AoK 2 : Natural Sciences –ALYSSA WOOTTEN

What 'picture' of the natural sciences do you get from your chosen text?

The text I have gathered a reaction to is ‘Madness or Genius?’, a list of the most bizarre tests ever conducted in name of scientific inquiry. My first reaction was pretty much, wow people can really be genuinely repulsive and do horrible, completely UNESSESARY things in the name of ‘scientific enquiry’. The picture that I’m given is a bunch of scientists in geeky jackets doing stupid things with drugs and such. I strongly disapprove of what they did, causing cruelty to animals and sometimes even to themselves (in the case of swallowing VOMIT). It just sounds and seems stupid. I also find it disgusting that when Vladimir Demikhov (1954) created a dog with two heads, and as if that isn’t bad enough, then the dog(s) are referred to as a ‘creation’, not a living being. When I read this I felt really remorseful for the animal(s), and then I read on to discover it was done 19 more times over the next fifteen years, with the longest lived lasting a month, suffering for an entire month. Good on the Sovient Union for dismissing it. Another experiment I found rather dumb – was by Robert Cornish at the university of California in the 1930s, where he attempted to bring dead animals back to life by tilting them up and down on a see saw. To be honest I found this rather (VERY) out of the ordinary when I first read it, it just seems so bizarre and in our days, right now if someone was to do what he did I would say they would probably get sent to a mental institution to be helped. Most of these experiments are being told to us in this magazine which complied the list together, to show us how science has progressed, and what exactly it has progressed FROM, and the different forms it comes and goes n. This ‘picture’ doesn’t really match my experiences and understandings of natural science. I think this because I didn’t really consider these sorts of experiments being done; I saw it more of a getting dirt and analysing it kind of science. So I was DEF. surprised!