An Experiment with an Air Pump is an ode to progress and human inquiry, sentiments that captivated society both at the height of the Enlightenment and in the late-20th century, which saw major advancements in the field of genetics. Many of the play’s central characters (Fenwick, Armstrong, Roget, Ellen, and Kate) are scientists who share a mutual passion for discovery and knowledge. Fenwick, for instance, is swept up in the spirit of the Enlightenment; he regularly attends scientific demonstrations and performs demonstrations of his own, and he believes that knowledge and progress go hand in hand. Scientists like Kate, Fenwick, and Armstrong unwaveringly believe that more knowledge is always a good thing and that humanity should assume there are no limits to what it can understand. For much of the play, Fenwick is an avowed supporter of scientific inquiry. He subscribes to the Enlightenment ideals of his present-day England and believes that knowledge is inextricably linked with progress. In Act One, Scene One, for instance, Fenwick proclaims that once the English “are released from their ignorance” and discover the degree to which ruling monarchs take advantage of ignorance to exploit and oppress the masses, they will reject the monarchy in favor of democracy, ultimately resulting in an improved quality of life for all.
The play celebrates knowledge and discovery, to be sure, but it also sheds light on the potential hazards that arise when people overestimate their capacity to know everything about the world they inhabit. When Isobel, the Fenwick family’s domestic servant, hangs herself after discovering the insincerity of Armstrong’s affections for her, it highlights how knowledge—even knowledge worth discovering, for it was undeniably good that Isobel learned the truth about Armstrong before he had the opportunity to exploit her—can bring about violence, death, and other negative, unintended consequences. It also shows Fenwick that there will always be certain aspects of life—love, death, and betrayal, to name a few—that defy logic and explanation, even as society evolves and becomes more technologically and philosophically advanced. An Experiment with an Air Pump therefore challenges the notion that humanity should strive to know everything at all costs. Though the play celebrates humanity’s quest for knowledge and discovery, it ultimately suggests that it’s important for humanity to acknowledge its limited capacity to understand all.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Human Industry and the Limitations of Knowledge ThemeTracker
Human Industry and the Limitations of Knowledge Quotes in An Experiment with an Air Pump
I’ve loved this painting since I was thirteen years old. I’ve loved it because it has a scientist at the heart of it, a scientist where you usually find God. Here, centre stage, is not a saint or an archangel, but a man. Look at his face, bathed in celestial light, here is a man beatified by his search for truth. As a child enraptured by the possibilities of science, this painting set my heart racing, it made the blood tingle in my veins: I wanted to be this scientist; I wanted to be up there in the thick of it, all eyes drawn to me, frontiers tumbling before my merciless deconstruction. […] I wanted to be God.
But when I was thirteen, what held me more than anything, was the drama at the centre of it all, the clouds scudding across a stage-set moon, the candle-light dipping and flickering. Who would not want to be caught up in this world? Who could resist the power of light over darkness?
Susannah: Maria, show a little faith, your father would never conduct an experiment unless he was quite sure of the outcome, isn’t that so?
Fenwick: You haven’t quite grasped the subtlety of the word ‘experiment’, Susannah –
Armstrong: This goes to prove the point I made earlier, sir: Keep infants away from the fireplace and women away from science.
Armstrong: With respect, I think you confuse a personal antipathy towards Reverend Jessop with the quality of his proposed lecture.
But does an idyll have its basis in reality?
Harriet: Primarily because you’re playing a sheep. And besides, some people are not meant to say anything of consequence. As in life, so in a play. Certain rules must be obeyed. And one of them is you stick to your own lines. You can’t swap them round as it takes your fancy. Think of the chaos. Think of the audience.
Ellen: Anecdotal doesn’t count. They could be making it up. Or elaborating something much more explicable.
Phil: Why would they want to do that?
Ellen: Because people like telling stories. They like sitting around and telling tales for which there’s no rational explanation. Like ghost stories. And crop circles. And being a reincarnation of Marie Antoinette. I’m not entirely sure why. You’d need to ask a psychologist.
Ellen: The fact that you’ve never had a moral qualm in your life doesn’t mean you have superior reasoning power, it just means you have a limited imagination.
Kate: We’ll be able to pinpoint genes for particular types of cancer, for neurological disorders, for all sorts of things, some of them benign, some of them not, but what it really means is we’ll understand the shape and complexity of a human being, we’ll be able to say this is a man, this is exactly who he is, this is his potential, these are his possible limitations. And manic depression is genetic. We’ll pin it down soon.
Phil: And then what? No more Uncle Stans.
Fenwick: By the end of the nineteenth century everyone will understand how the world works. By the end of the following century, if you can imagine that far, every man or woman in the street will understand more than we can ever dream of. Electricity, the stars, the composition of the blood, complexities beyond our imagination, will be as easily understood as the alphabet. Magic and superstition won’t come into it. And it stands to reason, any citizen with the facts at his disposal could not tolerate a monarchical system unless he was mentally impaired or wilfully resistant to reality.
Roget: Does good science require a warm heart?
Fenwick: I like to think so, Roget. In fact I suspect pure objectivity is an arrogant fallacy. When we conduct an experiment we bring to bear on it all our human frailties, and all our prejudices, much as we might wish it to be otherwise. I like to think that good science requires us to utilise every aspect of ourselves in pursuit of truth. And sometimes the heart comes into it.
Tom: So what’s the difference? At what stage does it stop being disturbing and start being archaeology?
Isobel: I’m unused to answering questions. When I talk about myself my face feels hot. When I talk about myself I feel that I am lying.
Armstrong: Are you?
Isobel: I’m not sure. I try not to. But we all lie about ourselves.
Armstrong: Do we?
Isobel: We don’t mean to but we do.
Maria: Papa, Edward thinks my eyes are blue, he said so in a letter, and Harriet says this is because he’s a complete fool and that she never liked him anyway, but I think, perhaps he has a tropical fever and his mind is wandering or perhaps he meant brown but wrote blue –
Harriet: The future’s ours, these chimneys belch out hope,
These furnaces forge dreams as well as wealth.
Great minds conspire to cast an Eden here
From Iron, and steam bends nature to our will –
Armstrong: What difference does it make if they’re dead? The dead are just meat. But meat that tells a story. Every time I slice open a body, I feel as if I’m discovering America.
Armstrong: Digging up corpses is necessary if we’re to totter out of the Dark Ages. You can dissect a stolen body with moral qualms or with none at all and it won’t make a blind bit of difference to what you discover. Discovery is neutral. Ethics should be left to philosophers and priests. I’ve never had a moral qualm in my life, and it would be death to science if I did. That’s why I’ll be remembered as a great physician, Roget, and you’ll be forgotten as a man who made lists.
Armstrong: I make sure she takes them off, that’s the whole point because then I get to examine her beautiful back in all its delicious, twisted glory, and frankly that’s all I’m interested in. D’you know the first time I saw it I got an erection?
Roget: You find it arousing?
Armstrong: In the same way that I find electricity exciting, or the isolation of oxygen, or the dissection of a human heart.
Tom: The heart retains information, they don’t understand how, yet, but everything’s connected one way or another, nothing exists in isolation. When you feel grief, your heart hurts. When you feel love, it’s your heart that hurts, not your brain. You took this job because your heart told you to.
Tom: So we’re not that much different after all. Art and science are part of the same thing. Like waves and particles. You need both to define the whole.
Armstrong: Well, how was I to know? It’s not my fault, I didn’t know she was …
Roget: What?
Armstrong: Unstable. I didn’t know. Don’t say anything, eh?
Silence.
I mean, we don’t know for a fact that it was me who drove her to it, do we? It could have been anything.
Roget: Of course it was you.
Armstrong: Where’s the evidence?
Fenwick: Here’s to whatever lies ahead … here’s to uncharted lands … here’s to a future we dream about but cannot know … here’s to the new century.
