Science and Psychology Theme Analysis

The characters in The Drowned World have a highly scientific way of thinking about the world around them. The story follows Dr. Bodkin, a biologist, and Dr. Kerans, a biologist and sometimes-medical doctor who are stationed at a military base in London. Their job is to map the changing landmasses and waterways, as well as to observe the new lifeforms of plants and animals that thrive in the newly tropical climate of London, with the hope that humans will be able to recolonize the drowned cities in the next ten years. However, both Kerans and Bodkin begin to question the role science can and should play in the new world as they're confronted with psychological problems and questions that science simply can't answer, as well as the overwhelming sense that the hope of recolonizing the cities is at best far-fetched—and at worst impossible.

The novel is quick to reveal that both Dr. Kerans and Dr. Bodkin aren't convinced that the fieldwork they conduct is at all useful. Ballard describes the doctors' scientific notes on the walls of their testing station as having been dense and detailed at the beginning of their three years in London, but in the present, the notes are few and lazily scrawled. Kerans explains the reason for this: the world simply did exactly what scientists predicted it would do twenty years before the present. Kerans and Dr. Bodkin's job for the three years prior to the start of the novel was, in essence, to confirm that prior hypotheses about global climate change were indeed correct. This instills the sense in both doctors that at this point in the world's history, science has become useless. They see that there's nothing they can do to stop what's happening or plan appropriately for a human-centric future, and thus they see little use in trying to document or make sense of the present.

Once the characters accept that the natural world is beyond their control and isn't worth attempting to understand scientifically, they turn their attentions inward. The characters focus on the more pressing psychological issues that plague the base—namely, the terrifying, recurring, and exhausting nightmares of a watery landscape filled with massive reptiles. Dr. Bodkin develops a new field of psychology to explain these dreams, which he terms "neuronics." Dr. Bodkin insists that evolution is somewhat reversible, and this becomes the central tenet of his theory of neuronics. He proposes that the dreams are triggered by "innate releasing mechanisms" that cause a person to instinctively remember a time when the world last looked like it does now. The dreams are then indicative of a return to the "archaeo-psychic past," and by allowing the dreams to take over the mind, the person will re-experience each moment in human evolution. Initially, Dr. Bodkin attempts to make neuronics empirical and scientific: he conducts experiments with Lieutenant Hardman, who is nearly driven mad by the intensity of his dreams. Once again, however, simply naming and understanding what's happening isn't enough to actually change what the characters experience. Dr. Bodkin doesn't propose a way to stop the dreams; rather, he simply tries to make it easier for Hardman to accept the reality of his dreams. When Hardman allows the dreams to take over his mind, he finds a sense of peace with the world and the change it's undergoing, but this ultimately leads to him fleeing London to go south, the logic behind which eludes nearly all of the people posted in London.

Hardman's escape—and later, Kerans' escape—both represent a rejection of the future that the government hopes for (i.e. mankind's return to the cities, facilitated by science). Going south alone symbolizes an acceptance that the future predicted in the dreams isn't something that can be changed or altered, it's just an inevitable reality that can either be accepted or ignored. In this way, the novel shows the characters rejecting the idea of science as a human-centric framework for understanding the world. Instead, they embrace science and psychology as tools for helping them understand and accept that humans aren't at the center of the new world order, and act accordingly.