★★★★☆ Scientist hero story

Arrowsmith

Sinclair Lewis

I read Arrowsmith as a high school student, probably in the late 1960s or early 1970s. It was for some years one of my very favorite books -- certainly I would have rated it five stars, if we were rating books that way in the 60s. I have not re-read it in many years, and have no real desire to do so. In retrospect the things that made it a favorite when I was a teenager are things I would dislike now. At that time I knew that I wanted to become a scientist, and I had very little concrete idea of what a scientist actually does.

In Arrowsmith Sinclair Lewis (Paul de Kruif also deserves credit/blame for Arrowsmith, as it was from him that Lewis got his ideas about how science worked) presents his protagonist, Martin Arrowsmith, as a hero scientist. Furthermore, he is the kind of hero all scientists like to imagine themselves to be.

Scientists, like artists and politicians and businesspeople, like to think of themselves as rebels, subversives -- people who speak truth to power and whose job is to think new things that no one has thought before. Take it from me -- even the most hidebound conservative establishment professor of science is, in his/her own mind, a pirate. That is Martin Arrowsmith and his mentor Gottlieb. There is of course some truth in this picture of the scientist (and artist and politician and businessperson), but it is not the whole picture.

Cementing Martin's status as a scientific Marty Stu, there is a love story in Arrowsmith. It was appealing to me as a teenager -- one of those love stories that features an attractive person gazing adoringly up at our hero for no really apparent reason. Eventually she dies to motivate Martin.

Aside from the obvious, the problem with these portrayals of scientist heroes is that they are inaccurate and damaging. Despite the silly academic classification system in which the sciences are contrasted with the humanities, science is a humanity -- a uniquely human intellectual pursuit conducted in converse with other humans. Science is teamwork. Martin and Gottlieb would not have been good scientists.

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