• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.2
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• pp.305-325
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• 2012

It is by the mad scientists that the ontological and epistemological turn was made in that scientific era. They achieved a scientific revolution although they were regarded as eccentric, comic, unsound, and evil ones in the dark and dismal labs. Likewise, a scientist who would like to create an anomaly, something novel and abnormal, tended to be considered mad and treated as such either because of his scientific theory which differed from those of other scientists or because his obstinate methodology was often blamed for its immorality and profaneness. Despite the fanciful purpose and the anomalous way in which the mad scientists did their experiments, these were attempts to explore new scientific terrain and find something new or unexpected, which often raised controversies between the old paradigm and the new one. As Thomas Kuhn manifests, subsequently, "an older paradigm is replaced in whole or in part by an incompatible new one" and then, "there must be a conflict between the paradigm that discloses anomaly and the one that later renders the anomaly lawlike." In that sense, Frankenstein's, Jekyll's, and Moreau's eerie challenges can be interpreted as efforts to achieve the ambitious goal of solving the scientific mysteries of the world in such unfavorable environmental conditions as specified in the three novels.