Mary Shelley and Robert Louis Stevenson understood something about human nature that modern science still struggles to explain. Two centuries-old Gothic novels reveal a truth about the darkness within us, and why scientific progress alone cannot fix the human heart.

The Corruption We Can’t Escape

Science offers us incredible gifts: formulas we can replicate, experiments we can verify, discoveries that transform our understanding of the world. There’s something beautiful about translating observations into data, into papers, into proven facts that anyone can reproduce. But here’s what science consistently fails to account for: the inherent corruption of humanity itself.

We are corrupted beings. Whatever we touch, we inevitably taint. Like an oil spill spreading across pristine waters, humanity leaves destruction in its wake, not always out of malice, but simply because it’s our nature.

Frankenstein’s Lesson: Running from Accountability

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein illustrates this perfectly. Victor Frankenstein, the brilliant scientist, creates life and immediately abandons his creation. Throughout the entire novel, he runs from the consequences of his actions, refusing to take accountability for the monster he brought into existence.

This is humanity in a nutshell. This is Adam and Eve hiding in the garden after eating the forbidden fruit. We make mistakes, and instead of owning them, we flee. We repeat the same destructive patterns over and over because we refuse to learn from our past.

The frustration isn’t just with Victor Frankenstein. It’s with all of us. We don’t want to be held accountable. Science can diagnose our problems, even understand them intellectually, but it cannot change the human heart that inevitably destroys whatever it touches.

Dr. Jekyll’s Experiment: The Evil Within

Robert Louis Stevenson takes this concept even deeper in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll recognizes what he calls “the thorough and primitive duality of man,” that within each of us exists twin natures constantly at war.

Jekyll articulates this clearly: there’s the side that seeks to do good, to walk “steadfastly and securely on his upward path,” and then there’s Mr. Hyde, the part that wants to indulge in evil, free from consequence and remorse.

Jekyll’s solution? Separate these twin natures through science. Create a potion that allows him to become Mr. Hyde, to unleash his darker impulses while keeping his respectable self intact. For a while, it works. He enjoys being evil without accountability.

But here’s the critical point: that evil side eventually consumes him. Science allowed him to isolate and understand his dual nature, but it couldn’t eliminate the corruption. It couldn’t fix what was fundamentally broken inside.

Science Creates Its Own Monsters

We critique religion for its institutional failures: the hypocrisy, the destruction, the refusal to take accountability. But science follows the same pattern.

Consider the atomic bomb. Consider how technology promised to make our lives better but has often made them worse. The first iPhone was a revolutionary device. Now look at what it’s doing to our children, to our attention spans, to our ability to connect authentically. We’ve become a society corrupted by the very technology designed to liberate us.

Science and technology are valuable tools, but they can corrupt us because we are corrupted beings. The common denominator isn’t science or religion. It’s mankind. It’s our inability to not break whatever we touch.

The Diagnosis Without the Cure

Both Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde demonstrate science’s limitation: it can diagnose the condition but cannot cure it. Science can identify our dual nature, explain our impulses, even manipulate our biology, but it cannot transform the human heart.

Jekyll discovered the “primitive duality” within himself. He understood intellectually that humans possess both good and evil natures bound together in struggle. His scientific genius allowed him to separate these natures temporarily. But understanding the problem and solving it are entirely different things.

Beyond Scientific Solutions

The evil within us, that Mr. Hyde lurking in every human soul, isn’t something we can experiment away. It’s not a chemical imbalance to correct or a genetic sequence to edit. It’s the fundamental brokenness of humanity that both Shelley and Stevenson recognized: we want to do wrong even when we know better.

At some point, accountability catches up to us. Jekyll couldn’t escape the consequences of unleashing Hyde. Frankenstein couldn’t outrun his creation. And we can’t science our way out of our own corruption.

Both these classic novels point to an ancient truth: evil doesn’t come from outside us. It comes from within. And no amount of scientific progress, no matter how brilliant or revolutionary, can fix that reality.

The question isn’t whether science is valuable. It is. The question is whether we’re honest about its limitations when confronting the deepest problem humanity faces: ourselves.