes the spiritual ideas underpinning the storyof Frankenstein, while Jane Goodall traces thedevelopment of electrical experiment in the latter
decades of the eighteenth century. In what may bethe best essay of the lot, Allan Hunter shows howShelley’s character, Frankenstein, draws fromvarious threads of then-contemporary science;e.g., she invokes the materialist philosophy of theScottish enlightenment, especially with regard toits effort to explain social dynamics (pp. 139–40).Ian Jackson explores whether the debates of 1814,
involving natural scientists, regarding the potentialexistence of a ‘life-force’ within humanity, was theimmediate background of Shelley’s novel, a notionthat she co-opted into electricity. The eleventhchapter is a reflection how Frankenstein’s adven-tures in life may be parallel to the increasedemphasis that the collection of specimens experi-enced in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuryscience. The volume is rounded-out by RobertMarkley’s chapter, covering the seemingly autono-mous development of planetary science in the lateeighteenth and early nineteenth centuries; he hereinsuggests that Shelley’s novel may speak to thepotential problem of the relationship betweenhumanity and the world, like H.G. Wells’ novels.
Regent University,Virginia Beach, VA
Bradford McCall
Understanding Consciousness (2nd ed.). By Max Velmans. Pp. xii, 393, London/NY, Routledge, 2009.
After a first section giving the historical back-ground to the almost intractable problem ofunderstanding consciousness, Velmans lists 10statements to which the average person wouldgive assent (p. 122), and which illustrate the ‘trickledown’ effect of Cartesian dualism (through ‘scien-tific culture’) into our common sense. Most of usare functional dualists who posit an immaterial rescogitans separated from a material res extensa by‘ideas’ which are the only things we know directly,and which need bear no similarity to what theyclaim to represent. The problems with this theoryare legion, and the dominant strategy by modernpsychology – chiefly functionalists and eliminativematerialists – has been either denying the reality ofconsciousness or declaring it identical with neuralactivity or brain states. Velmans concedes thatthere are neural correlates and causes to consciousexperience, but he has no difficulty in showing thatthey are not and cannot be ontologically identicalwith consciousness; his programme here is todevelop a more adequate explanatory account thatwould do justice to both our first-person consciousexperiences and to the third-person reports byexternal observers of either our behaviour or ourneural activity. He develops a theory of ‘reflexivemonism’ – an ontological monism combined with
epistemological dualism, or a ‘dual aspect’ access to asingle deeper reality – that undercuts the assumptionsof the previously unacceptable dualism, fits nicelywith the deliverances of common sense, and justifiesa ‘critical realism’ in epistemology. Though fallingshort of the univocal description of the ultimatebuilding blocks to which modern science aspires(‘matter’ is a mysterious reality that is definitely nolonger ‘inert’, but rather ‘ert’, ‘sensitive’, and asWhitehead held, perhaps even ‘mental’), Velmansshows that this is close to the situation in whichscience finds itself with regard to other mysteriousbut undeniably basic realities, such as the wave-particle theory of light, and the relationship betweenelectricity and magnetism. To choose an olderanalogy – the Nicene creed – whatever paradoxesattend this way of speaking about an ultimate reality,they are preferable to the outright contradictions andunacceptable eliminations that any alternative wayof speaking lands us in. This is a bravura perfor-mance, and Velmans has filled out this secondedition with a fuller engagement with his critics anddiscussions of new developments in neural research,information processing, and philosophy of mind.That said, his monism could have perhaps been
even more ‘reflexive’ – that is, on the basis of thedata Velmans supplies, the story of consciousness
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