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What sort of science is Victor learning from Agrippa?
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LINDA-ALLEN | CERTIFIED EDUCATOR
Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535) was a German mystic who practiced a "science" that combined alchemy, magic, mysticism, and astrology. Two of his books are Three Books of Occult Philosophy and On Calling Spirits. Through the writing of Agrippa, Frankenstein becomes very interested in alchemy, which is a pseudoscience whose main object is to find a way of turning base metals into gold. You could say that Frankenstein adapted the thinking of the alchemists and instead of transforming other metals into gold attempted to transform a corpse into a living being.
An interesting story about Agrippa concerns sightings of him after his death:
There were rumors that Agrippa had summoned demons on his death bed, and that a black dog roamed the countryside as his familiar. The black dog appears in tales as Faustus, Mephistopheles, and even as a grim in the Harry Potter series.
The attached picture shows how bacteria gain antibiotic resistance. Firstly, a few individuals attain a
beneficial mutation in their genetic material that accords them the capability to survive in an antibiotic. The
individuals are hence able to survive and
reproduce more than those individuals without the mutation. There is, therefore, a genetic
shift in the population in favor of the resistant genotype. After generations, the
whole population becomes antibiotic resistant.
An organism that obtains energy and nutrients by feeding on other organisms or their remains. A food web is a model of the feeding relationships between many different consumers and producers in an ecosystem. Without plants (the primary producers) consumers and decomposers would not be able to live. Producers always start every food chain. A consumer, also called a heterotroph, is an organism that cannot make its own food. It must eat producers or other organisms for energy.
