In 1893, H. G. Wells's article Man of Year Million dramatically predicted distant evolutionary future of mankind:1The descendents of man will nourish themselves by immersion in nutritive fluid. They will have enormous brains, liquid, soulful eyes, and large hands, on which they will hop. No craggy nose will they have, no vestigial ears; their mouths will be a small, perfectly round aperture, unanimal, like evening star. Their whole muscular system will be shriveled to nothing, a dangling pendant to their minds.2The editors at Punch evidently found this prediction hilarious, publishing a poem and accompanying sketch ridiculing Wells's lopsided future humans (Figure 1, p. 318). But not everyone was laughing.As ridiculous as Wells's bodiless, large-headed human tadpoles may seem, they were based on most rigorous evolutionary science of their day. Wells, a lower-middle-class academic prodigy, received a prestigious government scholarship to attend Normal School of Science in South Kensington (later absorbed into University of London). Though Wells left South Kensington in 1887 without earning his degree, he was greatly inspired by his biology teacher, famed physiologist Thomas Huxley. Wells absorbed Huxley's pessimistic take on late-Victorian evolutionary theory, particularly his emphasis on inherent brutality of natural selection.Huxley's pessimism surfaces in Wells's dystopian scientific romances, which imaginatively probe consequences of evolutionary theory run amok.3 Beginning with eponymous mad-scientist villain of The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) and continuing with alien invasion narratives like The War of Worlds (1897-98) and The First Men in Moon (1901), Wells depicts brains becoming steadily larger and more powerful as bodies grow smaller and more useless, emotions increasingly muted, and conscience all but silenced. Wells's nightmarish vision of massively overevolved brain unites these three works, as ruthlessly intellectual biologist Moreau morphs into amoral, top-heavy Martians and lunar inhabitants.Wells's malevolent mad scientists and extraterrestrials owe an intellectual debt not only to Huxley, but also to discussions of genius and insanity in late-Victorian issues of Mind (1876-present).4 The now-familiar trope of mad scientist in fact traces its roots to clinical association between genius and insanity that developed in mid-nineteenth century. Authors like Scottish journalist and materialist philosopher John Ferguson Nisbet, English eugenicist Francis Galton, and Austrian Jewish physician Max Nordau - all of whose works were reviewed in Mind - argued that mankind had evolved larger brains at expense of muscular strength, reproductive capacity, and moral sensibility.5 Wells drew upon these arguments in his fiction and even contributed his own article to Mind, a philosophical reflection on science entitled Scepticism of Instrument (1904).In its unique role as the first English journal devoted to Psychology and Philosophy. Mind was an ideal venue for an inherently interdisciplinary subject like clinical study of genius.6 The journal's first editor, George Croom Robertson, was particularly concerned that articles in Mind rise above narrowing influences of modern specialism.7 This disciplinary breadth attracted contributors from all fields, including fiction writers and literary critics like George Henry Lewes, Grant Allen, Andrew Lang, and, of course, H.G. Wells. During same period, literary works probed ideas discussed in Mind, such as nature of soul, possibility of free will, and ramifications of biological determinism. In four decades following its auspicious start, Mind provided a venue where scientists, philosophers and literary authors could find intellectual common ground.In this essay, early fiction of H.G. Wells will serve as a case study of cross-fertilization between literature and scientific ideas discussed in Mind. …
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Nov 20, 2009
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