Yesterday I found myself thinking about mad science and those who practice it. What makes a science mad? How does one study a mad science, and where? Cinnamon J. Scudworth has his “degree in the Mad Sciences from ASU.” Do other schools offer them? Also-and here’s where the question becomes personal-are there mad social sciences? How about the mad humanities? And what would you call a specialist in those, by the by? “Humanist” doesn’t have the connotations we’re looking for; a Mad Humanatist?
My speculations may partly have been spurred by the delightfully silly webcomic Miracle of Science, which takes as its premise the idea of mad science as a psychological disorder of the same character, more or less, as schizophrenia. It’s not earth-shattering in its art or its writing, but the idea is really, really cute. And I have a distinct weakness for webcomics.
Of course, this whole post (and by extension the Clone High reference) is linguistically naive, in that “mad sciences” doesn’t really exist in English; it is not that we have people who specialize in sciences which are mad, but rather that we have scientists who happen to be mad; i.e., traditionally, the madness accrues not to the science but to the scientist.
But why should this be the case? After all, it’s clear that certain sciences are more “mad”, i.e., more prone to turning out mad scientists, than others; the mad sciences are the edgy ones, the ones tied to emergent technologies which are not yet integrated into the secure industrial worldview of the public; we do not have mad scientists working hard at building dangerous new kinds of typewriter or automobile, generally speaking-genetics, cloning, particle physics, nuclear physics, and technologies of time, space, and dimension travel-these are the mad sciences. But beyond that, we can point to other characteristics of mad science: it is ambitious, transgressively visionary; the mad scientist is sometimes a tragic figure, ultimately successful in developing his technology or in regard to some facet of the functioning of the universe—but ultimately he is unmade by his commitment to his vision.
And what I want is to support a similarly transgressive vision in the social sciences and humanities; if mad hard science enables us to create monsters and destroy worlds-symbolically, to generate new forms of being or new ways of life and to destroy old worldviews-then I want to see social sciences and humanities with the same power in the human sphere. Historically, these fields tend even more than the hard sciences to be beholden to traditional perspectives—even if the traditions are no more than a generation old, they can have the force of dogma, and new traditions tend to arise under the force of clique-ish collectives politicking in the academisphere.
We have had, possibly, a few mad social scientists in the field of psychology-not surprising, since pyschology is the hardest of the soft sciences. The Watson fuzziphobia induction experiment, the skinner box, Theodore Reik, etc., not to mention the sweeping nature of the theorizing done in psychology, have historically-i.e., from the late nineteenth century to around WWII-been at times marked by a certain madness of intensity and scope, and certainly a frequent absence of proper ehtical restraint. But what I really want is for the late night conversations I’ve enjoyed with Chris to be the basis of a new science. Small countries theory, ending racism by promoting miscegenation by aesthetic manipulation in women’s magazines, various schemes of world government and domination, etc.-I want to go off into a basement somewhere and to, one day, “show them all.” Similarly, I want to encourage Andrew to go into the Mad Classics. And I also want to be able to look into Mad Education Studies grad programs at preposterous educational institutions.
