Life's Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos by Peter M. Hoffmann
Authors: Peter M. Hoffmann
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force responsible for the motion of muscles as it traveled along the nervous system. Unfortunately, what these experiments really inspired (much helped by Shelley’s novel) was the idea of the overreaching, mad scientist—a figure that has since dominated much of the public’s imagination.
I had not read Shelley’s book until I started writing this book (although I was familiar with several movie versions, including the classic with Boris Karloff as the monster) and was surprised to find that Shelley never mentioned exactly how Dr. Frankenstein vitalized his creation. Shelley’s hero deliberately keeps the reader in the dark, supposedly to prevent a repeat of the tragedy about to unfold: “I see by your eagerness and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with which I am acquainted,” explains Frankenstein in the novel, “that cannot be; listen patiently until the end of my story, and you will easily perceive why I am reserved on that subject.” The giant switches and the lightning storm seen in various movie versions are all inventions of Hollywood, but it is clear that the studies of irritability, which were in the news in the early 1800s, provided the inspiration for Shelley’s iconic novel.
Ever since its discovery by the Greeks ( electron means “amber” in Greek, and amber generates static electricity when rubbed), electricitywas considered a mysterious force and a subtle fluid. Such a mysterious force had to have some connection to the great mystery of life. Even Newton had suggested that electricity was responsible for animal motion. In the second edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica , he speculated that the “subtle spirit” of electricity, transmitted through the nerves, “stimulated sensations” and “moved limbs.”
Who was the inspiration for Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein? With animal electricity as the scientific object du jour, there were many candidates for this rather ignoble honor. Aldini, who passed large currents through the limbs of recently hanged criminals in front of large London crowds—to horrific effect—was certainly one of them. Another was Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776–1810), a German scientist who preferred to apply the large currents to himself instead. Applied to his eyes, they made him see red and blue flashes, depending on which electric pole he had connected to his eyeball. Ritter died at a young age of unknown causes—but repeatedly electrocuting oneself cannot be too healthy.
The Conservation of Force—Or How Vitalism Was Vanquished by a Frog Leg
Although the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century had become the age of teleomechanists and vitalists, by the mid-nineteenth century, mechanism had again gained the upper hand. This return to mechanistic explanations was mainly the work of two men: the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882), who destroyed teleology, and the German physiologist and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894), who vanquished the vital force.
Helmholtz was one of the last truly universal scientists. He made significant contributions to medicine, biology, and physics, in areas as diverse as heat in animals, irritability, the vital force, thermodynamics, electro dynamics, the conservation of energy, turbulence in liquids, and the physiology of the senses. His insights were groundbreaking, and most have withstood the test of time. He also invented several new experimental apparatuses, including the ophthalmoscope, the special microscope eye doctors point at your eyes to check the retina. His broad knowledge allowed him to make novel connections between different sciences. He could look at a system as complexas living tissue and determine the one parameter that linked it to the inanimate, mechanical world. He decided that this parameter was energy.
Physicists of the more arrogant sort often think that the interactions between physics and
I had not read Shelley’s book until I started writing this book (although I was familiar with several movie versions, including the classic with Boris Karloff as the monster) and was surprised to find that Shelley never mentioned exactly how Dr. Frankenstein vitalized his creation. Shelley’s hero deliberately keeps the reader in the dark, supposedly to prevent a repeat of the tragedy about to unfold: “I see by your eagerness and the wonder and hope which your eyes express, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with which I am acquainted,” explains Frankenstein in the novel, “that cannot be; listen patiently until the end of my story, and you will easily perceive why I am reserved on that subject.” The giant switches and the lightning storm seen in various movie versions are all inventions of Hollywood, but it is clear that the studies of irritability, which were in the news in the early 1800s, provided the inspiration for Shelley’s iconic novel.
Ever since its discovery by the Greeks ( electron means “amber” in Greek, and amber generates static electricity when rubbed), electricitywas considered a mysterious force and a subtle fluid. Such a mysterious force had to have some connection to the great mystery of life. Even Newton had suggested that electricity was responsible for animal motion. In the second edition of Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica , he speculated that the “subtle spirit” of electricity, transmitted through the nerves, “stimulated sensations” and “moved limbs.”
Who was the inspiration for Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein? With animal electricity as the scientific object du jour, there were many candidates for this rather ignoble honor. Aldini, who passed large currents through the limbs of recently hanged criminals in front of large London crowds—to horrific effect—was certainly one of them. Another was Johann Wilhelm Ritter (1776–1810), a German scientist who preferred to apply the large currents to himself instead. Applied to his eyes, they made him see red and blue flashes, depending on which electric pole he had connected to his eyeball. Ritter died at a young age of unknown causes—but repeatedly electrocuting oneself cannot be too healthy.
The Conservation of Force—Or How Vitalism Was Vanquished by a Frog Leg
Although the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century had become the age of teleomechanists and vitalists, by the mid-nineteenth century, mechanism had again gained the upper hand. This return to mechanistic explanations was mainly the work of two men: the English naturalist Charles Darwin (1809–1882), who destroyed teleology, and the German physiologist and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894), who vanquished the vital force.
Helmholtz was one of the last truly universal scientists. He made significant contributions to medicine, biology, and physics, in areas as diverse as heat in animals, irritability, the vital force, thermodynamics, electro dynamics, the conservation of energy, turbulence in liquids, and the physiology of the senses. His insights were groundbreaking, and most have withstood the test of time. He also invented several new experimental apparatuses, including the ophthalmoscope, the special microscope eye doctors point at your eyes to check the retina. His broad knowledge allowed him to make novel connections between different sciences. He could look at a system as complexas living tissue and determine the one parameter that linked it to the inanimate, mechanical world. He decided that this parameter was energy.
Physicists of the more arrogant sort often think that the interactions between physics and
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