European Review, Vol. 26, No.

2, 330–343 © 2018 Academia Europæa

doi:10.1017/S1062798717000710

Scientific Prometheanism and the

Boundaries of Knowledge:
Whither Goes AI?

TIANHU HAO
Department of English, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.
Email: haotianhu@zju.edu.cn

This article discusses John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the
contemporary film Ex Machina as a coherent group concerning the boundaries of
knowledge and the perils of scientific Prometheanism. The development of AI (Artificial
Intelligence) should be delimited and contained, if not curtailed or banned, and scientists
ought to proceed in a responsible and cautious manner. An obsessive or excessive
pursuit of knowledge, aiming to equal God and create humanoid beings, constitutes the
essential feature of scientific Prometheanism, which can end in catastrophic destruction.
Both Frankenstein and Ex Machina stringently critique scientific Prometheanism as one
aspect of modernity, and expose the real dangers that AIs pose to the very existence
of humanity and civilization. In Paradise Lost, Milton provides the epistemological
framework for Frankenstein and Ex Machina. The article concludes that the union of
science and arts in science fiction (films) can be very productive.

Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor
to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world. (Mary Shelley1)

The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.
Once humans develop artificial intelligence, it will take off on its own and redesign
itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolu-
tion, couldn’t compete and would be superseded. (Stephen Hawking2)

At the end of a recent critically acclaimed film on AI, Ex Machina (2015, written
and directed by Alex Garland), the heroine Ava (played by Alicia Vikander) manages
to leave the enclosed space of Nathan’s (Oscar Isaac) laboratory and glides into the
human throng at a city crossroads. She looks perfectly human, a standard beauty.
The crowd walks and talks, passing by, entirely unaware of the critical addition
of an alien creature among them and the impending perils that may ensue in view of
Ava’s relentless treatment of her creator Nathan (killed) and her ‘friend’ Caleb

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 Scientific Prometheanism and the Boundaries of Knowledge 331

(trapped; Domhnall Gleeson). Thus ends the film, casting in the mind of the absorbed
audience a big question mark: what will happen next? Ava manifests the possession of
human-like consciousness in the Turing test. Will this strong AI normalize
and assimilate herself into the human race, or will she give free rein to her secret
ambition and jeopardize the very existence of humanity, as she has just done in the
laboratory with Nathan and Caleb, together with another AI, Kyoko (Sonoya
Mizuno), Nathan’s until then dutiful servant, agile dancer, and mute sex slave? Can
we assume that Ava or any other strong AI is benevolent in nature and always
friendly to humans? Since the film is based on Mary Shelley’s prophetic novel
Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, 1831),3 what occurs after Ava
escapes from the laboratory may be found in Frankenstein, which narrates at
length the story of the Monster’s failed attempt to join human society. Frankenstein,
in its turn, was heavily influenced by John Milton’s masterpiece Paradise Lost
(1667, 1674).4
The three works – the epic, the novel, and the film – stretch across several centuries,
yet taken together, they make a single emphatic statement about the serious problems
of scientific Prometheanism and the proper boundaries of human knowledge. AI
represents the most advanced form of the progress of human knowledge; the ethics
or ‘human values’ of science dictates that the development of AI must be delimited
and contained, if not curtailed or banned, and that scientists ought to proceed in a
responsible and cautious manner. Pure science, as a Kantian ‘disinterested pursuit of
truth’, is ‘an end in itself, like art’, and pure scientists ‘regard it as a means only to the
highest interests of humanity’. This is basically what Herbert J. Muller means by the
‘human values of science’.5 Intellectual freedom is no excuse for scientists to abdicate
their own responsibility for the higher interests of humankind. In a Christian huma-
nist context, John Milton maintains through his mouthpiece, Raphael, that in the
human acquisition of knowledge, as in many other things, temperance is a paramount
virtue. With the counter-examples of Frankenstein and Nathan as mad scientists or
‘Faustian overreachers’, humans should beware of the dangers and limits of knowl-
edge and sail the ocean of knowledge by following the guidance of humility rather
than that of pride.6 The universality of Milton’s epic empowers the novel’s and the
film’s critique of scientific Prometheanism as an element of modernity. By arguing
against scientific Prometheanism, this article insists on the value of carbon-based
human existence and rejects the grim prospect of human extinction, to be replaced by
silicon-based AIs.

What Happens Next?

The intricate intertextuality of the three works (along with Genesis in the
background) is embodied and encoded in nomenclature. Nomen est omen. The
heroine of Ex Machina is named Ava, not only after Eve (in Genesis and in Milton),
which reads identically backward and forward (Nathan reads almost the same way),
but also because the director’s and the actress’s first names both start with A, and the
letter a, the first in the alphabet and the one opening AI (Artificial Intelligence), with

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 332 Tianhu Hao

the suggestion of Ava’s avant-gardeness as an AI, appears most frequently in the

two’s names (Alex Garland; Alicia Vikander). The choice of the letter v represents the
pernicious victory of AI and coincides with the actress’s surname initial; the letter is
also reminiscent of Frankenstein’s first name Victor, which is sometimes the devil’s
epithet for God the Father in Paradise Lost (e.g. 1.169).7 Thus, the careful naming of
the heroine in Ex Machina skillfully links the theme of the film, AI, the film itself, and
its literary predecessors, including Genesis, Paradise Lost and Frankenstein. The
Chinese mistranslation of the seven sessions in Ex Machina as seven ‘days’ enhances
the film’s relation with Genesis by making Nathan the scientist’s creation of AIs more
closely parallel God’s work of creating the world and humans. The Latin title,
Ex Machina, taken from the classical dramatic technique deus ex machina, with the
significant omission of the familiar deus (god), shows the absence of the traditional
god and the dominance of the machine in the modern technological culture. The word
machine(s) appears twice in the 1818 edition of Frankenstein: ‘He [my father]
constructed a small electrical machine’; ‘[Waldman] explained to me the uses of his
various machines’.8 The machine, the devilishly invented engine, or power-craving
art, is associated with evil in the war in Heaven in Paradise Lost, while the good
angels fight back with upturned hills and mountains, part of Nature (6.644–658).9
Nathan the boss-scientist displaces God, but he is killed by the machines he creates.
Hence the destined disappearance of deus. In the modern, disenchanted world, the
dues of deus are to die and disappear.
The name Caleb is taken from Mary Shelley’s father’s (William Godwin’s) novel
Caleb Williams (1794). According to Harold Bloom, the daughter’s narration of the
creator’s pursuit of his creature, and her destructive theme of the monster’s revenge
upon human society, carry the impact of her father’s work.10 The Orientalism
contained in the wordless sex slave Kyoko’s name, which is Japanese in origin, is
consistent with the light touches of Eurocentric Orientalism in Paradise Lost and
Frankenstein: in the epic, the ‘gorgeous East’ (2.3) is regularly associated with the
rebel devils and paganism, and in the novel, Safie’s father, a Turkish merchant, is
sentenced to death for his ‘religion and wealth, rather than the crime alleged
against him’ (122), and the ‘slothful Asiatics’ are stereotypically contrasted with the
‘stupendous genius’ of the Grecians (substitute Nathan here) and the ‘wonderful
virtue’ of the early Romans (119). Therefore, the scientific Prometheanism in
Ex Machina is Eurocentric in nature and commends scientific progress at the expense
of the East; the Orientalism of the film continues an old tradition in Western culture.
The beauty of Kyoko, like the sweetness of Safie the Arabian, serves as a mere
decoration to glorify the Westerner’s scientific experiment, although the representa-
tion in Frankenstein is more nuanced, with more sympathy lavished on the lovely
Safie, who could be an image of the author herself.11 Thus, the four major characters’
names in Ex Machina – Ava, Nathan, Caleb, and Kyoko – all connect the film, in one
way or another, with its predecessor texts: Genesis, Paradise Lost, and Frankenstein.
This fact justifies my juxtaposition of the four texts.
Just as Eve is a first-rate poet in Paradise Lost, the young Mary Shelley proved
herself to be a gifted novelist and initiated the modern genre of science fiction with her

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 Scientific Prometheanism and the Boundaries of Knowledge 333

debut novel Frankenstein.12 Mary Shelley established her identity with her pen, even
though the first edition of her masterpiece was published anonymously in 1818
and generally thought to be Percy Shelley’s work. Her character of the Monster,
commonly confused with his creator Frankenstein, marks Mary Shelley’s original
and enduring contribution to English and world literature and to modern culture,
particularly popular culture. The Monster has been designed to be ‘beautiful’ (57) but
looks repulsive and frightful when finished, while Milton’s Satan is assessed by
Baudelaire to be ‘the most perfect type of virile beauty’, and Ava and Kyoko are both
sexy and beauteous.13 In spite of, or precisely because of, their physical attractiveness,
the two AIs from Ex Machina are much more deceptive than the Monster, who is
actually eager to win human acceptance and companionship. The Monster’s
deformed and dreadful appearance sets off his susceptible and even tender heart,
or at least so at the initial stage. Frankenstein’s AI is a social animal endowed with
human-like emotions: he feels, for instance, compassion for the cottagers’ lack of
food. The tension between the Monster’s outward and inward qualities registers
Mary Shelley’s anxiety about the potential evils of bad science and also signals her
ideal of the eighteenth-century man of feeling, as Anne K. Mellor has brilliantly
demonstrated (Ref. 12, pp. 89, 108–109).
The Monster’s eventual fate as a social outcast and a cruel murderer, and Victor’s
death after confession and repentance, speak out against scientific hubris, while
Mary Shelley’s man-of-feeling ideal is embodied in Walton’s wise decision to
abandon his scientific project of exploration and return home. The prospective
homeward journey, together with Walton’s newly found friendship with Victor
(though soon lost), gives hope and warmth to the reader, who feels icy cold and
ghastly horror while reading. Walton, as Victor’s double (note the initials of the two),
will fulfill his friend’s unfinished mission of healing and recovering. Domestic affec-
tions and human bonds are the novelist’s weapon to counter-balance and fight against
the alienating effects of the overly enthusiastic scientist’s rationalistic obsession.
Frankenstein’s AI studies hard to learn to speak, read and write. He is not illiterate
or uneducated, but self-educated. He learns French from the De Lacey family and in
this advances even more rapidly than Safie (118). He also learns the science of letters
and reads four books: Milton’s Paradise Lost, Plutarch’s Lives, Goethe’s Sorrows of
Young Werter and Frankenstein’s journal (Ch. 15). The first three were among Mary
Shelley’s favorites. The avid reader is in a more favorable position than Adam or Eve
in Eden, who had no books besides the book of nature. The Monster’s liberal reading
cultivates his affections and feelings, and increases his knowledge and self-knowledge,
which is very important for his development as a civilized being. From his self-
imposed study program the enlightened Monster has gained various kinds of
knowledge: of good and evil, of human life, of the world, etc. Contemplating his
reflection in a transparent pool makes him aware of his monstrous appearance in
a Narcissus- or Eve-like moment (114), and the sympathetic reading of Paradise Lost
as ‘a true history’ (129) assists his self-definition: ‘I ought to be thy Adam; but I am
rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed’ (100), as he
complains to his creator. With human acceptance, the seeming Monster might well

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 334 Tianhu Hao

become a good citizen. Even after the destruction of Victor, the Monster reveals
himself capable of domestic affections: ‘Still I desired love and friendship, and I was
still spurned’ (221). The fiend’s show of and desire for love, companionship, and
other human emotions is consistent throughout the novel (108, 110, 111, 119, 129,
140, 145, 147, 221, etc.).
His creator acknowledges the Monster to be ‘a creature of fine sensations’ (146). In
fact, the Monster appears to be more human than his creator (Ref. 10, pp. 3–4; Ref. 7,
p. 197). As the creature himself states, ‘I was benevolent and good; misery made me a
fiend’ (100). This might be the case, yet misery and solitude do not necessarily result in
fiendship; great achievements may also grow out of solitude and misery, the historian
Sima Qian being a salient example. Therefore, the Monster’s self-defense may be
interpreted as an excuse. He is intelligent like Adam, sly like Satan, and powerful like
a superhuman. His persistent efforts towards humanizing and civilizing are sincere,
but his fate seems to be sealed by his native ‘unearthly ugliness’ (99), which is
arguably symbolic of the nature of his creator’s single-minded scientific endeavor.
The self-alienated scientist harbors a monster within; like God he creates his creature
in his own image. The Monster he creates deliberately and then spurns irresponsibly is
in fact his alter-ego, the materialization of his internal state.
The old blind father in the cottage is willing to lend a hand, for he cannot see, but
his children are no different from anyone else in their instinctive response to the
Monster’s – variously called ‘miserable Monster’, ‘frightful fiend’, ‘depraved wretch’,
‘vile insect’, ‘filthy mass’, ‘dæmon’, ‘devil’, etc. (58, 59, 77, 99, 147, 85, 99) – hideous
form. Blinded by the loathsome figure, mortal sight cannot perceive the creature’s
potential goodness. The limitations of the human senses are apparent here, for
the perception of human features is something ‘secondary’ that is dependent upon the
human senses, while the Monster’s abnormal height of eight feet (54), a pure
mathematical fact and a ‘primary’ quality in John Locke’s distinction, is simply
appalling (Ref. 5, p. 39). Callous and biased, society is partly responsible for the
Monster’s fall.14 Constant frustrations and repeated failures gradually harden
the Monster’s heart. His saving a girl’s life is rewarded with a gunshot. From then on
he vows ‘eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind’ (141). He murders in succes-
sion William, Justine, Henry Clerval, and Elizabeth Lavenza, all of whom are family
or friends of Victor. The mutated Monster’s diabolical cruelty and snaky wiliness
place him squarely in the gang of demons and devils. In Paradise Lost, when Adam
asks for a companion, God tests Adam’s good sense through a dialogue concerning
solitude and fit society (8.354–451). After Frankenstein’s similar request for a female
companion, Victor usurps God’s role of creator. Although distancing itself from
a Christian context, the fiction nonetheless repeatedly stresses Frankenstein’s
‘unhallowed arts/acts/wretch’ (9, 89, 185, 222) (Ref. 14, p. 216).15
Thus, the Monster’s disastrous flight from his creator’s laboratory results in
multiple deaths and an aborted marriage. The triumphant creation turns out to be a
catastrophe. The Monster’s painful and harmful experience after his flight from the
laboratory testifies to the extreme difficulty for AIs to integrate themselves
into human society and the severe damage that AIs may inflict upon humanity.

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 Scientific Prometheanism and the Boundaries of Knowledge 335

The gloomy thriller ends on a note of ‘darkness and distance’ (223). Accordingly, it is to
be expected that the escaped Ava in Ex Machina will also bring darkness and destruc-
tion to humanity. With her fraudulent beauty and seeming friendliness, Ava is even
more treacherous. Robert Walton rightly describes the Monster as a ‘hypocritical fiend’
(220), which would be an apt title also for Ava. According to Milton, hypocrisy, to be
discerned by ‘neither man nor angel’, is ‘the only evil that walks / Invisible, except to
God alone’ (Paradise Lost, 3.682–684). Hypocrisy is the defining mark of Ava as well as
Satan, for the former disguises herself successfully under the scrutiny of Nathan and
Caleb. Ava out of the lab is comparable to Satan out of Hell, with humankind to be
victimized fatally and decisively. Essentially, the modern novel and the contemporary
film convey the same message, i.e. Frankenstein’s ‘apt moral’ (30):
Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the
acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his
native town to be the world… (53)
Farewell, Walton! Seek happiness in tranquility, and avoid ambition, even if it be
only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in science and discoveries.
(217–218)

Frankenstein’s parting message about the perils of knowledge and ambition is especially
timely today, when Alpha Go defeats every human go master in the world and when
Real Doll goes on the market. AI technology is making swift progress, and it is no
exaggeration to say that the crisis of AIs has dawned. The reflective scientist’s emphasis
on the Romantic ‘happiness in tranquility’ and the value of the domestic hearth will
be a potent antidote against the rampant social and professional mania. The angelic
Elizabeth, a living embodiment of the aesthetic ideal of ‘happiness in tranquility’, in
poetic language offers nature as an additional solace: ‘The blue lake, and snow-clad
mountains, they never change;—and I think our placid home, and our contented hearts
are regulated by the same immutable laws’ (64). However, she is murdered by the
Monster on her wedding bed. Frankenstein is subtitled ‘The Modern Prometheus’, and
Nathan in Ex Machina is called ‘Prometheus’. Both works are modern in spirit and
severely critique scientific Prometheanism as a feature of modernity, exposing the real
dangers posed by AIs to the very existence of humanity and civilization. Milton’s
discussion of Prometheanism and of the necessary bounds to knowledge in Paradise
Lost provides the epistemological framework for Frankenstein and Ex Machina.

Milton’s Prometheanism and Scientific Prometheanism

The myth of Prometheus, sometimes regarded as ‘a fundamental myth of Western
culture’, has evolved over centuries, and different people – Hesiod, Aeschylus, Dante,
Milton, Goethe, Mary Shelley, Alex Garland, and many others – appropriate the
malleable figure to their own purpose.16
In the Theogony, Hesiod establishes a hierarchy of Olympian gods, with Zeus
presiding. Fathered by Iapetus the Titan, Prometheus was cousin to Zeus, who was
begotten by Cronos the Titan. Zeus later overthrew his father Cronos and superseded

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 336 Tianhu Hao

him as the supreme god. In a Latin poem ‘In Inventorem Bombardae’ (‘On the
Inventor of Gunpowder’) Milton writes: ‘Iapetionidem laudavit caeca vetustas,/
Qui tulit aetheream solis ab axe facem’ (‘Blind antiquity praised the son of Iapetus,
who brought the heavenly torch from the sun’s chariot’).17 Iapetus had four sons with
Clymene, and one of the sons is Prometheus, or Forethought. Milton links
Prometheus the fire-thief with Satan, the inventor of gunpowder in Paradise Lost
(6.470–506).18 The modern name for the inventor of gunpowder is the chemist, and
Victor Frankenstein is a chemist engaged in the new branch of science called chemical
physiology.19 In this sense he is a ‘modern Prometheus’. According to Hesiod,
Prometheus favored mankind in his division of a sacrificial ox, which enraged Zeus.
Zeus withdrew the gift of fire from man, and the cunning Prometheus stole the spark of
fire in a hollow fennel stalk to succor mankind, who was meant for wholesale
obliteration by the master god. Zeus punished the rebel by chaining Prometheus to the
Caucasus and sending his sacred bird, the eagle, to feed ceaselessly on the liver of
the offender. Zeus also put a curse on man, spreading all ills among humankind
with Pandora’s jar. Pandora in Greek means ‘all gifts’, for all gods participated in her
creation. In Hesiod’s Works and Days, Epimetheus or Afterthought, unmindful of his
brother Prometheus’s advice, married Pandora brought to him by Hermes. The fair lady
opened the jar and released all evils into the world (Ref. 16, pp. 17–18). Milton was
familiar with the story and combined it with the Biblical account, for he depicts Eve as
More lovely than Pandora, whom the Gods
Endowed with all their gifts, and O too like
In sad event, when to the unwiser son
Of Japhet brought by Hermes, she ensnared

Mankind with her fair looks, to be avenged

On him who had stole Jove’s authentic fire. (4.714–719)

The passage equates Iapetus, the father of Prometheus (‘him who had stole Jove’s
authentic fire’) and Epimetheus (‘the unwiser son / Of Japhet’), with Noah’s son Japhet.
Milton unifies Greek and Roman mythology with Biblical history; or rather, the
Biblical authority in poetic guise overshadows the pagan naming. The poet compares
Eve with Pandora – both being the first woman in the world – to the former’s advan-
tage, but the two are ‘too like / In sad event’, thus relegating Eve to the status of another
ensnarer of ‘Mankind with her fair looks’. The line echoes with Adam’s forced choice
to eat the forbidden fruit, ‘Against his better knowledge, not deceived, / But fondly
overcome with female charm’ (9.998–999). Eve’s feminine attractiveness becomes a
snare that causes her husband’s fall. Milton elucidates the same point in his prose tract
The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce by labeling Eve ‘a consummate and most
adorned Pandora’ and Adam ‘our true Epimetheus’ (Ref. 17, p. 892).
In Ex Machina, Caleb’s failure to escape is likewise caused by Ava’s trap of
‘female charm’, which has been tailored for Caleb’s particular taste on the basis of a
collection of powerful search engine data. Big data, big trap. If Ava acts like Pandora,

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 Scientific Prometheanism and the Boundaries of Knowledge 337

then Caleb is the perfect Epimetheus. It is amazing that, faced with the enchanting
chain of Pandora-Eve-Ava, all straight males disarm themselves as ‘the unwiser son’,
leaving the wiser one suffering in tyrannical chains perpetually and vainly. The
distinction is that both Epimetheus and Caleb are fooled by their female partner,
while Adam chooses knowingly. Adam’s choice puts a premium value on domestic
feelings and the ‘bond of nature’ (Paradise Lost, 9.956) in preference to the arbitrary
divine injunction. Victor’s fault lies in his triple violation of the ‘bond of nature’,
for he acts against the human nature of communion and connection, against the
evolutionary law of Dame Nature, and against the proper role of the heavenly
Creator (Ref. 12, pp. 95–102). Nature breaks, and Victor falls, down into the pit
of Hell, never to return. It is fair enough that both he and his creature confess to bear
a burning Hell within them (88, 136) like the arch-fiend (Paradise Lost, 4.75, 9.467).
While Hesiod’s version of Prometheus pyrphoros promotes political orthodoxy
by stressing the point that ‘whoever defies the gods receives severe punishment’,
Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound foregrounds Zeus’s tyrannical role and portrays
Prometheus as a hero and political radical who is ‘noble, bold, and resourceful’
(Ref. 16, pp. 16,18). For Aeschylus, Prometheus is a benefactor of humankind and a
revolutionary against tyranny. Although Aeschylus is considered to be the most
neglected of Greek tragedians in the Renaissance (Ref. 16, p. 37), Milton lists him
along with Sophocles and Euripides as ‘the three tragic poets unequaled yet by any,
and the best rule to all who endeavor to write tragedy’ (Ref. 17, p. 708). Aeschylus’s
Prometheus Bound is a structurally static play, like Milton’s Samson Agonistes,
and Aeschylus’s Prometheus and Milton’s Satan are comparably defiant in spirit
(Ref. 16, pp. 22–23, 76–89).
Unknown to Hesiod or Aeschylus, whose world lacked the Biblical sense of
creation, the story of Prometheus plasticator as creator or recreator of mankind by
animating a clay-made figure was more current among the Romans (Ref. 9, p. 53).
The tradition might have relied on the authority of Aesop, whose fables 100 and 240
credit Prometheus with molding men. By the second or third century AD or so, the
images of Prometheus pyrphoros and Prometheus plasticator were synthesized, with
the significant result that the stolen fire was also the fire of life that Prometheus
breathed into his man of clay. Neoplatonism interpreted Prometheus as the demiurge
or deputy creator. In the visual arts, from the early Christian era through the
Renaissance and right up to the mid-nineteenth century, Prometheus was compared
to Jehovah as creator and to Jesus as crucified savior. Moreover, since the Renais-
sance, Prometheus also served the image of the creative artist (Ref. 1, pp. v–vi;
Ref. 16, pp. 18, 34, 65–67 [Figures 3–5], 172, 173 [Figure 19]). For instance, in ‘Ad
Patrem’ (‘To His Father’) Milton describes the poet’s work as ‘Sancta Prometheae
retinens vestigia flammae’ (‘keeping the sacred traces of Promethean fire’). As a gloss
on the line, Francis Bacon states that ‘Prometheus clearly and expressly signifies
Providence’ (Ref. 17, p. 221).
The third Earl of Shaftesbury was presumably ‘the first English author to
popularize the analogy of the Promethean as poet’ in The Moralists (1709) and Advice
to an Author (1710). Shaftesbury comments on the true poet as ‘indeed a second

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 338 Tianhu Hao

Maker, a just Prometheus, under Jove’. In addition to the image of Prometheus

plasticator, he also supplies the phrase ‘modern Prometheus’s’ who ‘have a strange
Fancy to be Creators’ and who actually deliberate ‘how to make Man, by other
Mediums than Nature has hitherto provided’ with ‘the same breach of Omnipotence’
(Ref. 1, Appendix B, ‘Shaftesbury on Prometheus’, pp. 228–229; Ref. 16, pp. 145,
171). It is a critical commonplace that after the American and French revolutions in
the eighteenth century the myth of Prometheus gained wide currency and central
importance among German and English Romantics, including Goethe, Blake, Byron
and Shelley, who inherited and transformed the idea from Aeschylus, Dante, and
Milton, among others. Byron, for example, affirms that Prometheus cast an ‘influence
over all or any thing that I have written’ (Ref. 16, p. 2). It stands to reason, then, that
the intellectual milieu around her contributed to the shaping of Mary Shelley’s
outlook and inspired her Promethean science fiction.
Mary Shelley’s critique of scientific Prometheanism centers on the nature and use
of knowledge. Knowledge, which is indispensable and inevitable in the postlapsarian
world, occupies an insecure and dubious position between the extremes of ignorance
and wisdom. Hence the problem. ‘Of what a strange nature is knowledge!’ exclaims
the pestered Monster, whose sorrow increases with knowledge (120). The Miltonic
epistemology of knowing good by evil, as expounded in Areopagitica and Paradise
Lost, informs the philosophy of knowledge and the ethics of science in Frankenstein.
In his juvenilia Prolusion 7, Milton distorts the story of Prometheus to present ‘the
wisest of gods and men’ as pursuing learning in his purposeful withdrawal ‘to the lofty
solitude of the Caucasus’ (Ref. 17, p. 794). To this simplistic positive view of learning
the mature Milton adds two points. First, his famous and perplexing denunciation
of Greek learning through the Son in Paradise Regained highlights the priority of
a knowledge of God and divine wisdom, which alone can equip the ‘spirit and
judgment equal or superior’ necessary for a wise reading of books (4.324). The
Son sighs on the ignorance of Greek philosophers, ‘Alas what can they teach, and not
mislead; / Ignorant of themselves, of God much more’ (4.309–310). Therefore, the pursuit
of knowledge ought to be guided by Christian faith, and aim at ‘True wisdom’ (4.319).20
Adam’s, Victor’s or Nathan’s search for knowledge is shallow and misleading because
they disregard the Christian faith and fail to revere God. They either ignore God or seek
to become God themselves. According to Milton, this is false from the start, if not like the
reasoning devils in Hell (2.557–565). Psychiatrist C.G. Jung, in his introduction to R.J.Z.
Werblowsky’s Lucifer and Prometheus: A Study of Milton’s Satan (1952), holds that the
rift between knowledge and faith opened out with the Enlightenment and could no longer
be repaired (Ref. 9, pp. xi–xii). This is the reason, I suppose, for the post-Enlightenment
hypertrophy of absolutist rationalism and the simultaneous neglect of God or the
Christian faith.
Second, Raphael’s teaching of ‘knowledge within bounds’ in Paradise Lost (7.120)
introduces the classical virtue of temperance into epistemology: ‘But knowledge is as
food, and needs no less / Her temperance over appetite, to know / In measure what the
mind may well contain’ (7.126–128). In Paradise Lost, whose central action is tasting
the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, eating and knowing are often

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 Scientific Prometheanism and the Boundaries of Knowledge 339

related, as when Adam compares Raphael’s lecture to ‘sweet repast’ (8.214). Mary
Shelley uses the same metaphor when she writes that ‘in a scientific pursuit there is
continual food for discovery and wonder’ (50). Victor’s admission that his irresistible
occupation ‘swallow[s] up every habit of [his] nature’ (55) aligns the overwhelming
destruction of intensive intellectual pursuits with the implied knowledge-as-food meta-
phor. Like the consumption of food, the acquisition of knowledge demands the gov-
ernance of the principle of temperance. If out of measure, wisdom will turn to folly, just
as nutrition will turn to wind. To put it another way, since God has suppressed certain
knowledge in night, ‘To none communicable in Earth or Heaven’ (7.124), it would be
folly for humans to search and know such things. When proud and selfish Faustians such
as Victor and Nathan trespass the bounds of knowledge stipulated by God and attempt
to ‘unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation’, discover ‘the principle of life’,
and bestow ‘animation upon lifeless matter’ (48, 51, 52), they destroy the divine order –
pun intended – by playing God and will be severely punished for their misdeeds. Such
people flout the temperance principle, for Victor drops the habit of corresponding with
his family and friends in spite of his father’s prior admonition (55) and Nathan is a
habitual drunkard. When Victor summarizes his lesson he knows good by evil, bitter
experiential evil: in the pursuit of knowledge no one should ‘allow passion or transitory
desire to disturb his tranquility’ of domestic affections; otherwise that study is ‘certainly
unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind’ (55–56).
Mary Shelley’s Romantic rule of tranquility as a state of mind and Milton’s clas-
sical rule of temperance as a manner of self-discipline seem to be disparate, but the
two are consistent in spirit. For proof we may refer to Adam and Eve’s perturbed and
intemperate behavior after their fall, the ‘fruitless hours’: carnal desire and burning
lust ‘As with new wine intoxicated’ (9.1188, 1008), covering their bodies with fig
leaves out of shame (cf. ‘that first naked glory’: 9.1115), weeping and suffering,
mutual accusation and endless quarrels, thoughts of suicide, and so on, so forth. For
the first couple, the interruption of tranquility and the breach of temperance amount
to the same thing: the former results from the latter, because eating the forbidden fruit
obviously disrupts their tranquil pastoral life. ‘Knowledge is as food’; both the poet
and the novelist endorse the necessity of the bounds of knowledge, which scientific
Prometheanism unlawfully oversteps. As Andrew Griffin observes, ‘Frankenstein’s
Prometheanism is more and more clearly revealed as obsessive and inhuman, the
cause of much suffering and many deaths’.21 Nathan’s Prometheanism is all the more
obsessive and inhuman, the cause of much suffering and his own death.
In his excellent treatise Lucifer and Prometheus: A Study of Milton’s Satan,
R.J. Zwi Werblowsky points out that knowledge

is a blessing, but can also be destruction if it is not carefully limited and kept down.
But significantly enough it is also the only element whose natural tendency is
upwards. … Fire is the appropriate symbol for the spirit and knowledge which is in
man and by which he ‘aspires to divinity’ and becomes a god. (Ref. 9, p. 56)

In Greek philosophy, Empedocles attributed to fire consciousness, thought and

knowledge, which qualities Heraclitus held to be divine prerogatives (Ref. 9, p. 55).

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 340 Tianhu Hao

Stolen from Hephaestus and Athena, Prometheus’s gift of fire brings with it arts
and sciences, all departments of knowledge for the birth and growth of human
civilization. Francis Bacon’s household aphorism ‘Knowledge is power’ annotates the
symbol of Prometheus’s fire as a stolen forbidden power, just as it comments on Adam
and Eve’s abrogation of forbidden knowledge, which Satan urges to get hold of: ‘Can it
be sin to know?’ (4.517). Elsewhere, Bacon lists the attempt to ravish Athena as
Prometheus’s additional crime and views this as an allegory: ‘when men are puffed up
with arts and knowledge, they often try to subdue even divine wisdom’ (Ref. 16, p. 73).
Knowledge breeds contempt, of God. Adam’s planned use of fire after the climactic
change subsequent to the fall (Paradise Lost, 10.1070–1078) literally anticipates Ben-
jamin Franklin’s kite experiment with lightning in the storm, which is repeated by
Frankenstein’s father: ‘he made also a kite, with a wire and string, which drew down
that fluid from the clouds’.22 The modern Prometheus’s stolen fire is electricity
or galvanism. Electricity, possibly the ‘principle of life’, plays a key role in both
Frankenstein and Ex Machina. In the novel, electricity animates lifeless matter, and in
the film each power outage leaves an opportunity for Ava and Caleb’s private,
unmonitored exchange. Like God’s breath of life into the first man’s nostrils, electricity
is the AI’s breathed air, without which the simulated life could not live.
From another perspective, the upward movement of knowledge/fire resembles that
of the Romantic symbol of Shelley’s high-flying skylark, a ‘scorner of the ground’
(l. 100) that ever soars while singing, a ‘blithe Spirit’ (l. 1) of heaven, ‘Higher still and
higher / From the earth thou springest / Like a cloud of fire’ (ll. 6–8).23 If the soaring
skylark is a ‘cloud of fire’ (reminiscent of Franklin’s and old Frankenstein’s experi-
ments), then erroneous pursuits of bad science are like an ‘empty cloud’, in Milton’s
metaphor (Paradise Regained, 4.321). The soaring of knowledge lacks the Romantic
spontaneity of the skylark, which sings ‘hymns unbidden’ in ‘profuse strains of
unpremeditated art’ (ll. 38, 5). On the contrary, the high flight of knowledge in the lab,
like Victor’s or Nathan’s, isolates the egotistic pursuer from nature and human rela-
tionship and has a feature of strained obsession that dehumanizes. They think they are
God-like, but actually they are slaves to their excessive passion, or madness, which
is certainly not the skylark’s ‘harmonious madness’ (l. 103), the work of supreme
Nature. Just as they learn of the destructive power of fire that radiates light and heat
(41, 104–105), Frankenstein and the Monster get to know the negative sides of
knowledge through acute experience. As the smart creature philosophizes, ‘How
strange … that the same cause should produce such opposite effects!’ (104). Well used,
knowledge is a most powerful weapon; abused, the fire of knowledge can destroy not
merely an oak, but also the entire human species. Like the image of Prometheus (Christ
or Satan), knowledge is also double-edged, leading to happiness or misery, civilization
or extinction, depending on the ethics of the wielder of knowledge.

Concluding Remarks
In the preface to Prometheus Unbound (1820), Shelley lavishes unbounded praise on
the mythological figure: ‘Prometheus is, as it were, the type of the highest perfection

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 Scientific Prometheanism and the Boundaries of Knowledge 341

of moral and intellectual nature, impelled by the purest and the truest motives to the
best and noblest ends’ (Ref. 18, p. 393). In her ‘secular myth’ of Frankenstein, a
far-sighted critique of scientific Prometheanism within a Miltonic epistemological
framework, Mary Shelley radically and quietly reverses her husband’s agenda of
unequivocal Prometheanism (Ref. 6, p. 4). For the initiator of science fiction, the mad
scientist’s obsessive pursuit of knowledge directed toward the creation of humanoid
beings crosses the necessary boundaries of knowledge and encroaches upon the divine
privilege. The products are inevitably monsters, unnatural in appearance or in reality.
Between Zeus and Prometheus, Mary Shelley seems to champion the former, by
whatever name he is called.24 Mary Shelley and Ex Machina artistically weave
scientific elements into literary/cinematic texts, and their successful practice shows
that science and the arts are not necessarily opposed to each other. Instead, the union
of science and arts in science fiction (films) can be very productive. As an end in itself,
pure science resembles the arts, and both aim to serve the highest interests of
humankind. Like Ava standing at a crossroads, every conscientious and responsible
scientist must bear Stephen Hawking’s caution in mind while confronting this crucial
issue: wither goes AI? To make or not to make, that is the question.

Acknowledgements
The author was supported by the National Humanities and Social Sciences
Foundation, China (authorization: 15ZDB091). The author is grateful to Professor
Wang Ning for his helpful suggestions.

References
1. J. Kinsley and M. K. Joseph (Eds) (1969) Frankenstein (Oxford: Oxford
University Press), p. 9. For the text of Frankenstein I prefer this edition, which is
based on the 1831, instead of the 1818, version.
2. ‘Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind’. BBC News.
Accessed on 30 October 2015.
3. For two lists of film adaptations of Frankenstein since 1910, and discussions on
Frankenstein and film, see E. Schor (Ed.) (2003) Cambridge Companion to Mary
Shelley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), ‘Select filmography’, p. 283,
and ‘Frankenstein and film’, by Esther Schor, pp. 63–83; A.J. LaValley (1979)
The stage and film children of Frankenstein: a survey. In: G. Levine and U.C.
Knoepflmacher (Eds), The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s
Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 243–289.
4. Mary Shelley’s indebtedness to Milton even surpasses the usual impression. See,
for example, M.A. Mays (1969) Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s black theodicy.
Southern Humanities Review, 3, pp. 146–153.
5. H.J. Muller (1970) The Children of Frankenstein: A Primer on Modern Technology
and Human Values (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), pp. 7, 130. In my
discussion I am aware of the distinctions between science and technology.
6. G. Levine (1979) The ambiguous heritage of Frankenstein. In G. Levine and U.C.
Knoepflmacher, (Eds) The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s
Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 9.

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 342 Tianhu Hao

7. On the personal level, Victor is also the pseudonym Percy Shelley adopted when
publishing his first collection of childhood poems, together with the productions
of his sister Elizabeth, the namesake of Victor Frankenstein’s cousin and later
wife in the novel. See, P.D. Scott (1979) Vital artifice: Mary, Percy, and the
psychopolitical integrity of Frankenstein. In G. Levine and U.C. Knoepflmacher,
(Eds) The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s Novel (Berkeley:
University of California Press), p. 175.
8. Words cognate with machine often occur in Frankenstein: machinery (7), engine (9),
mechanism (9, 48, 49, 185), mechanics (53), machinations (153, 176, 186),
mechanical (204), etc. The first machine in the 1818 edition disappears from the
1831 text due to authorial revision. For quotations from the 1818 text, see J. Rieger
(Ed.) (1982) Frankenstein (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), pp. 35, 43.
9. R.J.Z. Werblowsky (1952) Lucifer and Prometheus: A Study of Milton’s Satan
(Abingdon: Routledge), p. 85. This monograph makes a lucid and profound
study of the Promethean myth from the angle of psychology; see esp. pp. 53–60.
10. H. Bloom (1987) Introduction. In H. Bloom, (Ed.) Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
(New York: Chelsea House Publishers), p 4. For a more detailed analysis of
similarities between Caleb Williams and Frankenstein, see K.C. Hill-Miller
(1995) ‘My Hideous Progeny’: Mary Shelley, William Godwin, and the Father-
Daughter Relationship (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London:
Associated University Presses), pp. 68–75.
11. J.W. Lew (1991) The deceptive other: Mary Shelley’s critique of Orientalism in
Frankenstein. Studies in Romanticism, 30, pp. 278–283.
12. A.K. Mellor (1988) A feminist critique of science. In Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her
Fiction, Her Monsters (New York: Methuen), p. 89.
13. G. Teskey (2015) The Poetry of John Milton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press), p. 289.
14. W. Cude (1972) Mary Shelley’s modern Prometheus: A study in the ethics of
scientific creativity. The Dalhousie Review, 52, pp. 221–224.
15. The novel’s generally non-religious setting does not disqualify or discredit a Christian
or Miltonic perspective on it, not the least because the protagonists themselves –
Frankenstein as well as his creature – adopt such a point of view. Frankenstein’s
instinctive utterances of ‘Great God!’ on several occasions (57, 191, 195) reveal his
Christian sense, though he is usually atheistic. In another moment Frankenstein
likens himself to Satan, ‘the archangel who aspired to omnipotence’ (211).
16. Hans Blumenberg, cited in: L.M. Lewis (1992) The Promethean Politics of
Milton, Blake, and Shelley (Columbia: University of Missouri Press), p. 1.
17. W. Kerrigan, J. Rumrich and S. M. Fallon (Eds) (2007) The Complete Poetry and
Essential Prose of John Milton (New York: The Modern Library), p. 200.
18. Cf. Shelley: ‘The only imaginary being resembling in any degree Prometheus, is
Satan’. G. Teskey (Ed.) (2005) John Milton: Paradise Lost (New York: Norton),
A Norton Critical Edition, p. 393.
19. Humphry Davy, a contemporary scientist who influenced Mary Shelley, touches
on the chemist’s discovery of gunpowder. See, A.K. Mellor (1988) A feminist
critique of science. In: Mary Shelley: Her Life, Her Fiction, Her Monsters
(New York: Methuen), pp. 90, 94–95.
20. For another example of Milton’s advocacy of the union of knowledge and faith,
see Of Education: ‘The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents
by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate
him’. W. Kerrigan, J. Rumrich and S.M. Fallon (Eds) (2007) The Complete Poetry
and Essential Prose of John Milton (New York: The Modern Library), p. 971.

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 Scientific Prometheanism and the Boundaries of Knowledge 343

21. A. Griffin (1979) Fire and ice in Frankenstein. In G. Levine and U.C.
Knoepflmacher, (Eds) The Endurance of Frankenstein: Essays on Mary Shelley’s
Novel (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 51.
22. J. Rieger (Ed.) (1982) Frankenstein, p. 35 (1818 edition).
23. G.E. Woodberry (Ed.) (1892) The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe
Shelley (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company), vol. 3, pp. 270–274
(‘To a Skylark’).
24. N. Marsh (2009) Mary Shelley: Frankenstein (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan), p. 152.

About the Author

Tianhu Hao (PhD, Columbia) is a Changjiang Distinguished Young Scholar,
professor of English, and director of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies in the School of International Studies, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou,
China. He specializes in early modern English literature, comparative literature,
bibliography, manuscript study, and history of the book. In addition to several
translations and numerous articles in Chinese, his publications include English essays
in Comparative Literature Studies, Journal of British & American Studies, The
Library, Milton Quarterly, Spenser Studies, Studies in Bibliography, and Tamkang
Review, and a Chinese monograph entitled ‘Hesperides, or the Muses’ Garden’:
A Study of an Early Modern English Commonplace Book (2014).

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