Artigo - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Science & Education
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-021-00309-9
ARTICLE
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Dialogs Between Fiction and Science Teaching
Ingrid Aline de Carvalho Ferrasa1,2,3 · Elaine Ferreira Machado1,3 ·

Awdry Feisser Miquelin1,4,5 · Ronei Clécio Mocellin5,6,7 ·
Bruna Elise Sauer Leal1 · Micheli Kuchla1,3,8 · Luciane Kawa Reis Oliveira1,3 ·
Adriane Marie Salm Coelho5,9
Accepted: 25 November 2021

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2021
Abstract
In this article, we present reflections on the possible dialogs between literary creation and
science teaching. Our considerations will be directed to the work of Mary Shelley, Frank-
enstein, and the role of science and science education over the text that gave rise to the
genre “science fiction.” This work aims at presenting the possibilities of using Shelley’s
work in order to explore historical, methodological, conceptual, social, and political impli-
cations that may be useful for motivating reflection in teaching science in the classroom in
times of “post-truth.” In order to do this, we base our notes on the conceptions of Science,
Technology, and Society (STS); in rationality and reasonability; in aspects of bioethics;
and on the man–machine implications according to the scientific community in the educa-
tional field. In addition to the pedagogical mediation of concepts by the teacher, we seek
to look at different strategies as alternatives for pedagogical action in science teaching,
through dialog.
1 Introduction
Mary Shelley’s book (1797–1851) Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus is a classic that
marked a new literary genre: science fiction. Here, we will be interested in how this work
can be used for reflections in the classroom on science teaching in times of problematizing
science and its modes of production.
This classic presents the world with the dilemmas of a young inventor disturbed by his
creation and the suffering of his creature, which, for its horrifying aspect, will be rejected
by its creator. Frankenstein had great intelligence and, in time, acquired a deep human-
istic culture, even though he committed cruel murders fueled by his thirst for revenge
against his irresponsible creator. The work becomes a classic of fiction because it values
the essence, perfection, and emotions of art in relation to the dark side of the inventor, sci-
entific development, and its limits. The book awakens sensations and questions that bring
* Ingrid Aline de Carvalho Ferrasa

ingridferrasa@gmail.com
Extended author information available on the last page of the article
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Vol.:(0123456789)
I. A. de Carvalho Ferrasa et al.
science teaching into the classroom. Osborne and Brady (2000) state that science and art
when involved with each other open possibilities for critical and creative teaching. But, in
what ways?
Although Shelley (2017) presents a Gothic novel with a central theme focused on the
relationship between life and death, her work can offer interesting elements for science
teaching. Her work is rich in issues involved in the scientificity of knowledge at the time; it
mirrors the multiplicity of science between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With
aspects of Physics related to the discoveries of Electricity, Chemistry that moved from
alchemy towards Chemistry as a science, and Biology, which presented Experimental Biol-
ogy and Evolutionary Biology, the author leads us to question the particularities of the
episteme of knowledge, i.e., the scientific knowledge and their relationships that can be
directly involved with contemporaneity.
Mary Shelley (2017) enhances Frankenstein’s concerns and paranoia to the reader, with
three great stories. The first starts from a narrative full of details of the majestic Captain
Walton, through the letters he sent to his sister about his adventures, among them, the one
in which he describes the rescue of a glacier, the one that would become his most recent
friend, Victor Frankenstein. The second great story takes place with Victor, who relives the
peculiarities of his moments of “playing God” to the Captain, who knows his “creature.”
And, to seal the work, Shelley puts Victor face to face with his creation, with a fascinating
narrative, presenting us with all the obstacles of his existence.
Thus, we discuss and present in this paper, according to the scientific community in the
educational area, elements that lead us to point out this work of literary fiction as poten-
tially effective for teaching dialog, the one responsible for knowledge (Resnick & Schantz,
2015), regarding three aspects: based in classroom examples; with questions in view of
our argument; and foundations that support our notes in light of historical and current con-
texts supported by Shelley (2017). For this, we will articulate such dialogs between science
teaching and the STS implications; in rationality and reasonableness; on issues of bioeth-
ics; and in the man–machine relationship for the promotion and maintenance of dialogs in
the classroom, about which, generally, very little or nothing is articulated in school.
2 Dialogs Between Science, Technology, and Society in Frankenstein
In this section, we will present the possibilities of dialoging between Science, Technol-
ogy, and Society (STS) in Frankenstein, with elements that make it possible to expand the
development of critical reflection and capacity in students, in addition to the knowledge
present in the school curriculum. Between clippings of contexts experienced by writer
Mary Shelley and those present in her work, we weave arguments to present literature as a
didactic resource for opening and maintaining dialogs for and in science education.
The novel deals with a young inventor, Victor Frankenstein, who, although trained at
the University of Ingolstadt as a “modern chemist,” was also fascinated by the work of the
ancient alchemists, such as Paracelsus and Cornelius Agrippa. His objective was to under-
stand the essence of life, and, for that, he developed experiments with cadavers in order to
“create living beings.” Mary Shelley’s work leads us to dive into the history of Physics,
Biology, and Chemistry, including historical, social, political, and philosophical aspects
of the early nineteenth century, in the face of science issues and the aspects involved in
humanity.
13
As we immerse ourselves in the context experienced by Mary Shelley, there are sev-
eral potentially effective elements that allow us to open conditions for STS dialogs in the
classroom. Mary grew up surrounded by England’s intellectual wealth. Being a daughter
of the feminist and writer Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), who died a few days after
her birth, and the political philosopher and journalist William Godwin further strength-
ened her ideals by living with the poet and future husband Percy Shelley (1792–1822),
with the writer and doctor John Polidori (1795–1821) and with the poet George Gordon
Byron (1788–1824), better known as Lord Byron. From this friendship and during a trip to
Europe in 1816, in the so-called year without summer, the first draft of Shelley’s work was
finished, and consecrated later by “Frankenstein” or the Modern Prometheus. But what is
the relationship between Mary Shelley’s “year without summer” and Frankenstein’s first
draft to start STS dialogs in the classroom?
Retrieving historical data, in 1815 the Tambora volcano, located on the island of Sum-
bawa in Indonesia, erupted. With the outbreak, billions of tons of gases, rocks, and ash hit
the sea and spread through the air. Volcanic eruptions “can have global consequences for
the environment, climate and human beings” (Petrone, 2018, p. 927). Petrone (2018) fur-
ther states that volcanic plumes (clusters composed of ash and gases) can rise kilometers of
altitude in the atmosphere, reaching the stratosphere, and then be dispersed throughout the
planet.
Mary, who was staying at the home of the poet Byron, did not have much to do out-
doors, not least because the climatic conditions were not favorable in the summer of 1816
in Geneva. According to Robock (2000), a very large amount of sulfurous gas (sulfur diox-
ide (SO2)) and ash particles remain in the stratosphere, for up to 1 year, after the eruption of
a volcano. The dispersion of gases and particles, associated with physical phenomena, con-
siderably increases the amount of cloud mass, causing an increase in electrical discharges
and torrential rains. Thus, Byron, in order to entertain his guests: Mary, Claire Clairmont
(Mary’s half-sister), Percy, and John, conceived the idea of a ghost and vampire story con-
test. Between reciting Gothic tales by the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1782–1834), in
Christabel, Mary still had no ideas on what to tell as a horror story (Wood, 2014).
However, Shelley’s ideas came to light shortly after a tour with Lord Byron on Lake
Geneva. Amid a moment of rapid calm in the rains caused by Tambora, on the way home
Mary is dazzled, as she witnesses the beginning of a new storm in which “the pyrotechnic
displays of the lightning of June 1816, ignited Mary Shelley’s literary imaginations and
Lord Byron” (Wood, 2014, p. 53). Much of the planet has suffered from the climatic conse-
quences of the Tambora volcano. A thin gray layer covered the Earth, with an exceptionally
cold and rainy climate, causing problems in the harvest and famine that extended across
Europe, Asia, eastern United States, and Canada (Pyle, 2017). Especially in Switzerland,
plantations suffered from acid rain (the sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere reacted with water
to produce sulfurous acid (H2 SO3)) and food shortages began. According to Wood (2014,
p. 62) “[…] as of August 1816, bread was scarce.” The people started invading bakeries
to eat a piece of bread, after its price increased dramatically. Mary Shelley was inserted in
this turbulent and horrifying atmosphere and takes such aspects to tell her horror story in
Frankenstein (idem, 2014).
Frankenstein’s birth clearly shows how Mary felt involved with what was also happen-
ing around her. The creature’s physical features represented the countenance of people
overwhelmed by the effects of Tambora (a creature involuntarily brought to life during an
electrical storm). Mary organized, in the face of her life experience, enough elements to
reach Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, the fire thief of the gods of Greek mythol-
ogy (Wood, 2014). Mary replaced the divine fire of Prometheus by the spark of electricity,
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which was very popular around 1800, with the experiments of Luigi Galvani (1737–1798)
and shortly after Alessandro Volta (1745–1827), who discovered the chemical processes
caused in the body (human or animal) by electricity. Even more impressive were the
experiments carried out by Giovanni Aldini (1762–1834), who was Galvani’s nephew and
graduated in Physics from the University of Bologna. In these experiments, Aldini pro-
posed combining Galvani’s so-called animal electricity and Volta’s “bimetallic electricity”
in order to revive warm-blooded corpses, from small animals to human bodies. His experi-
ments were carried out in public and the “galvanic resuscitation” was a spectacle that made
a great impression on his contemporaries (Parent, 2004). Such symbols present in Shelley’s
life world, portrayed in the novel, reproduce what Habermas (1984) calls elements of cul-
ture, society, and personality.1
The author of the book In search of Frankenstein: Mary Shelley’s monster and his
myths, a scholar of Mary Shelley’s diaries and letters (although there are no reports in
his manuscripts), says that Shelley was inspired by the alchemist Konrad Dippel for the
creation of the character Victor Frankenstein (Florescu, 1998). According to Florescu
(1998), Konrad Dippel was born in the castle that belonged to the family of Baron Georg
von Frankenstein, possibly originating the character’s name. Dippel, as an alchemist, had
among his ideals to give life to the dead, as an end of the possible elixir of longevity, which
is why he was expelled from Strasbourg, accused of exhuming human bodies for bizarre
anatomical experiences (Figueiredo, 2009). Vasbinder (1984) describes Victor Franken-
stein was influenced by Newtonian research methods, concluding that “[…] the fusion of
the natural and the ‘supernatural’, the physical and the metaphysical are personified in the
power of electricity which is apparently used to animate the monster” (Vasbinder, 1984
apud Figueiredo, 2009). In the essay De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commen-
tarius, published in 1791, Galvani describes a series of experiments in which he observed
the action of electrical sparks in inducing muscle contraction creating natural electricity
within the nerves, proposing that the brain is responsible for the generation of electric-
ity distributed to the muscles through an internal nervous system (Parent, 2004). He also
investigates the relationship between electricity and animation (or life), in the second half
of the eighteenth century, when he observed that a dissected frog’s leg, touched with a
scalpel, contracted strongly when an electric machine was operating near the frog. With the
performance of several tests, he realized that the phenomenon was of an electrical nature,
as it only occurred when a conductor was placed in contact with the frog’s muscles, at the
same time as an electrical discharge occurred in the device (Martins, 1999).
2.1 Strengthening Dialog in STS
Shelley (2017) confronts us with Victor’s thirst for knowledge and how his concerns and
questions regarding the natural sciences led him like a compass. Are we teachers giving
our students an appetite for science? Are we expanding our students’ critical thinking by
promoting discussions beyond those based on a school curriculum? Some critics might
point out that rescuing works of fiction does not add value to science education, since the
compass, given here as an example, is now an obsolete instrument due to modern GPS
1
For Habermas (1984) “communicative action” opens possibilities for the rationalization of the individu-
al’s worldviews, as it considers the contexts of the world of life (elements of culture, society, and personal-
ity).
13
(Global Positioning System) communication, very popular in vehicles and smartphones.

At first, we can even agree with this statement; however, given a situation in which there
is a failure in the communication of the GPS2 that scans around the Earth, it would lead us
to say that, knowing the manufacture and operation of a compass given the geographic and
magnetic behavior of planet Earth, it would be useful to us.
Therefore, considering the necessary contextualization regarding the work, as well as
the historical rescue of science, we can mention some aspects that may allow us to start
STS dialogs beyond the contents of the school curriculum. As examples, we can mediate
knowledge based on the work of Frankenstein related to the chemical composition and the
formation of acid rain due to the eruption of a volcano, in the approximations and distances
of environmental pollution under human interference; to present the optical effects and the
scattering of radiation in the atmosphere by the ash of a volcanic eruption; mediate con-
cepts involved in climate warming and cooling; the conditions for the behavior of electrical
current in the human body; the differences between direct current and alternating current;
rescue technical and technological equipment that use electricity for physiological effects
on the human or animal body; and the use of guinea pigs in experiments, among others.
However, we observe from our experience as researchers and University Professors who
work at universities and at schools that the knowledge generally articulated in the school
classroom is limited only to those available in the curriculum. And, we are searching,
through research and different instruments, such as literary works of fiction, which may
allow us to create possibilities for a solid dialog about the nature of knowledge and its
implications in the daily lives of students. We refer to Shelley’s work (2017) as means to
instigate STS dialogs in the classroom, in the sense of proposing conditions for students
to focus on historical, methodological, conceptual, social, and political aspects that are
strongly rooted in science, as a means of taking action. Discussions based on the work can
leverage STS dialogs, advance to STSE dialogs (where “E” refers to environmental con-
cerns), and advance in search of elements for our students to confront social and scientific
issues (SSI). According to Derek Hodson (2020), SSI are those that generate controversy,
and it is up to the teacher to mediate aspects that may allow students to know how to exam-
ine and evaluate different points of view, recognize contradictions and inadequacies, argue
scientifically, be ethical, and think actively to develop actions with wisdom and justice. In
the same line of thought, Zeidler et al. (2005) argue that SSI-oriented teaching with STS
and STSE discussions promotes in students the capacity for critical thinking, development
of skepticism, and recognition of how science is done and is present in their daily relation-
ships, among other aspects.
Thus, we ask ourselves: what is the use of experimenting and normalizing laws in the
classroom, if we do not mediate aspects from which students may contemplate the com-
plexity of science? Facing Shelley’s science fiction (2017) and future discoveries in the sci-
ences “we are at the dawn of a breathless effort, which needs multiple new developments,
in order to allow scientific activity to have the means of reflexivity, that is, of self – inter-
rogation” (Morin, 2005, p. 26). This comes close to scientific literacy, which contemplates,
among other aspects, the curiosity, and students’ open mindedness to learn (Sharon &
Baram-Tsabari, 2020).
2
According to Official U.S government information about the GPS, 24 GPS satellites are available to the
world population 95% of the time, with a total of 31 active GPS satellites and 1 inactive GPS satellite.
(https://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/space/), data from 07/24/2021 (National Coordination Office for Space-
Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing, 2021).
13
We then return to the thinking of Ladrière (1996), where he affirms that human respon-
sibility in the face of scientific and technological advances only constitutes a source of
action when acquired in a rational, reflective way. Since these advances guided by human
action produce situations that could not be produced without human intervention, there
is a rotation of the natural course of things, generating bifurcations that only ethical rea-
son can help us in defining the most appropriate choices, determining what there is spe-
cific in ethics, and creating criteria for effective conduct, that is, the balance between the
rational and the reasonable. Next, we will discuss how the teacher can open and maintain
dialogs between the rational and the reasonable in Frankenstein, in science teaching from
the classroom.
3 Dialoging Between the Rational and the Reasonable in Frankenstein

for Science Teaching
The process of knowledge construction is rooted in the choice of elements, objects, and
questions around a condition or situation. We will discuss how such aspects are strongly
rooted in beliefs, cultures, philosophies, and values, among others, which build science and
characterize its history, taking into account that science is not neutral, and also how the
teacher articulates it in the classroom in science teaching.
The character of science’s non-neutrality makes us question its nature. Inquiries and
questions can lead to new discoveries that contribute to the arrival of new historical ele-
ments in science. Therefore, science, as a human product, will always be open to inquiries
and questions, although human reason is not always endowed with a rationality and this, in
turn, may imply reasonableness.
Victor Frankenstein leads us to reflect on the articulation between human reason and
science. He puts us in front of scenarios in which the rational stars in the scene with the
reasonable, and in scenarios that do not even act as supporting actors. The first scenario
refers to the fact that Victor attributes to his teacher Waldman, the awakening of his devo-
tion to science, inspiring him to explore hitherto unknown forces by breaking with his
prejudices to modern chemists, and allowing him to self-inquire, if, from how science is
done by human hands (Shelley, 2017). And the second scenario refers to the fact that Vic-
tor asks himself about issues involving especially affection, which he found in the dialogs
with Professor Waldman and in the letters sent by his father, about his actions in doing
science. Victor went through moments of controversy when he reflected on what is correct
in terms of morality, of his project to generate life for his creature, justifying himself in
historical aspects of humanity, by attributing that: “[…] if this norm were always observed,
if every man had established a limit between his duties and his affectionate life, Greece
would not have been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his homeland, America would
have been colonized without major conflicts, and the empires of the Aztecs and the Incas
would not have been annihilated” (Shelley, 2017, p. 54). We realized that Victor was at
a moment of controversy, questioning himself from the rational and what would be rea-
sonable. The conflict was between continuing his audacious project of “generating life”
and abandoning his project of exploiting unknown forces. We can point out that rational-
ity involves the action of the individual, whether he is a teacher or a student, as rationality
is a property of their world, but constructed by their actions on objects that are devoid of
rationality (LADRIÈRE in MORIN, 2013). The behind-the-scenes implications involving
Frankenstein’s scenario open up a range of possibilities for dialogs between rationality and
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reasonableness in the classroom, rescuing aspects involved in the construction of science

itself.
3.1 Thinking About the Rational and the Reasonable
But what is rational? And, what is reasonable? What are the conditions that answer for the
rational to be, necessarily, reasonable? In this work, when we use the terms rationality and
reasonableness, we base ourselves on the text of the French Mathematician and Philoso-
pher Prof. Dr. Jean Ladrière, written to his friend Prof. Edgar Morin in the book The recon-
nection of knowledge: the challenge of the twenty-first century. In short, rationality can be
understood as a way that seeks to organize and establish the objectivity of the knowledge
involved in a given topic, while as its duality pair, reasonableness is a judging, critical,
and creative force that manages to assess the advances and limits of a possible discovered
rationality. According to Ladrière (in Morin, 2013), rationality is not a property of the sub-
ject, but of the world in which he is inserted, and this determines his action. Rationality is
“an objective domain constituted from and by human initiatives on objects” (p. 504), which
may contemplate the real or not. And reasonableness is defined by what “gives to the effort
of reason its dynamic character and directionality, and what prescribes its purpose” (idem,
p. 504).
It is clear to us researchers, scientists, and even epistemologists that there are different
perspectives on how science is done and how it develops. Therefore, it would be appropri-
ate for scholars and scientists to show students that science, as a human activity, is linked
to a complex and comprehensive sociocultural context Zeidler et al. (2002) show that SSI
when inserted in the nature of science strengthen students’ learning. We affirm that SSI can
help to open and maintain dialogs between the rational and the reasonable. Also, accord-
ing to Hodson (2020), the teacher who introduces SSI into the curriculum needs to have
skills in working with the emotions of students who face controversial issues, as they will
naturally arise. It shows us that emotional intelligence, emotional literacy, and emotional
competence can be useful for the teacher to lead learning process.
We can cite as a source of potentially controversial topics, Nuclear Physics. The phe-
nomena are involved with atomic nuclei, nuclear fusion and fission, radioactive disinte-
gration, and nuclear binding energy, among others; it encompasses a rationale that ranges
from the issue of using knowledge of medicinal use to military use, for example. From dis-
cussions about the initial discoveries of nuclear fission by Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) when
subjecting chemical elements to neutron bombardment and strengthened by Otto Hahn
(1879–1968) and Fritz Strassmann (1902–1980) in the division of the uranium nucleus in
two more stable ones, quickly the Manhattan Project in the USA, led by physicist Julius
Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967), was developing atomic bombs, which ended up devas-
tating the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here is an example in which ration-
ality is independent of the subject, as it is in nature; however, reasonability depends on the
subject, that is, what it will do with knowledge. Also considering nuclear fission, many
research institutes develop nuclear reactors for the production of chemical elements for
hospitals for medical treatment and diagnosis. From this, it is also possible to observe how
the example of nuclear fission is articulated between rationality and reasonableness.
But which aspects of science teaching, from the novel by Shelley (2017), present a
rationality and reasonableness for the classroom? Ladrière (in Morin, 2013) points out
that the articulation between the rational and the reasonable includes ludic, creative,
and affective aspects. For him, scientific knowledge is loaded with interconnections,
13
complementarities, and reconnections. As teachers articulate the rational and the rea-
sonable, they may open possibilities for new proposals for mediation of knowledge in
the classroom, which may lead us to maintain dialogs between a work of fiction and the
teaching of science, for example.
According to Jardim et al. (2021), to promote the historical recovery of science in
physics classes allows students to understand that science was developed by social
actors, in places far beyond the laboratory and by actions carried out within different
cultural contexts. And the promotion of this understanding by students based on the
work of Shelley (2017)? In addition to allowing dialog about knowledge and its com-
plexity, it opens possibilities for students to realize the implications of the literary work
on their own societies, which is something not generally proposed in the subjects of the
school curriculum. This may involve, for example, the teacher walking down the roads
of the Scientific Renaissance of the sixteenth century; presenting the birth of “modern
science” in the seventeenth century and how it started to revolutionize the Aristotelian
pattern, extending it between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and problematiz-
ing students in the face of the rationality of scientific logic of the twentieth century so
that they understand that, in the twenty-first century, although science is still develop-
ing, students may reject, in times of post-truth, scientific negationism (Mcintyre, 2018).
According to Bogar (2019), traditional science education includes unquestionable truths
for students. Teaching in the face of an unquestionable science prevents them from
understanding how knowledge is structured and limited, inhibiting them from building
argumentation in science as a process of creation by human hands.
It is important that the teacher allows students to understand the nuances of the con-
text of wealth in which science is produced, ceasing to be neutral, as well as that the
development of technical instruments for observation, description, and experimentation
characterizes science and culture throughout human history. As an example of a tech-
nique, we can mention in Frankenstein the galvanic currents, later known as “direct cur-
rent.” Shelley (2017) bases the actions of the young inventor Victor Frankenstein based
on Galvani’s conceptions that electricity existed in the body itself, both of humans and
animals, and in Volta’s conceptions, in which electricity was conceived external to the
human body, which led to the invention of the cell. Mary Shelley (2017), within the
Romanist aspect, attributes to Frankenstein the hope of reconstructing human life, in a
creature made up of body parts from other dead humans, using electricity. We observe
the resistance of the mechanistic and rationalist past of the eighteenth century to be very
present in her work. Presenting characteristics of Romanticism, it is easily perceived in
her work the emotion invading reason and the human instincts standing out from the
Laws.
We can also talk about the aspects of experimentation, what was called “modern sci-
ence,” referring to the conceptions of philosophers like Alexandre Koyré, Pierre Duhem,
and Thomas Kuhn. Koyré presented his interpretation of the scientific revolution as early
as the seventeenth century, from a new conception of experimentation, in the sense of read-
ing and interpreting nature, establishing a landmark between ancient medieval science and
modern science (Koyré, 1992).
Regarding experience as a fact to conceive a theory, Pierre Duhem understood the
teacher as an indispensable agent to “ascertain the critical sense of students, in the sense
of making our reason infinitely difficult to satisfy […] about the rigor of a demonstration”
(Duhem, 2008, p. 12). For Thomas Kuhn (1978), knowledge (its progress) is deepened
through the acquisition of a new paradigm and scientific revolutions; and knowledge is
expanded due to its incommensurability, which projects it to new approaches.
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Still within the universe of science, it is reasonable to allow classroom discussions

regarding Chemistry, which became a science from the second half of the eighteenth
century, with the works of Pierre-Joseph Macquer (1718–1784), Louis-Bernard Guy-
ton de Morveau (1737–1816), and Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794), in France; by Joseph
Black (1728–1799), in Scotland; by Henry Cavendish (1731–1810) and Joseph Priestley
(1733–1803), in England; or in Sweden with Torbern Bergman (1733–1784) and Carl Wil-
helm Scheele (1742–1786). Engaged in promoting and determining the quantitative char-
acter of the experiment, chemists of the second half of the century endeavored to establish
a new language for chemical science, as well as in its theoretical reformulation (Bensaude-
Vicent & Stengers, 1996). The participation in this dialog among chemists, e.g., by the
young Luso-Brazilian Vicente de Seabra Telles (1764–1804), whose work Elements of
Chemistry (1788) was the first to introduce in our language the new nomenclature estab-
lished by Guyton de Morveau, Lavoisier, and his collaborators in 1787 (Filgueiras, 2015),
is also worth highlighting.
3.2 Rationality and Argumentation for the Classroom
Working with rationality in the classroom is directly linked to reasonableness. We believe

that a rational individual is one who is able to appropriate scientific precepts and find a
reasonable way, for the reason, to live and interpret his world. We are not saying that the
student should relive the evidence in certain contexts or enter sophisticated laboratories to
replicate tests already consolidated by science. We point to what Toulmin (1976) refers as
the approaches to rationality: geometric (evidence or intuitions), anthropological (historical
and social), and criticism (rational).
The connection between the rational and the reasonable is in creativity, playfulness,
and affectivity, among others, as determining factors for the success of this articulation
(Ladrière in Morin, 2013). By enabling students with dialogs between fiction and science
teaching, teachers may contribute to grant students an opportunity for reflection, which
may allow them to perceive scientific knowledge as knowledge that allows interconnec-
tions, reconnecting, complementarities, and placing them in the condition of the scientist
himself, as a creator.
Mary Shelley (2017) created a work that questions the morality and responsibility of sci-
ence. Rescuing constructive aspects of the scientific knowledge opens up possibilities for
the student to start to reflect critically on the complexity of knowledge. For this reason, we
point out the Didactic Transposition (Chevallard, 1991) as potentially effective for working
with literary works of fiction as didactic tool in the promotion of dialogs in the classroom.
Frankenstein’s science fiction presents the making of science and its development from an
improbable atmosphere, but which enhances the role of scientific entrepreneurship. The lit-
erary work makes it possible to problematize issues for a scientific debate, even to foresee
the scientific developments within the historical aspect and the ethical issues involved.
This flow between rational and reasonable, enhanced by science fiction, can contribute
and is compatible with the rationality of the argument proposed by Bricker and Bell (2008)
as a component of school science, in order to help students learn about the functioning of
science. For students to substantiate their arguments, the teacher can present them instru-
ments with texts, mathematical expressions, graphs, tables, diagrams, drawings, maps, and
photographs, among others, which are also used by scientists to argue their moments of
controversy.
13
This characteristic of engaging students in the argumentation of the critical production

and social construction of science is what draws our attention in proposing in this paper the
analysis of Mary Shelley’s book. Extracting aspects of rationality as elements of scientific
development and discussions at the time, the limits of science and moral relations implicit
in this fiction can strengthen the space for argumentation in the classroom about the pro-
duction, evaluation, and advancement of science, with literature as an ally, in an interdisci-
plinary approach proposal.
Thus, the transit between rationality in Frankenstein, more precisely, would be estab-
lished in what Bricker and Bell (2008, p. 481) classify as “Argumentation from the History,
Anthropology, and Sociology of Science” based on scientific controversies. As Shelley was
inspired by these elements of her time, and we intend to show in this work, the book makes
room for countless moments of analysis and argumentation in the teaching of science in the
classroom. About this, the authors quote Brante:
[…] One of the central aims of scientific activity is to establish facts about the natural
world. Science study scholars consider moments of scientific controversy important
because it is during controversy one can examine knowledge construction in process,
which is hard to do once scientific knowledge has been ‘black boxed’. Black boxing
is a term used to indicate that scientific facts are accepted. At that point “the history
and grounds of their becoming good facts or successful facts is seen as unimportant
to their use” (Brante, 1993 apud Bricker & Bell, 2008, p. 482).
Brante’s statement expresses that for argumentation in the classroom, it is necessary to
open the black boxes of scientific knowledge, so we argue that this is part of the existing
rationality in Frankenstein and contributes to this goal.
As an example of a scientific controversy, we put the reasons why Victor (Shelley, 2017)
produces his creature in the literary work and makes us realize that, in his world, there
were no possible domains to classify as right or wrong, although what was reasonable for
him was responsible for which aimed recognition in the progress of science; that is, what
are the limits of science when conceiving life? Upon realizing this power, Victor expresses
the following thought:
When I found such awesome power in my hands, I hesitated for a long time about
how to use it. [...] My imagination, however, was too exalted at the first success to
allow me to doubt the possibility of giving life to such a wonderful animal as man.
[...] I knew that I would face countless obstacles that could put me at risk of perform-
ing an imperfect work. But given the ceaseless progress of science and mechanics,
with the improvements that appear day by day, I would at least have the possibility
of laying the foundations for future success. [...] Such were the conditions in which I
began the creation of a human being [...] to restore life in cases where death, by gen-
eral consensus, relegated the body to decomposition. Resurrection! Yes, that would
be nothing less than resurrection power (Shelley, 2017, pp. 52 and 53).
But, which aspects of science teaching, based on Shelley’s novel (2017), present a
rationality and reasonableness for the classroom? Ladrière (in Morin, 2013) points out
that the articulation between the rational and the reasonable includes playful, creative, and
affective aspects. For him, scientific knowledge is loaded with interconnections, comple-
mentarities, and reconnections. As we, teachers, articulate the rational and the reasonable,
we open possibilities for new proposals for mediating knowledge in the classroom, which
lead us to maintain dialogs between a work of fiction and science education, for exam-
ple. In this sense, in Frankenstein’s book there is an established rationality, from which a
13
curriculum of knowledge and possibilities involved both in its historical and social frame-
work and in its fictitious proposition is possible, but it will be in the school treatment, in
the classroom, by teachers and students, that will develop reasonableness to determine the
level of effectiveness of teaching and learning in a school practice related to science and
technology.
For this, we perceive aspects of the work that lead us to such questions. Among some
aspects, we can maintain dialogs with students in the face of Frankenstein’s fictional sce-
nario, in view of the important scientific questions portrayed between the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. For Florescu (1998), Frankenstein is a work with a prophetic char-
acter, pioneer of the scientific discoveries of the twentieth century that demanded so much
critical postures in relation to science; in addition to allowing arguments about knowledge
and its complexity, it opens possibilities for students to realize the implications of their
own society, which are generally not rescued by the subjects of the school curriculum.
Therefore, this work will establish much more in the aspect of rationality, than in the
reasonableness of the implementation of the classroom, precisely because it needs develop-
ment and experiences for students in different contexts and it is impractical to develop a
practical classroom model without this contextualized knowledge that each science teacher
has, of their school reality. We still hope that this work, with its rationality, provides subsi-
dies for the reasonable transit of the argument based on Frankenstein. Thus, to continue our
reflections, we present some aspects involved in the issues of life manipulation from Frank-
enstein (Shelley, 2017). We place bioethics as the protagonist of our reflections on literary
work, presenting, in sequence, dialogs between fiction and science in teaching of science.
4 Dialoging with Bioethics
We will start this section presenting some fundamentals related to bioethics, articulat-
ing presuppositions about morals and ethics from science. In this regard, we dialoged in
Ladrière (1996) and Shelley (2017) rescuing the power relations that knowledge is capable
of producing, and how fiction and science dialog in this sense, from other authors who
enhance our notes in the teaching of science.
The term bioethics was coined in the early 1970s by Van Rensselaer Potter, for his con-
cern with the consequences of advances in science, mainly related to biotechnology, with
the intention of encouraging people to reflect on its positive and negative implications in
relation to life. For this reason, bioethics can be translated as “ethics of life” (Junqueira,
2007). Potter states that bioethics must be a bridge between two cultures, one of sciences
and the other of humanities, that have difficulty in dialoging, that is, between biological
science and ethics. The survival of the human species, in a dignified and sustainable man-
ner, depends on the development and maintenance of an ethical system (Pessini, 2013).
The limits of human actions in a rational and sensible way are essential to minimize the
possible risks caused by science, expressed by the phrase: Not everything that is scientifi-
cally possible is ethically acceptable (Junqueira, 2007).
Based on that thought, we drew on Jean Ladrière’s theoretical reflection, in his book
Ethics and Scientific Thinking, as well as Science with Consciousness by Edgar Morin,
to analyze in Frankenstein’s work, the role of the human being in scientific research in
face of biotechnological advances and taking bioethics as a factor of social responsibil-
ity. When we refer to the scientific advances in cloning, for example, at the cellular, ani-
mal, or human level, feelings such as fear, anguish, and even the possibilities and limits
13
of experiences that account for the advances of science may appear, and questions about
ethical issues, both in Frankenstein’s literary work and in research today, may come up.
In this aspect, we can mention the modern technique of genetic editing called
CRISPR/Cas9. This Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats tech-
nique according to Redman et al., (2016, p. 213) refers to: “a gene-editing technol-
ogy which involves two essential components: a guide RNA to match a desired target
gene, and Cas9 (CRISPR-associated protein 9)—an endonuclease which causes a dou-
ble- stranded DNA break, allowing modifications to the genome.” This genetic editing
enhances the correction of genetic disorders, including sickle cell anemia, dystrophies,
thalassemia, and even the editing of viruses such as HIV (human immunodeficiency
virus). However, this same technique has the potential to lead to unintentional editing
of the genome, causing alterations capable of generating malignant tumors, since the
exchanges can take place outside the expected effects. Another concern with CRISPR/
Cas9, generators of socioscientific discussions, is related to editing genes in embryos,
since changes in the embryo are permanent and it is not possible to predict the long-
term consequences.
We are apprehensive and even a little terrified, despite all the hopes we have, that there
will be, in the near future, the cure of diseases, for example. The CRISPR/Cas9 will be a
turning point in science that, by the way, makes us question: to what extent does scientific
dissemination on bioethical issues really come to the knowledge of the great mass of the
population? About this fact, we also ask ourselves: to what extent do we, as human beings,
have responsibility in relation to the actions we perform towards our own species?
In addition, Redman et al., (2016, p. 215) state that “many oppose germline modifica-
tion under any circumstances, reasoning that an eventual consequence could be non-thera-
peutic genetic enhancement. It is clear that the ethical boundaries, within which CRISPR/
Cas9 can be used, remain to be fully determined.” Jiang and Doudna (2017) also take a
reasonable stand in stating that: “[…] collectively, recent structural and mechanistic stud-
ies provide not only a fundamental understanding of CRISPR/Cas9 mechanisms but also a
framework for structure-based rational design aimed at improving CRISPR/Cas9 efficiency
and minimizing off-target effects for human health and therapeutics” (p. 526).
So, the American progressive educator John Dewey stated that “every great advance
in science arises from an audacity of the imagination” (Dewey, 1929, p. 294). However,
even in the face of many controversies about situations involving what is ethical or not
from the “human” point of view, we carry, throughout our history, scientific techniques and
procedures that refer us to two questions: the humanization of science itself or if there are
efficient results without worrying about its causes?
Over time, human history is characterized by its scientific advancement. Today, regard-
ing cloning, for example, its use is already commercial in agriculture with the technique
of improving herd species and in the genetic modification of soybean seeds. Although the
technique was very controversial at first, we can point out that today it corresponds to a
technology imbued with rationality, which is organized on a commercial scale. We can
affirm that science is linked to totally historical contexts, appearing and remaining in it,
until it no longer makes sense. But what, indeed, is the role of science? And of science
teaching in that respect?
It is important to emphasize to our students that the responsibility for techniques and
procedures with respect to ethics has two sides. On the one hand, it is constituted and regu-
lated by procedures instituted in a social field; on the other, it is inherent to the ethical
determination of the action. The responsibility consists in carrying out actions that guar-
antee the smooth functioning of a system. To feel responsible to one’s self is to feel the
13
demand of the future being, to be responsible to all others and towards the world that you
share, thus reaching a dimension of universality (Ladrière, 1996).
In Shelley (2017), Victor Frankenstein, the creator of the “monstrous creature” as he
calls it in passages in his account to Walton, goes through a clear position of irresponsibil-
ity towards the species, and later he tries to rescue this responsibility to his own, giving up
the creation of the longed, for female, demanded by the monster, fearing, in this way, that a
new creation could reproduce and destroy humanity.
In this sense, Victor Frankenstein appears in the literary work just as the individual with
longings and ambitions, whose main objective and at any price was the resurrection of bod-
ies by the techniques of studying galvanic currents. In his view, research had more noble
ends than just reviving dead matter. She would give the researcher scientific recognition
and intellect; that is, its purpose was clear, as he says in conversation with Captain Walton
that “only those who have experienced (referring to scientific findings) can evaluate the
attractions that science offers and its absorptive power. […]. But, in scientific research the
horizons are unlimited” (Shelley, 2017, p. 50).
4.1 Bioethics and Science
Despite her young age, Mary Shelley felt widespread anguish at the growing power of sci-
ence and technology. And as we refer to our young students, are they being motivated and
led to understand, in fact, the potential of science and technology as entities?
This is due to the fact that human existence presents an intrinsic desire that aims at its
authentic realization and must be driven exclusively by its action. Knowledge is capable
of producing a power relationship and creating a controllable field of action. In this way,
the adequacy between this deep desire for existence and effective action is mediated by the
ethical problem (Ladrière, 1996). In addition, Victor Frankenstein, affirms “the danger that
represents the indiscriminate assimilation of science, and that the happier man is so that the
world does not go beyond the daily, than the one who aspires to become greater than his
limit nature” (Shelley, 2017, p. 52). It is in this limit nature, surpassed by Victor, that his
human-monster is created and, science represents what is built by the human, distancing
itself in this case from the life experiments. Therefore, in ethical reflections, the scientist
cannot distance himself from what he has lived, running the risk of science and its under-
takings distancing the human being from this experience and, therefore, from his ethical
posture (Ladrière, 1996).
Morin (2005, p. 30) also states “that the very progress of scientific knowledge requires
the observer to include himself in his observation, what he conceives in his conception; in
short, that the subject reintroduces himself in a self-critical and self-reflective way in his
knowledge of objects.” Likewise, Ladrière (1996) explains that the development of science
and technology creates new and diverse situations where morality is not able to resolve
and, therefore, knowledge and ethical reflection are necessary mediations.
Thus, it appears that the reflection on science and its creations are fundamental for sci-
entists. For this reason, Ladrière (1996) elaborates two other principles that must be obeyed
in scientific production: that of limitation and that of cooperation. These principles were
left out of Victor Frankenstein’s research and invention, inasmuch as he did not recognize
the other knowledge he used (such as galvanic currents) as an approximation of reality and
not reality itself: the so-called limitation principle. The principle of cooperation was also
at the mercy of his research, not extending it as contributions to the existence of the human
13
totality. In Shelley’s fiction (2017, p. 40), in the excerpt below, the two principles proposed
by Ladrière (1996) and denied by the researcher appear:
My father was not a scientist; without lights, therefore, to get rid of the struggle in
which I was struggling blindly, having as my ally only the unbridled thirst for knowl-
edge. Under the direction of my new masters, I threw myself on the discovery of the
philosopher’s stone and the elixir of long life.
Thus, we can also include here the ethical principles of science and scientific research
defended by Morin (2005, p. 31):
1) that the institutional (technobureaucratic) characters of science do not suffocate, but

upholster its adventurous characters;
2) that scientists are capable of self-inquiry, that is, that science is capable of self-analysis;
3) that the processes that would allow the current scientific revolution to transform the
structures of thought be helped or stimulated.
In the three proposed principles above, Morin is clear in defending the scientist’s free-
dom, but at the same time, it does not remove the rigor of reflection and the need for mech-
anisms created by science itself for this reflection, a fact not addressed by Victor Franken-
stein when creating his creature, but reflected later in conversations with Captain Walton.
We can say that these conversations, narrating his experience, made Victor reflect on the
need for an ethics for science and for scientific research.
Below we will take up the construction of our dialogs in discussions about the philo-
sophical and scientific aspects of human life.
5 The Man–Machine Implications
In this section, we will seek to dialog between fiction and science education with scholars
in the field, in man–machine relationships, from the philosophical aspects present in Mary
Shelley’s horror novel (2017). For this, we present knowledge with possibilities of media-
tion in the school environment, in addition to those present in the curriculum, based on our
experience as teachers in science education.
The figure of artificially produced beings with human characteristics permeates the
imaginary of humanity since the Industrial Revolution (Rama, 2012). The development of
the imagination based on techniques, technologies, and scientific knowledge of the time
fascinated Mary Shelley, who gave the young inventor Victor Frankenstein the condition to
create an artificial being. With the knowledge of his time, in his laboratory, Victor was able
to reorganize human pieces of bones, organs, and muscles in a state of decomposition and,
by an electrical discharge, activate them, generating life for his creature (Shelley, 2017).
So, we can ask ourselves: how did science itself come to understand the human body and
human life? What aspects differentiate a human from a non-human? What does human life
or death portray?
In Frankenstein, there are often questions about the conflict between the creator and the
creature. Although with disproportionate physical characteristics, the creature (called that
way, without even having a name) is provided with sensitivity and curiosity that is rejected
and abandoned by its creator (Shelley, 2017). These attributes are very close to those of
humans who have questions about their own creation, living conditions, and also death.
13
To maintain dialogs in the classroom between fiction and science teaching, we can start
from what “life” represents, from the mechanistic-materialist worldview of the philosopher,
physicist, and mathematician René Descartes (1596–1650). For him, the fact that life exists
is limited to matter, movement, and the extension of a human body (Descartes, 2004).
Studies on spontaneous generation that proliferated between the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries also sought to build fundamentals on materialist-based life. Still, with
assumptions in Descartes’ materialist conception of man, the doctor and philosopher Julien
Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751) defines life by the fact that the body seeks what is neces-
sary for its survival, arguing that the human body is a machine, reducing it to matter (La
Mettrie, 1982). Still, La Mettrie presented a nihilistic condition, for removing the ethics of
human beings, characterizing them as anti-democratic beings (Fernandes, 2014).
Mary Shelley (2017) did not fail to present in her novel philosophical and scientific
aspects regarding human life. The influence of Dr. Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802) in her
work is noticeable, as well as the desire to understand and conceive the origin of life, when
she mentioned the voluntary movement of a small piece of glass. Erasmus Darwin, doc-
tor, botanist, and grandfather of Charles Darwin, was a member of the “Invisible College,”
an elite group of enlightened people, whose objective was the search for knowledge (Sal-
gado-Neto, 2009). Created in 1641, by Robert Boyle (1627–1691), the “Invisible College”
between the years 1660 and 1663 was transformed into Royal Society by King Carlos II
(Salgado-Neto, 2009). Darwin was indirectly influenced by Boyle’s Chemistry and Phi-
losophy due to his participation in the Invisible College; Bacon’s empiricism followed by
Boyle; and by the iatrochemistry that was created by the hands of Paracelsus for use in
medicine (Zaterka, 2004).
The origin of life naturally unsettles scientists. This is reflected in the Miller-Urey
experiment of Earth’s early atmosphere. Both confirmed the hypothesis of Oparin and Hal-
dane that in inorganic chemical compounds, when subjected to the presence of an electrical
discharge, under very specific conditions, it generates organic compounds (amino acids)
(Miller, 1953). Even in the face of a simulation, which did not necessarily rely on chemi-
cal compounds from the primitive atmosphere, Miller-Urey’s merit was in the proof, since
the production of amino acids has the function of producing proteins, essential to life. In
this experiment, although obsolete, electrical discharges played a fundamental role in the
production of amino acids.
5.1 Science Teaching, Science and Fiction, and Its Possible Relations
In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley mentions: “Perhaps a corpse could be revived; […]; perhaps
one could manufacture the component parts of a creature, put them together and animate
them with the warmth of life” (Shelley, 2017, p.11). This brings us closer to Boyle’s work
entitled: Some physical- theological considerations about the possibility of resurrection. In
this work, Boyle assumes that, if there were not in the scriptures of God, that He would be
able to resurrect a dead individual, as it is in fact described, he as a man would never think
of such madness. However, Boyle appropriates the understanding that matter is part of
God, and in this way, resurrection is possible, not by natural means, but by “merely physi-
cal agents,” starting from the concept brought from the sacred scriptures. Zaterka (2004)
brings this text as an appendix to his work, in which Boyle argues:
And while perhaps in the speculation it does not seem absolutely repulsive to the
reason that the separate parts of a dead body can be brought together soon after the
13
death of a man, I think it will be easy for you to consider that it is morally impossible
for this to happen to anyone [...] (Boyle apud Zaterka, 2004, p. 267).
Boyle also concludes that if God created the woman from a rib removed from the man,
that is, that a part of matter gave rise to the other person, without it being in the conven-
tional way, then, the matter of all human beings would be equal (Boyle apud Zaterka,
2004). This reminds us in Frankenstein of the fact that the creature asks its creator for a
companion, which led Doctor Victor to question how relevant such a creation would be, for
the purpose for which it was proposed (Shelley, 2017).
Still, to really give life, Zaterka (2004) corroborates from the understanding of spirit,
widely adopted by philosophers and chemists, as responsible for the principle of movement
and life, according to the paraceltist philosophy:
[...] the spirit was considered as a substance that originated in the stars [...]. The
forms of the bodies, in this perspective, have a celestial origin and are contained in
the seeds that receive the formative power of the universal spirit - a substance dis-
seminated in the universe, that provides life and activity to all the bodies (Clericuzio,
2000 apud Zaterka, 2004, p. 125).
The concept of spirit, according to Bacon, goes beyond the activity of a body, as for
him, “matter is composed of spirits and tangible matter” (Zaterka, 2004, p.128).
We must investigate how much spirit and how much tangible essence there is in
every body; and whether that spirit is copious and turgid or jejunal and meager;
whether it is thin or thick; if closer to air or fire; whether you are active or apathetic;
whether it is thin or robust; whether in progress or returning [...]. The same must be
done in relation to the tangible essence and its hairs, fibers and its multiple textures,
as well as the placement of the spirit in the substance and its pores, ducts, veins and
cells, and the rudiments or attempts of the organic body (Bacon, 1963 apud Zaterka,
2004, p.128).
Thus, Mary Shelley (2017) elucidates where the idea to animate the monster’s lifeless
body with what she called “the heat of life” came from. Right at the beginning of the work,
Shelley gives an idea of his primary inspiration: “[…] Perhaps a corpse could be reanimated;
the galvanic currents had signaled this; perhaps you could fabricate the component parts of a
creature, put them together and animate them with the warmth of life” (Shelley, 2017, p. 11).
We can clearly perceive philosophical aspects prevalent in Mary Shelley’s horror novel
(2017), which open dialogs for the rescue of the very conception of knowledge. For this,
we believe it is extremely important to dialog with students about the deterministic issues
of science, which involves, for example, failing to present simplistic applications of the
same phenomenon involved in Biology, Physics, or Chemistry. We highlight the fact that
the teacher creates dialogic environments in the classroom, of “accountable talk” (Resnick
& Schantz, 2015), one in which there is interaction with students, i.e., one which an answer
gives rise to other questions, such as a search for the truth (Bakhtin, 1986), in order to cre-
ate conditions for students to interact with the complexity of knowledge, also understand-
ing the role of science from Frankenstein.
In this regard, we point to the classroom as a potentially active means for the student to
perceive and think about the conditions under which knowledge is structured and the impli-
cations involved in this construction. We can work with the conception of knowledge in the
classroom, referring to the initial questions about evolution in the eighteenth century, for
13
example, from Buffon, Lamarck, and other naturalists who presented the changes that a life
would undergo from its creation and, with it, also human reason.
For Neves (2002), science is tied to a worldview with characteristics specific to a certain
time in human history and the school still uses such mechanisms to exclude individuals
from the construction of knowledge. The construction of science is a human activity with
challenges of a practical as well as an intellectual nature. The author points out that the
correct path is towards desecrating science and making it democratic. The naive view of
science in which the school establishes its roots does not open itself to the discussion of the
epistemological character of knowledge,3 much less to the processes of affirmation in the
scientific community. Science is only placed on subjects that occupy school benches posi-
tively, ones that accept their paradigms (Kuhn, 1978) unconditionally.
Placing literature at the center of controversies opens possibilities for both teachers and
students to realize that scientific knowledge is not neutral and that it is directly involved
in society (of its time), to the detriment of the mere reading of a classic Gothic novel, for
example. We aim to rescue the historical, methodological, conceptual, social, and polit-
ical aspects of science teaching for the classroom, via literary work, in order to enable
students to rescue, understand, and stand before the sciences far beyond the concepts of
school curriculum. Still, from the Gothic novel by Shelley (2017), we can also maintain
dialogs between fiction and science teaching in the classroom; based on bioelectricity, sci-
ence today is responsible for electrical phenomena in biological systems according to stud-
ies by Galvani (Santos, 2014). The Galvanic bioelectricity may take us to reflect upon Dr.
Frankenstein and the relationship between electricity and the life of its creature.
To induce the animation of Mary Shelley’s monster, the use of “brief and coordinated
electrical discharges, of approximately 200 Joule, is assumed, having as reference the func-
tioning of a defibrillator” (Túlio & Taques, 2005, p. 18). This electrical discharge, sup-
posedly, would recover the heartbeat of the dead individual, causing the blood to circulate
through the body again, irrigating the whole brain and other organs, providing the restoration
of the chemical reactions of the human organism. Thus, through brain electrochemistry, the
disciplinary limitations on the human body would be broken (Azambuja & Guareschi, 2016),
and the creation of Mary Shelley’s monster, inspired by Dr. Darwin’s concepts of philosophy,
medicine, and chemistry and the electrical geniality of the physician’s and physicist Galvani,
would be possible. According to Boyle, according to the Scriptures, with a piece of matter,
joined to another portion of matter, even if from different and dead individuals, it would be
possible to give life, because the matter would be God Himself.
Although we are aware that an electrical discharge does not necessarily generate human
life, its maintenance occurs through electrical and electronic devices that use controlled
electrical discharges. In addition to the defibrillator, we can mention the pacemaker. This
device promotes artificial heart stimulation by stimuli of an electrical nature, provided with
a pulse generator and an electrode that replaces the heart’s natural pulse (Aredes et al.,
2010). Within the fictional scenario in which Victor Frankenstein used means to generate
life for his creature, it makes us question: the “means” by which we use today, for the main-
tenance of life, does not make us humans a bit of a machine?
3
That understood in the sense of mediating discussions, questioning, debates, and problematizations
around the search for the meanings of the descriptions of doing science, i.e., in the comprehension of
knowledge. This is not about presenting a chronological order to scientific theories but understanding them
as world transformations.
13
Aesthetic procedures, for example, which use electrical discharges (of low intensity),
popular for the treatment of blood circulation, metabolism, nutrition, and skin oxygenation,
among other aspects, present benefits for the human body, among them the collagen and
elastin production (Bock & Noronha, 2013). Would a human who benefits from aesthetic
electrotherapy procedures assume a machine condition? And for people with illnesses who
need treatment in intensive care units for the maintenance of life, would they be in the
same condition? And yet: people without a body member, who opt for prosthetic mecha-
nisms, would assume the condition of man–machine?
It is important that our students realize that only the development of knowledge may
convert the term “fiction” into science. If we refer to the electrical currents that Victor
inserted in his creature to conceive his life, today there are also an infinite number of pro-
cedures that place electrical currents as scientific knowledge present in technology. But
then is man a machine?
It is also important that our dialogs allow the student to realize that the human–machine
relationship has always been present in the history of humanity. It would be enough for
us to start listing situations, conditions, and objects, among others, that we have already
done, and that are part of our world with “hybrid topography” (Latour, 1994). We are no
longer able to separate what is human from what is not, just as it makes no sense to sepa-
rate science on one side and technique on the other (idem, 1994). However, we engage in
possibilities for the construction of a critical conscience in young people, so that they take
a position faced by knowledge, articulating elements for their own conception of the world.
6 Final Considerations
The main objective of this essay was to present a rationality involved from Mary Shel-
ley’s Frankenstein, to open and maintain dialogs between fiction and science teaching in
the classroom. For that, we look for foundations that allow us to link elements beyond the
school curriculum. To that end, we offer possible conditions for articulating the knowledge
of the high school curriculum—in addition to the pedagogical context for the teacher. Thus,
we point out that scientific knowledge, when articulated by reasonability, enhances condi-
tions for understanding the complexity of knowledge and, as a fictional work, is potentially
effective in strengthening the links between science and the classroom.
Lima et al. (2019) emphasize that the basic school is the place where individuals receive
the most education in science and, therefore, articulating didactic strategies can be devel-
oped for Science Education in times of post-truth, as suggested here, and that unites the art
of literature to the scientific development of the time, articulating a network of actors in
scientific production. According to the same authors, what strengthens scientific produc-
tion is its network of articulations and not its supposed scientific objectivity.
In an era of post-truth, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein makes us reflect, as science teach-
ers, that only education and training for all could make the correct and necessary dissemi-
nation of scientific information, as stated by Naquet (2013, p. 194) “education and training
of all actors will be my conclusion in relation to research in the biological sciences which,
every day, beckons new data, some more surprising than others!”.
Thus, the questions that we have systematized in this essay are inconclusive in view of
the complexity of building knowledge and teaching science. However, the foundations pre-
sented here lead us to point out that literary works are potentially effective instruments for
13
the promotion of a critical conscience in students, inserted in the contemporary, political,

subjective, moral, and ethical context of society.
Author Contribution All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data
collection, and analysis were performed by Ingrid Aline de Carvalho Ferrasa, Elaine Ferreira Machado,
Awdry Feisser Miquelin, Ronei Clécio Mocellin, Bruna Elise Sauer Leal, Micheli Kuchla, Luciane Kawa
Reis Oliveira, and Adriane Marie Salm Coelho. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Ingrid Aline
de Carvalho Ferrasa and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read
and approved the final manuscript.
Data Availability Not applicable
Code Availability Not applicable
Declarations
Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
References
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institutional affiliations.
Authors and Affiliations
Ingrid Aline de Carvalho Ferrasa1,2,3 · Elaine Ferreira Machado1,3 ·

Awdry Feisser Miquelin1,4,5 · Ronei Clécio Mocellin5,6,7 ·
Bruna Elise Sauer Leal1 · Micheli Kuchla1,3,8 · Luciane Kawa Reis Oliveira1,3 ·
Adriane Marie Salm Coelho5,9
Elaine Ferreira Machado
elabio03@gmail.com
Awdry Feisser Miquelin
awdryfei@gmail.com
Ronei Clécio Mocellin
roneimocellin@ufpr.br
Bruna Elise Sauer Leal
lealbrunaa@hotmail.com
Micheli Kuchla
michelikuchla93@gmail.com
Luciane Kawa Reis Oliveira
luciane_k_reis@hotmail.com
Adriane Marie Salm Coelho
adriane.salm@gmail.com
13
1
Federal Technological University of Paraná (PPGECT - Brazil), Doutor Washington Subtil
Chueire, 330 ‑ Jardim Carvalho, Ponta Grossa ‑ Paraná. CEP: 84017‑220 ‑ Brazil., Ponta Grossa,
Brazil
2
State University of Ponta Grossa, Ponta Grossa, Brazil
3
SEED-PR, Ponta Grossa, Brazil
4
Federal University of Santa Maria, Santa Maria, Brazil
5
Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil
6
University of Paris X, Nanterre, France
7
UFPR – Federal University of Paraná, Curitiba, Brazil
8
State University of the Midwest, Guarapuava, Brazil
9
Federal Technological University of Paraná (DAENS), Ponta Grossa, Brazil
13

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Artigo - Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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Science & Education

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Ingrid Aline de Carvalho Ferrasa1,2,3 · Elaine Ferreira Machado1,3 ·

Accepted: 25 November 2021

* Ingrid Aline de Carvalho Ferrasa

2 Dialogs Between Science, Technology, and Society in Frankenstein

2.1 Strengthening Dialog in STS

(Global Positioning System) communication, very popular in vehicles and smartphones.

3 Dialoging Between the Rational and the Reasonable in Frankenstein

reasonableness in the classroom, rescuing aspects involved in the construction of science

3.1 Thinking About the Rational and the Reasonable

Still within the universe of science, it is reasonable to allow classroom discussions

3.2 Rationality and Argumentation for the Classroom

Working with rationality in the classroom is directly linked to reasonableness. We believe

This characteristic of engaging students in the argumentation of the critical production

4 Dialoging with Bioethics

4.1 Bioethics and Science

1) that the institutional (technobureaucratic) characters of science do not suffocate, but

5 The Man–Machine Implications

5.1 Science Teaching, Science and Fiction, and Its Possible Relations

the promotion of a critical conscience in students, inserted in the contemporary, political,

Data Availability Not applicable

Code Availability Not applicable

Filgueiras, C. A. L. (2015). Origins of chemistry in Brazil, Campinas, Ed. Unicamp, 504 p.

Authors and Affiliations

Ingrid Aline de Carvalho Ferrasa1,2,3 · Elaine Ferreira Machado1,3 ·

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2 Dialogs Between Science, Technology, and Society in Frankenstein

2.1 Strengthening Dialog in STS

3 Dialoging Between the Rational and the Reasonable in Frankenstein

3.1 Thinking About the Rational and the Reasonable

3.2 Rationality and Argumentation for the Classroom

4 Dialoging with Bioethics

4.1 Bioethics and Science

5 The Man–Machine Implications

5.1 Science Teaching, Science and Fiction, and Its Possible Relations