In our precious reading, “Discourse of Method”, Rene Descartes points out that education is a process that will answer your questions and remove your doubts. Descartes also believes education would lead to a certain truth. In part three of his discourse, Descartes states “I was successful enough; for, since I endeavoured to discover the falsehood or incertitude of the propositions I examined, not by feeble conjectures, but by clear and certain reasonings, I met with nothing so doubtful as not to yield some conclusion of adequate certainty”(3). Descartes explores the world to find the necessary knowledge to answer his questions He thinks the education he gained from his traveling and experience can clear his mind and provide him with the certainty that he is eager for. In Descartes’s point of view, knowledge is a good thing.

However, in this week’s reading, Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, Victor Frankenstein has different views about knowledge. Quite opposite to Descartes, he thinks knowledge is a dangerous thing. In the beginning of the book, Victor believes science is the only route to find truth. “In other studies you go as far as others have gone before you, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit there is continual food for discovery and wonder”(4). However, as he digs deeper and deeper into his subject, he is so fascinated and he attempts to go beyond the human limit and he find out the secret of life. Victor’s thirst for knowledge drives him to create the monster with strength and intelligence. However, he is too late to realize where his pursuit of knowledge has brought him. The monster ends up murder his family and destroys the things he valued. Victor finally realizes what he has done results in deathly consequences and is dangerous.

In addition, Victor Frankenstein’s monster challenges Descartes’s ideology by presenting  the danger of knowledge. The monster lives in an isolated environment after he vanished. He doesn’t know anything about the human world and he doesn’t realize that he is unnatural. Starting with no knowledge at all, the monster learns to keep warm and find food to eat as he’s exploring the nature. The monster learns to speak the human language by listening to his neighbors and tries to understand them by their gesture. As the monster knows more about the human culture and sensation, he wants to learn more about it and he wants to be like human. “Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind when it has once seized on it like a lichen on the rock”(13). The monster urges to learn more about the human world; the more knowledge he has, and the more he wants to become a human being. However, even though he tries so hard to attain knowledge, he can’t escape from his fate of being a monster.