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ENGL378G: Science and Fiction - Coggle Diagram

- - - - "The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world then it finds," (Bacon, 471).
      - The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it" (Bacon, 472).
      - "the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses," (Bacon, 474).
      - Bacon believes that human minds are innately incapable of grasping the truth of the universe and sees our attempts at it as futile unless we develop better language and mindsets.
    - - "Limited as we are in every way... too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great distance hinders our view; too much truth is paralyzing... If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further," (Pascal).
    - - Victor Frankenstein's research in reanimation is successful but at the cost of his own person. Victor's endeavors are rewarded with a creature society regards as a monster. A warning for those who try to play god/go against nature.
    - - There is a constant comparison between the superior alien race and the humans who they have captured and are nursing back to livelihood.
      - Lilith is given qualities similar to the Oankali to protect herself from the humans around her. The Oankali planning to manipulate human genes to create a more viable human race than the original.
  - - - Highlights the new discoveries we've made using the microscope, encourages more learning and interest in the sciences.
    - - Zooms out to show us our insignificance in the face of the universe, zooms in to show us the complexities of ourselves. The video shows us the capabilities of human beings in our ability to see beyond what we would be capable without out inventions.
    - - "the transsexual body is an unnatural body. It is the product of medical science. it is a technological construction. It is flesh torn apart and sewn back together again in a shape other than that in which it was born... I am a transsexual and therefore I am a monster." (Stryker, 240).
      - Describes the transsexual body as "other" in a positive sense. A technological innovation.
- - - - From the perspective of Satan seeking to pervert God's creation of Man in spite of his banishment from Heaven.
    - - Occasionally features the perspective of a reanimated creature. Beyond a human being and yet treated as lesser due to its appearance. It contrasts the narratives of the Victor, the human responsible for the creature, and the creature itself.
    - - "By the name 'ships' we simply mean certain floating objects... their importance is fundamental: they are the only objects that can be seen physically moving on the Earth's surface," (Levi, 614). From the perspective of some species looking on Earth from space.
      - From the narrative of an otherworldly species looking in on the Earth. Humans are completely overlooked.
    - - "Bervin wrote a poem in the voice of a silkworm that draws on the worm's five-thousand-year history of interacting with human culture," (Crim, 98).
      - Unique poetry from the narrative of a silk worm. The poems themselves present as unreadable at times due to their structure. And yet others, they are clear in their mentioning of silk worms and their history through different nations.
  - - - "Yet I am happier, said the Oake, then Man; With my condition I contented am." (Cavendish, 262).
    - - "Eternity is none of my business. I am an oak, no more, no less... Mortality is my privilege..." (LeGuin, 272).
  - - - Also from the perspective of Eve and Adam both before and after they gain knowledge.
    - - A human relating to the tale of Frankenstein's creature, a character that is explicitly rejected from humanity in the book.
    - - human perspective of an alien abduction. Lilith is forced to balance her humanity and her new surroundings.
- - - - “I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on.”
      - The creature's monstrous appearance is enough to frighten everyone who lays eyes on him, despite his initial innocence.
    - - "Sometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the uncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into silence again." (Ligon)
      - The same phrase printed repeatedly until it becomes unreadable. Frankenstein not believing he were anything but a fellow living creature, until he is conditioned by his environment to believe that his form of speech is violent, monstrous.
    - - "Monstrousness is so incompatible with femininity that Frankenstein cannot even complete the female companion that his creature so eagerly awaits," (Johnson, 7).
  - - - "I want to lay claim to the dark power of my monstrous identity without using it as a weapon against others or being wounded by it myself..." (Stryker, 240).
      - Reclaiming and embracing the label "monster" to minimize the damage the word holds
- - - - Commentary on Frankenstein and his abandonment of his creation. The creature outwardly searching for parental care and approval from Victor as his creator.
    - - The extent a grieving mother will go for her son. Contrasts the abandoned original Frankenstein's creature to the innocence presented in Dr. Baker's son.
    - - "Victor Frankenstein's disgust at the sight of his creation as a study of postpartum depression..." (Johnson, 6).
      - Twists the narrative from the male narration to a female/maternal perspective on motherhood. Postpartum depression in specific
  - - - “exclusion from the human community fuels a deep and abiding rage in me,” (Stryker, 238). In comparing Frankenstein to herself.
    - - "In order to prove herself worthy of her parentage, Mary, must thus usurp the parental role and succeed in giving birth to herself on paper," (Johnson, 8). In interpreting Frankenstein as Shelley's own autobiography, her debut of her separation from her parent's legacy.
      - Relates the creation of Frankenstein to Shelley's autobiography. The book being Shelley's monstrous creation.
  - - - Looking at Frankenstein as a narrative on slavery and racial rebellion.
      - "In dealing with a negro we must remember that we are dealing with a being possessing the form of a man, but the intellect only of a child," (Young, 20).
    - - Lilith is Awakened and tasked with acclimating herself to an alien world, only to Awaken and help others adjust themselves as well. Its the human reaction to having to start over and adjust to an unseen god figure and an entirely different, new environment.
    - - "I find that everyday language, with its imprecisions and casual disregard for fixed definitions, helps to capture something slippery about experience. I am also interested in capturing the ambiguity, ambivalence, and difficulty that sexual violence creates," (Graybill, 12). Human language and our use of it in discussing sexual violence.
      - Our relationship with language and an attempt to reconstruct how we talk about sexual violence and assault to be more open and relatable for those involved.
    - - "What we saw was total death. Nothing was alive." (Labutut, 25)
      - manmade death, manmade color
      - Connections between our most beloved colors and our most feared chemical weaponry. The terrifying innovations we've made wither intentionally or as byproducts.
- - - - "But Man hath something more... he hath a Mind... A curiosity for to inquire.. And never can be satisfied, untill He, like a God, doth in Perfection dwell" (Cavendish, 263). In argument with Nature's desire to left alone.
      - "He nothing loves but what he cannot get... makes Griefe himselfe, if Fortune gives him none" (Cavendish, 263).
      - A tree's perspective on human greed. It outwardly rejecting the man's attempts at convincing it to be more, to strive for more as he does. The tree remarks how humans have a greed for more, for what they don't have. A never ending hunger.
    - - Adam and Eve gaining knowledge after eating the forbidden fruit and immediately begin to question and scorn one another. Their human greed is punished by God.
  - - - An ingredient in Dippel's elixir would eventually produce the blue that shines not only in Van Gogh's Starry Night and in the waters of Hokusai'd Great Wave, but also on the uniforms of the infantrymen of the Prussian army, as though something in the colour's chemical structure invoked violence," (Labatut, 19)
      - From Prussian blue to prussic acid, gruesome innovations weather intentionally created created or discovered through byproduct.