An Experiment with an Air Pump is a play that considers the morality of scientific inquiry. The play features or alludes to numerous scientific experiments that raise major ethical concerns, even as they purport to improve humankind’s quality of life. Characters like Armstrong and Fenwick in 1799 and Ellen and Kate in 1999 believe that scientific advancement is ultimately good. Though Ellen (and eventually, Fenwick) nurse doubts about the ethical ramifications of the scientific research they conduct (it’s implied that Fenwick performs anatomy demonstrations of stolen corpses, and Ellen has done groundbreaking work with the Human Genome Project), they ultimately believe that the benefits of science outweigh any thorny moral issues that certain experiments might raise. Meanwhile, other scientists—like Armstrong and Kate—take on an even less nuanced view of science’s moral ramifications; Kate, for instance, jokingly admits that she’d readily dissect her (already deceased) mother if doing so might lead to some discovery that benefits humankind. On the opposite end of the spectrum are non-scientists like Phil, a builder conducting a building survey on Tom and Ellen’s house. Phil is overtly skeptical of scientific inquiry. Phil believes that Ellen’s genetic research is morally corrupt; he thinks it’s misguided for scientists to disregard the past for the sake of the future—and to assume that everything old is bad, while everything new is good.
Yet, what both sides fail to recognize is that science itself isn’t inherently moral or immoral—rather, the motives and biases that drive humans to experiment are what should be judged through a moral lens. At the beginning of the play, for instance, Armstrong suggests that Maria’s emotional distress at Fenwick experimenting on her pet bird “prove[s] the point” that women are too emotional to appreciate or understand science. In reality, though, Armstrong’s supposed “evidence” is not so objective. Rather, his socially constructed, sexist inclinations predispose him to see women as hysterical and intellectually inferior. This, in turn, keeps Armstrong from seeing Maria’s distress as a reasonable (not to mention nongendered) response to seeing Fenwick experiment on her beloved pet bird. An Experiment with an Air Pump thus suggests that the morality of scientific inquiry depends entirely on the conscious and unconscious biases that impact the way scientists approach their work—in other words, scientists must remain aware of how their socially constructed views might impact their ability to interpret data objectively.
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Science and Morality ThemeTracker
Science and Morality 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.
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 –
Kate: She probably wasn’t murdered. She was dissected. That’s why some of her’s missing.
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.
Susannah: I am full of feeling and passion and I am wedded to a dried cod.
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.
