WEBVTT - The Science of Frankenstein's Monster 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:06.680 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:13.680 Works dot com. Hey're welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.960 My name is Robert Lamb. I'm Julie Douglas. Julie your 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:19.680 Halloween costume that you're wearing for this podcast. Um, I 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:23.000 noticed that your hair is really tall and you have 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:26.520 a really impressive white stream coming down the side. Yes, 0:00:26.800 --> 0:00:31.680 are you the bride of Frankenstein's Monster? No, I'm Marge 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:35.839 Simpson in her later years. Oh well, well sorry, but 0:00:35.920 --> 0:00:39.000 it looks like the bride of Frankenstein. What are you saying? See, 0:00:39.000 --> 0:00:41.279 I never get my costumes right. But what about you? 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:43.000 What's what's going on over there? Well, as you can 0:00:43.040 --> 0:00:46.280 tell by my by the burns on my body as 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:49.199 well as the reek of burnt urine that surrounds me. 0:00:49.320 --> 0:00:51.479 Who's going to say something about that? Yeah? I am, 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:55.240 of course an alchemist, busy applying my trade in my laboratory, 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:58.080 trying to discover the secrets of life to turn to 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:01.240 transmute nettles into gold and uh, and turn one type 0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:05.119 of animal into another and you'urn into gold. Of course, 0:01:05.360 --> 0:01:08.120 I'm totally about the gold, and urine is kind of 0:01:08.160 --> 0:01:09.840 gold looking, So there's gotta be a way to turn 0:01:09.880 --> 0:01:11.920 into go. Yeah, you know, I appreciate your commitment to 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:16.320 the illusion. By the way, Uh, podcast room is really 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:20.040 small and enclosed. Well, you know, I'm hungent right now. 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:22.480 I'm committed to the idea I go all the way, 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:25.399 been burning here and all night. So both of these 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:27.120 play into what we're gonna talk about today, which is, 0:01:27.160 --> 0:01:31.160 of course Frankenstein's Monster or Frank's monsters as you like 0:01:31.240 --> 0:01:33.959 to call yeah, yeah, or some people just call the 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:37.840 monster Frankenstein. And and that's technically incorrect, but it's it's 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:40.039 been used to such an extent it's it's almost to 0:01:40.040 --> 0:01:44.720 the point where it's okay to call the Frankenstein's Monster Frankenstein. Uh. Well, 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:48.000 and I think it's actually quite reasonable given that it 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:51.840 was this, this creature and made in Frankenstein's image sort 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:54.160 of burned man's image. Yeah yeah, and he never actually 0:01:54.240 --> 0:01:57.320 names it. I mean it's uh, you know, the demon, 0:01:57.360 --> 0:02:00.760 the creature and occasionally some more wordy to descriptions that 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:04.560 because it's a it's a rather poetic novel. The original 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:09.400 the original book Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus by Mary 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:13.200 Shelley eighteen. It's never been out of print, and uh, 0:02:13.240 --> 0:02:15.160 if you haven't read it. If you have not read 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:17.680 this book, I I highly recommend you giving it a read. 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:20.960 It can be a little wordy at times, but it's 0:02:21.080 --> 0:02:25.239 it's just really great. Uh that like Frankenstein, the Man 0:02:25.639 --> 0:02:28.840 is uh, you know, it's very philosophical about everything, and 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:30.120 he's putting a lot of thought into this in the 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:32.840 in the monster is very intelligent as well, and it 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.800 engages in a lot of a lot of deep ponderings 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:39.400 about his own life and his purpose and what has 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:41.639 happened to him and all this misery that has has 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:44.000 befallen him in the state of mankind. I mean, it's 0:02:44.000 --> 0:02:47.120 a it's an intelligent novel. Well the ways that the 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:51.240 movies really rarely are able to capture. Well, the movies 0:02:51.280 --> 0:02:54.480 are more like fire fire scared, right, and and this 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:55.959 is more like, hey, let me tell you about my 0:02:56.000 --> 0:03:00.200 existincial angst as a creature that was abandoned. Yeah, was 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:03.000 created by a man and by an imperfect man, and 0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:06.280 abandoned on an imperfect world. And over the past month 0:03:06.760 --> 0:03:09.200 I was asked by How Stuff Works to write an 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:12.000 article how Frankenstein's Monster works. And I set out to 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:13.840 write it, and uh, you know, I could have just 0:03:13.880 --> 0:03:17.639 written a whole regigitation of the normal. Hey, there was 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:19.639 this lady Mary Shelley and she got scared in a 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:22.200 lightning storm and was in a story writing contest, and 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:25.359 then she wrote this, and then these people played Frankenstein 0:03:25.400 --> 0:03:27.400 in the movie. And that's all well and good. All 0:03:27.440 --> 0:03:30.000 the I mean, the the story of the novel and 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:32.440 the and the the pop culture significance of the of 0:03:32.560 --> 0:03:35.560 the book and the idea is really cool and uh 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:37.040 and I can read it all day, and there are 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:39.240 plenty places on the internet already to read about it 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:41.960 all day. But I was really more interested in the 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:45.640 idea of Frankenstein's monster in our culture is this idea 0:03:45.720 --> 0:03:48.480 that we can create life, that we can we can 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:50.680 take and not just create life in the way that 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:53.720 humans create life every day through approcreation, but the idea 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:57.400 that I can use my wisdom and my intelligence and 0:03:57.840 --> 0:04:00.320 with one hand sort of flip off God and with 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:02.360 the other one make a little man that will walk 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:04.000 around and do what I tell it to. Well, in 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:07.400 this idea, too, that we perhaps just haven't discovered the 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:10.440 right element or the right thing, or the right piece 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:14.320 of knowledge to transcend our own humanness right into to 0:04:14.440 --> 0:04:18.159 make a better version of ourselves. Yeah. And this the 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:21.479 idea too, has been around forever. I mean it. I 0:04:21.480 --> 0:04:25.839 mean it goes back to just our basic like cognitive abilities. Uh, 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:29.600 to look at an object and imagine it alive. The 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:33.960 idea to anthropomorphize things and to and to personify even 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:36.359 like aspects of nature. You know, you have like the 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:39.440 Greek myth of Pygmalion, the sculpture that is awakened by 0:04:39.440 --> 0:04:42.680 the god Venus and turned into an actual lady and uh. 0:04:42.680 --> 0:04:45.039 And you also have one of my favorite ideas, the 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:47.960 golem or and I found this interesting that you can 0:04:48.000 --> 0:04:50.120 also since this is a Jewish idea, it can be 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:54.120 pronounced golm um, which is, I guess more in keeping 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:57.360 with the Hebrew. And the most famous version of this 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:00.520 was the Golem of of Prague, which is it is 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:03.200 a medieval myth and it eventually found its way into 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:06.120 new life in the ninet novel Drek Golem. In this 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:10.880 particular story, you have this guy, Rabbi Judah Low bin Besabel, 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:13.320 and he's an expert in the use of the magical 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:16.800 use of letters to create various magical effects. And these 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:19.000 are almost like incantations, right, I mean you could say 0:05:19.000 --> 0:05:21.000 there are prayers, yeah, and then it gets into the 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:22.800 soul like there's a whole lot of stuff in in 0:05:22.920 --> 0:05:26.599 Judaism and incamalo, the importance of the importance of names, 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:28.800 the importance of letters, and the importance of the name 0:05:28.800 --> 0:05:31.719 of God, right and uh and so I mean you 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:35.160 have things like the Sefer Yasarrah. The Book of Creation, 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:37.800 which is often referred to as a guide to magical 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:40.479 usage by some Western European Jews in the Middle Ages 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:44.520 and in some of the involved various directions for creating 0:05:44.520 --> 0:05:46.479 a goal, on some of which it involved taking the 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:50.240 name of God and rearranging the letters and putting them 0:05:50.240 --> 0:05:53.000 on things and and bringing them to life. But in 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:55.360 the most of the tellings of this particular story of 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:59.640 the Golm of Prague, Besabel creates this clay humanoid because 0:05:59.640 --> 0:06:02.479 gold basically means clot of earth, and he activates it 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:06.480 by placing um. He writes the word a meth meaning 0:06:06.760 --> 0:06:09.440 that's a m E t h meaning truth and reality 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:12.279 on a shim tablet, and he places that under the 0:06:12.320 --> 0:06:14.880 thing's tongue. Then it comes to life. Then he starts 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:17.240 using this golm to ring the bell at the synagogue. 0:06:17.440 --> 0:06:18.719 But the only thing is you have to take the 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:21.400 tablet out of its mouth and turn it off, because 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:23.359 all it knows how to do is ring bells, apparently, 0:06:23.680 --> 0:06:26.360 and he forgets to take it out of the creature's mouth, 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:30.279 and then it just runs wild one night, presumably, ringing 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:33.760 everything in sight like it's a bell. He's harassing people 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:37.400 are getting around. Yeah, it's like when the roomba escapes 0:06:37.520 --> 0:06:39.800 from the living room that you want to vacuum and 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:42.120 you catch it in the bathroom eating the rug. That 0:06:42.200 --> 0:06:44.839 kind of thing. Um. The rabbi has to hunt it down, 0:06:44.920 --> 0:06:47.480 and when he finally gets there, he pulls the little 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:49.760 tablet out from under its tongue, and the word a 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:52.120 myth a m e t t h, which means you know, 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:55.000 life and all uh becomes the word meth m e 0:06:55.080 --> 0:06:57.480 t h which means death and the and the golden 0:06:57.560 --> 0:07:00.960 falls into dust. Um. And then the other tales as well. 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:03.000 There's this one story of a rabbi and the name 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:06.200 of JF and Prussia and he um. He has a 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.000 golem like like the candles in the synagogue, but the 0:07:09.120 --> 0:07:11.840 golem can't really tell what's a candle. H. And what 0:07:12.480 --> 0:07:14.840 a non candle is like it it basically thinks everything 0:07:14.880 --> 0:07:17.280 is a candle, so it lights everything inside on fire. 0:07:17.960 --> 0:07:21.560 So it's the programming doesn't work all that well. And 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:24.520 then there were apparently some stories to where there were 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:26.680 some ethical debates on the use of golems not only 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:29.800 for the use of you know, tasks and chores around 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:32.640 the synagogue, but the use of golems for the purposes 0:07:32.680 --> 0:07:35.720 of of making the required number for the minya, and 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:38.640 which is the the qorum of a ten Jewish adults 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:42.440 required for certain religious observations, which indeed, I would feel 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:43.840 it would be like, all right, you need to tend 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:45.840 people to make this decision, and you're telling me three 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:50.440 of them were made out of clay. That yeah, especially 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:53.960 since we know that the column doesn't really have the 0:07:54.000 --> 0:07:56.680 ability of speech, right right. That's what I thought was 0:07:56.720 --> 0:07:59.880 interesting met this is that the it's predicated on this 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:03.920 notion that only holy men could create this golem, and 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:08.480 yet uh, the golm was going to be completely imperfect 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:10.920 in the shadow of man because the golm was not 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:14.640 created by God, right, And just there's an aside too. 0:08:14.640 --> 0:08:17.400 I find it interesting that they are taking symbols rearranging 0:08:17.400 --> 0:08:22.560 them to create artificial beings, which has a nice parallel 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:27.120 with modern programming and uh an artificial intelligence. Oh yeah, yeh. 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:30.280 We'll get into a little later. I haven't thought about that, 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:32.600 but this ties in well with the The idea of 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:35.280 Frankenstein is the modern Prometheus. I mean, that's right up front, 0:08:35.320 --> 0:08:38.760 that's the subtitle for the book. Prometheus, of course, being 0:08:38.760 --> 0:08:41.800 the titan that retrieves the fire. Uh, takes the fire 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:44.720 from the gods and gives it to humans and is 0:08:44.760 --> 0:08:47.600 then punished by what being lashed to a stone so 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:49.680 that the birds can come in. Yeah, because the ego 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:53.360 that comes and eats the liver, and then unfortunately the 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:56.560 liver grows back. And then this is it's like groundhog Day. 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.680 Every day the same thing happens, just an endless groundhog 0:08:59.760 --> 0:09:02.120 day of the liver doomed to have your liver eating everything. 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:04.280 But he took something that was the gods, the domain 0:09:04.320 --> 0:09:06.959 of the gods, the fire, and he gave it to man. 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:08.920 And then now man has the ability to use this 0:09:09.040 --> 0:09:12.400 fire and build up his civilization with it, and with fire, 0:09:12.440 --> 0:09:15.600 of course, achieve great goods such as staying warm at night, 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:18.520 and great evil like burning cities to the ground, right right. 0:09:18.520 --> 0:09:20.600 And I think it's so interesting to that Greek mythology 0:09:20.640 --> 0:09:23.120 would would focus on this because you really mean, this 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:26.400 was such the turning point for man, right, the discovery 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:28.760 of fire and the power that it had and the 0:09:28.760 --> 0:09:32.360 sustenance that it had. Um that you know, they had 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:35.679 to come up with this uh myth about it that 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:39.400 that uh celebrated it and then also said, uh, but 0:09:39.559 --> 0:09:43.520 with this comes great responsibility, right right, which is another 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:48.200 sort of theme that we see in Frankenstein. Yeah. And 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:49.680 and of course you think of like the way fire 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:52.360 changed everything and how it powered and destroyed, I mean 0:09:52.400 --> 0:09:55.920 the ability to to murder and create, to uh, to 0:09:56.000 --> 0:09:59.000 steal from ts Eliott Uh and uh and one can't 0:09:59.000 --> 0:10:01.080 help me be reminded of trees and centuries I mean 0:10:01.120 --> 0:10:04.199 thousands of years later. Uh. The importance of electricity as well, 0:10:04.760 --> 0:10:07.959 which is suddenly this Promethean fire that comes to us 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:12.960 through technological advancement that has all these great abilities. I mean, 0:10:13.000 --> 0:10:16.680 electricity surrounds us today as the it's it's everywhere, it 0:10:16.720 --> 0:10:19.000 is part of our civilization, is it's it's hard first 0:10:19.000 --> 0:10:21.680 to imagine our modern lives without it. Oh, yeah, I 0:10:21.679 --> 0:10:25.280 can't I can't can't see of a life divorced from electricity, right, 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:27.560 I mean, obviously, so much of the technology that we 0:10:27.600 --> 0:10:30.720 enjoyed today wouldn't even exist. But during Mary Shelley's time, 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:35.200 electricity had really captured the imagination of people, and yet 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:38.360 it was quite feared because it wasn't truly understood, right. 0:10:38.400 --> 0:10:41.439 It was a mysterious property. And I remember seeing reading 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:44.679 accounts to where people were really judgmental about the idea 0:10:44.679 --> 0:10:47.200 of using them for electric chairs, because pretty early on 0:10:47.320 --> 0:10:49.840 people were like, like Edison was like, Hey, this electricity 0:10:49.880 --> 0:10:52.679 is great. Watched me fry this elephant, you know, topsy 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:55.160 things of that nature, and they were like, we could 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:57.920 totally fry prisoners with this. And there were some people 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:01.120 were like, how can you take this holy gift of electricity, 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:04.240 I mean it's too and use it for something horrible 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:08.240 like that, you're really debasing this wonderful thing. Well, what's 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:11.920 interesting about that too, is that Edison was in competition. 0:11:12.160 --> 0:11:14.400 He had a C right, and it was a volta 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:17.360 that had d C the DC current, and so it 0:11:17.400 --> 0:11:19.960 was Edison who was going around saying, Ah, don't fear 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.599 my a C current. It's not as dangerous as the 0:11:22.679 --> 0:11:24.559 DC and I believe they are using the d C current. 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:26.679 I could have it switched around, but I believe they 0:11:26.679 --> 0:11:29.320 are using a d C current on prisoners. And that 0:11:29.440 --> 0:11:31.560 was sort of a scare tactic on his part to 0:11:31.679 --> 0:11:34.360 be like to say to companies, you should really adopt 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:38.800 my my electrical currency rather than this other one. Just 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:40.679 as a side note, but the you know, in the 0:11:40.720 --> 0:11:42.760 previous podcast, we were talking about the way, you know, 0:11:42.800 --> 0:11:46.599 if you're shocked by heaven forbid coming into contact with 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:49.559 a live wire, you fly away from the outlet or 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:52.679 the source of electricity because your muscles are spasming. Well, 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:56.480 this is exactly the response that various scientists at the 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:58.760 day and Mary Sheelow's day, we're looking into the effects 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:01.680 of electricity on dead tissue. Yeah, and it actually became 0:12:01.760 --> 0:12:05.040 sort of a sideshow. Really, this frog's dead, but watchford 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:07.000 happens when I stick alive fire to it? Right right? 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:10.560 Or this prisoner is dead, Look what happened? The prisoners 0:12:10.600 --> 0:12:13.400 decapitated By the way they were doing this that I 0:12:13.400 --> 0:12:16.400 think they were thinking about like science festivals, showing the 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:20.520 public this ability to reanimate a corpse. Yeah, it's like, look, 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:23.520 first we reanimate the frog legs and then they become 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:26.880 delicious all through electricity, right, right, And so people were 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:29.880 of course even more frightened, and they started to think 0:12:29.920 --> 0:12:33.199 that electricity had the ability to to reanimate their loved ones, 0:12:33.240 --> 0:12:34.800 and they were totally weirded out because they were like, 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:41.120 he's right, these frog legs are delicious and they can move. Um. 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:44.040 So Mary Shelley actually knew all about this, by the way, 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:48.480 because it's referenced in the book of Victor Frankenstein. I mean, 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:50.160 it's told like a lot of these older novels. It's 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:53.400 a one character talking about conversations with others, and Victor 0:12:53.679 --> 0:12:56.760 doesn't share the details of how he creates life because 0:12:56.760 --> 0:12:59.280 it's a horrible secret that destroyed his life and and 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:01.960 led to the dead of of everyone he holds dear 0:13:02.000 --> 0:13:04.280 in life. So he's not going to burden anyone else 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.560 with the secret recipe. But he does mention in passing 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:09.800 a few different influences, one of which are these studies 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:13.520 into electricity. Yeah, and I mean, just everybody knows to 0:13:13.600 --> 0:13:18.040 Marie Shelley's father was actually friends with the leading authorities 0:13:18.320 --> 0:13:22.120 of the day on electrical research. So this was these 0:13:22.120 --> 0:13:25.599 were conversations that she was privy to. And also, I 0:13:25.600 --> 0:13:27.760 mean she's nineteen years old, so amazing that she had 0:13:27.760 --> 0:13:29.800 amassed this amount of knowledge and was able to put 0:13:29.840 --> 0:13:33.040 this together and this pastiche of of a story of 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:35.160 this monster. But there you go. I mean, there's the 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:38.720 basis for this idea that we could bring back life. 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:44.319 And in a moment, we're actually going to talk about homunculous. 0:13:44.400 --> 0:13:47.040 Oh yes, we're gonna get into alchemy, one of my favorites, alchemy, 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:50.360 making a tiny little person and what it has to 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:55.560 do with cow guts. Right. Yeah. This podcast is brought 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:58.920 to you by Intel, the sponsors of Tomorrow and the 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:03.280 Discovery Channel. At Intel, we believe curiosity is the spark 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:07.560 which drives innovation. Join us at curiosity dot com and 0:14:07.679 --> 0:14:13.320 explore the answers to life's questions. All right, so we're 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:17.080 back alchemy. Now this is another we're talking about the 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:21.000 the influences that Victor Frankenstein cites in the book, and 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.680 he he starts off really into alchemy and and studying 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:27.520 the writings of various alchemists. Then he gets into the 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:30.880 modern sciences and sort of goes off in that direction. 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.640 So it's eventual creation of this monster of this artificial 0:14:34.720 --> 0:14:38.440 being is kind of a synthesis of modern science and 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:45.680 alchemical ideas. Now, alchemy, if you go back through eighteenth centuries, 0:14:45.680 --> 0:14:49.840 this is essentially a mix of early chemistry and occultism, 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:54.840 So you're crossing empirical research with mystical philosophy. Um. And 0:14:54.880 --> 0:14:56.600 it's kind of Alchemy is kind of a big tent 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:58.840 when you get when you really start analyzing it, because 0:14:58.840 --> 0:15:02.760 they're on one hand, people interested in transmitting metals um. 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:05.720 Right there there are people who are just prospecting essentially 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:07.720 from gold. So some people were citing more on the 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:10.280 get rich quick kind of aspects of alchemy. Some people 0:15:10.280 --> 0:15:13.800 were really more into the occultists or philosophical aspects of it. 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:16.440 And some people were basically chemist in a day when 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:18.880 there's not really there's no chemistry yet. So if you 0:15:18.920 --> 0:15:21.840 are interested in chemical properties, alchemy is where you are. 0:15:21.880 --> 0:15:23.760 It's the only game in town for the most part, 0:15:23.840 --> 0:15:27.320 at least in much of the world. Uh And and 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:30.040 certainly there's some actual scientific achievements that came out of this. 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:33.840 I mentioned reeking of burning urine, which which some of 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:37.600 these uh, these alchemists did because there was a great 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:40.160 deal of interest in urine and in the possibility of 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:44.520 turning it into gold. And seventeenth century German alchemists Hinnig 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:48.200 Brount distilled countless buckets of urine uh in attempt to 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:51.360 turn turn it into gold, and as you might expect, 0:15:51.360 --> 0:15:54.600 the experiment failed to produce results, but it did allow 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:58.600 them to discover the element phosphorus. So you have situations 0:15:58.640 --> 0:16:02.280 like that where even in alchemy, in this study of chemistry, 0:16:02.280 --> 0:16:05.720 people are actually making real discoveries, and as you point 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.280 out before, without the aid of the scientific method, right, 0:16:08.360 --> 0:16:11.200 so it's you know, which obviously would have farreted out 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:13.360 a lot of what was wrong with alchemy, but at 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:15.480 the time it was a great way to try to 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:18.240 interrogate the physical world around you. Right of course, where 0:16:18.280 --> 0:16:21.320 does this get involved with? Like why alchemy and Victor 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:24.240 Frankenstein And a lot of this comes down to the 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:27.640 idea of the homunculous or homunculi and that's the plural. 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:30.840 And this is an idea that's fascinated me for ages, 0:16:30.920 --> 0:16:33.240 just because on one level, what's so grotesque and steeped 0:16:33.240 --> 0:16:37.120 in medieval um nonsense that you know, I can't help 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:38.560 but just fall in love with it. So I was 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:42.840 researching this, researching how to create a homunculous and yes 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:45.480 for myself. Um and and not just in the old 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:48.320 fashioned way of just screwing up your compost heap until 0:16:48.360 --> 0:16:51.600 it comes alive. M though that's also involved in this. 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:55.160 You know, the early idea that when material rots, it 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:58.240 turns an insect like that's a basic misunderstanding of how 0:16:59.360 --> 0:17:03.080 organic works. And so a lot of these alchemical ideas 0:17:03.160 --> 0:17:06.480 of how to create life stem from misunderstandings of how 0:17:06.520 --> 0:17:09.399 it works. And this idea that that we basically that 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:12.119 it was within our reach, even in the Middle Ages, 0:17:12.160 --> 0:17:15.399 to understand it and control it. So the idea of 0:17:15.400 --> 0:17:18.280 the homunculus is basically basically comes down to I can 0:17:18.320 --> 0:17:21.240 grow a little person, not just like an animal. I 0:17:21.280 --> 0:17:23.840 can not only make an animal, because they're also alchemical 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:26.960 um recipes for say, turning a headless cow into a 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:29.480 swarm of beast, which I think I'm going to share 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:32.800 that one on the blogs soon. But but I was. 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:35.520 But but the idea of the monthless is also that 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:39.000 it is a reasoning creature that you're making. It's not 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:41.919 it's maybe not quite a human, but it is like 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:45.440 a little human, like a tesque little humanoid, right, grotesque 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:48.440 little humor, which I think is fascinating because I can 0:17:48.720 --> 0:17:52.119 kind of inhabit that perspective at that time to think like, okay, 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:54.280 this would be possible. Maybe I can't make a full 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:57.439 grown human, but I can make it in miniature, you know, 0:17:57.520 --> 0:17:59.520 sort of like my sea monkeys over here. Yeah. Yeah, 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:01.560 well you know it's it's lost, you know, in these 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:04.879 false concepts of spontaneous generation, like we said, magical tomfoolery, 0:18:05.720 --> 0:18:08.639 but they're basically pondering the possibility of creating an artificial 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:14.240 quote rational animal unquote through uh learned manipulation of organic tissue. Okay, 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:16.760 so what is that organic tissue? Because that's that's where 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:20.520 it becomes a little cringe worthy. Okay, Well, I have 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:23.520 to read part of the recipe because and this comes 0:18:23.560 --> 0:18:26.359 from the Book of the Cow, which is which the 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:30.280 what I guess this is French is the Liberva I 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:32.840 think it might be Latin Latin. I'm sorry, yeah, but 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:35.680 it's the Book of the Cow because the cow factors 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:39.399 prominently into these, uh these recipes. And so I'm just 0:18:39.440 --> 0:18:43.359 gonna read a little here until Julie stops me. Um. 0:18:43.400 --> 0:18:45.119 But it goes a little something like this, and and 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:50.600 this is from Mike vander Luke's abdominal mixtures the Libertvaca 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:54.200 in the Medieval West, or the Dangers and Attractions of 0:18:54.280 --> 0:18:58.400 Natural Magic, he writes, then describing the recipe in the book. 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:01.840 With the mixture of sperm and sunstone, the magician inseminates 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:04.240 a cow, or are you. He then carefully plugs up 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:07.439 its vagina with the sunstone and smears its genitals with 0:19:07.520 --> 0:19:10.240 the blood of the animal that was not chosen for insemination. 0:19:10.560 --> 0:19:12.359 Then the cow that you must be placed in a 0:19:12.440 --> 0:19:14.720 dark house in which the sun never shines. Its food 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:17.080 must be mixed with the blood of other animals. While 0:19:17.080 --> 0:19:20.000 awaiting the moment of birth, the magician prepares a powder 0:19:20.040 --> 0:19:24.440 made of the ground sunstone, sulfur, magnet, and green tutilla 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:28.200 stirred with the sap of the white willow. The unformed 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:30.800 substance to which the you or the cow gives birth 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:33.600 must be placed in this powder, whereupon it will instantly 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:36.640 grow a human skin. The newborn homoculous must be kept 0:19:36.640 --> 0:19:39.080 in a large glass or lead vessel for three days 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:41.359 until it is very hungry. Then it is fed on 0:19:41.400 --> 0:19:44.200 its decapitated mother's blood for seven days until it is 0:19:44.240 --> 0:19:47.520 developed into a complete animal, it can henceforth be used 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:51.120 to perform certain feats. Um. All right, I'm just gonna 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:54.560 go and stop a whole another paragraph of just because 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:56.520 it gets down. Once you've created it, you like put 0:19:56.560 --> 0:19:59.200 it into this this other vat and you grow it 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:01.880 a little more, and then you can you can kill 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:03.960 it and like spirits guts on your shoes and you 0:20:04.000 --> 0:20:06.760 can walk on water. But the crazy thing is here 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:10.760 is aside I think being the original recipe for hagus. 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:14.800 It completely reminds me of of when we've talked about 0:20:14.880 --> 0:20:21.320 growing tissue before and scaffolding um tissue. I mean that's 0:20:21.359 --> 0:20:23.440 not to say that you know this, this modern day 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:27.680 technology is based on alchemy, but it's interesting that that 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:30.679 idea it's very similar to what we are now doing 0:20:30.680 --> 0:20:32.720 because we have the technology, right. Yeah, all of this 0:20:32.920 --> 0:20:34.960 was based in the idea of the humans could mimic 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:38.719 and manipulate natural reproductive processes. I mean, especially they were 0:20:38.760 --> 0:20:42.000 really confident about insects. They were like, insects, that's easy, 0:20:42.040 --> 0:20:44.640 I can I can make bees all day and uh 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:47.920 and and and then that the greater idea was that, yeah, 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:49.960