Brave New World: The Advancement of Science :: Brave New World

chivalric New ball The Advancement of Science  Christy Campbell Mrs. Doig Eng OAC 2 16 May, 1996         When thinking of progress, most people think of advances in thescientific fields, accept that most discoveries and technologies atomic number 18beneficial to society.  Are these advances as beneficial as most people think?In the novel Brave New World, the generator Aldous Huxley, warns readers thatscientific advances can be a threat to society.  This is particularly evident inthe fields of biology, technology and psychology.  According to Huxley, Thetheme of Brave New World is not the advancement of science as such it is theadvancement of science as it affects human individuals(Huxley CLC 79 290).        One scientific advance of which Huxley warns readers of is that inbiology.  In the setting of Brave New World, henceforth referred to as thereservation, the mass production of humans is accomplis hed with the Bokanovskyprocess.  In this process, human beings are genetically engineered inlaboratories.  ... a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide.From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full sized adult(Huxley Brave New World 4).One of the threats of this genetic breeding is that no family structures existon the reservation.  Instead, humans are raised in conditioning centres.  R.T.Oerton points out that Present knowledge indicates, for instance, that a childcannot be deprived of parents or parent figures, as were the children in BraveNew World, without suffering lasting pathological damage to hispersonality.(Oerton CLC 7 308).  Another threat that the Bokanovsky processposes to society is that life is not highly valued.  Murder kills scarce theindividual and, after all what is an individual?  With a sweeping gesture he Mr.Foster, director of hatcheries and c onditioning indicated the rows ofmicroscopes, the test-tubes, the incubators.  We can make a new one with the superior ease-as many as we like(Huxley Brave New World 133).  Human life holdsno value because it can be easily replaced through the Bokanovsky process.Furthermore, Bokanovskys system of mass production prevents individuality, ason the reservation, all people are cloned.  Starting from the time of decanting,each embryo is genetically cloned to fall into one of the motley social classes.Within each social class, all members are cloned to be intellectually andphysically equivalent.  Biological technology helps to achieve this equality bygenetically shaping the minds of society.  In Brave New World , onesintelligence depends on the amount of alcohol injected into their embryo.  Forexample, one of the lower classes in society, Epsilons, have quite a high amount