Journey to the Center of the Earth follows eccentric scientist Professor Lidenbrock as he and his nephew Axel travel underground in an attempt to find the center of the earth. Both Lidenbrock and Axel are geologists and mineralogists, and they delight in identifying and classifying the geological curiosities they encounter underground. Lidenbrock’s desire to complete the adventure is driven in large part by his desire to prove his unpopular theory that the earth lacks a burning core. Throughout the adventure, Lidenbrock points out evidence that supports his theory, while Axel notes evidence that disproves it. In addition to their geological discoveries, Lidenbrock and Axel discover specimens they never expected: subterranean forests, living dinosaurs, and giant cave-dwelling men. In these ways, the novel acknowledges science’s exciting potential to make the unknown knowable.
Other aspects of the men’s underground journey, however, suggest that science can’t provide a clear answer to every question. For instance, when Lidenbrock shows Axel a subterranean sea bordered by a forest of massive mushrooms, he tells his nephew, “I will explain nothing, for it is inexplicable; […] geological knowledge is far from final.” Lidenbrock is a proud man who believes unfailingly in his own genius, but he acknowledges the limits of modern science when faced with a reality that science cannot account for. At the end of the book, Axel still believes that the earth has a molten core, but he is open to accepting new evidence that might change his mind. The novel concludes with a resolution of one question––why the men’s compass malfunctioned underground––but its central scientific question remains open-ended. The men’s encounters with the limits of science make clear that science is an ongoing process of discovery, and that some things may always remain unknowable.
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Science and Discovery Quotes in Journey to the Center of the Earth
Not that he troubled himself much about the assiduity of his pupils, or the amount of attention they paid to his lessons, or their corresponding success. These points gave him no concern. He taught subjectively, to use a German philosophical expression, for himself, and not for others. He was a selfish savant––a well of science, and nothing could be drawn up from it without the grinding noise of the pulleys: in a word, he was a miser.
“This is what I settle,” replied Professor Lidenbrock, mounting the high horse; “that neither you, nor anyone else, knows anything certain that is going on in the center of the earth, seeing that we scarcely know the 12,000th part of its radius, that science is eminently perfectible, and that each theory has constantly to give way to a fresh one.”
Had I been listening to the mad speculations of a fool, or the scientific deductions of a great genius? And in it all, where did the truth end and error begin?
A thousand contradictory hypotheses floated before my mind, and there was nothing I could lay hold of.
“When science has spoken, it is for us to hold our peace.”
I went back to the parsonage, very crestfallen. My uncle had vanquished me by scientific arguments.
As a true nephew of Professor Lidenbrock, and notwithstanding my mental preoccupation, I was interested in observing the mineralogical curiosities displayed in this vast cabinet of natural history, and, at the same time, was going over in my mind the whole geological history of Iceland.
I was on the summit of one of the twin peaks of Snäffel […]. I commanded a view of almost the whole island. […] I could have said that one of Helbesmer’s relievo maps lay before me. […] precipices seemed mere walls, lakes changed into ponds, and rivers were little streams. On my right there were glaciers without number, and innumerable peaks […].
[…] I forgot who I was, and where I was […]. I gave myself to the luxury of the heights […].
What the boring machine, an insensible inert instrument, could not bring to the surface, we could examine with our eyes, and touch with our hands. […] I could not but think what riches are hid in the depths of the earth, which covetous humanity will never appropriate. These treasures have been buried so deep by the convulsions of primeval times, that neither mattock nor pickaxe will ever disinter them.
We were quite fit for this existence of troglodytes. I scarcely thought of sun, or stars, or moon, or trees, or houses, or towns, or any of those terrestrial superfluities which are necessary to sublunary beings. We were fossils now, and thought such useless marvels absurd.
“[…] if there is any law of increase in temperature, the heat here ought to be 1,500.”
“Ought to be, my boy.”
“And all this granite would be in a state of fusion, as it could not possibly remain in a solid state.”
“You see, however, that it is nothing of the sort, and that facts, as usual, give the lie to theories.”
“I will explain nothing, for it is inexplicable; but you will see for yourself, and you will understand that geological knowledge is far from final.”
I had no words to express my sensations. I felt as if I had been transported to a distant planet, Uranus or Saturn, and was gazing on phenomena of which my Earth-nature had no cognizance. To express such novel impressions, I wanted new words, and my imagination was unable to supply them. I looked, I thought, I wondered with amazement, not unmixed with fear.
“Science, my boy, is made up of mistakes; but of mistakes which lead to the discovery of truth.”
The whole fossil world lives again in my imagination. I go back in fancy to the biblical epoch of creation, long before the advent of man, when the imperfect earth was not fitted to sustain him. Then still further back, when no life existed. […] All life was concentrated in me, my heart alone beat in a depopulated world.
“At any rate, we have no reason to regret having come so far. The scene is grand….”
“The question is not of scenery. I have an object in view, and I wish to attain it. Don’t talk to me of scenery.”
The soul of the professor had passed into me. The spirit of a discoverer pervaded me. I forgot the past, I disdained the future! Nothing existed for me on the face of our planet, in whose bosom I was plunged, neither town nor country, neither Hamburg nor Königstrasse, nor my poor Gräuben, who must think me lost for ever in the bowels of the earth!
