Dystopian Genesis: The Scientist's Role in Society, According to Jack Arnold

In 1971, Joseph Ben-David's The Scientist's Role in Society reinvigorated the sociology of science by presenting the emergence of autonomous science as a social process.² For Ben-David, the history of science was not a history of ideas but a history of social and political developments that created specific social functions for science and for scientists. A social role for the scientist was able to develop only as a result of the unfettered pursuit of knowledge encouraged by the Enlightenment.³ Paradoxically, the specific social function of science required it to be free of political or religious interference and yet demanded its involvement in solving social problems (often those caused exactly by scientific and technological change⁴). Science was, therefore, both autonomous and intricately woven into society.

Ben-David's account of this relationship between science and society stands in stark contrast to views held in the study of science two decades earlier. Where Ben-David saw science as deeply embedded in society, internalist historians of science, following Alexandre Koyré, and positivist philosophers of science, following the Vienna Circle, maintained a view of science as an intellectual enterprise that was, at best, removed from, and, at worst, infringed on by, the social and the political spheres.⁵ Indeed, this view reflected a development within American society in which science became more and more distanced from social, political, and economic processes. Under pressure from Cold War politics, scientists retreated from public affairs and refrained from associating their work with social or political issues.⁶ In the same period, these researchers, especially physicists, detached themselves from the cultural and political centers and developed a pragmatic approach to adapt their work to their "suburbanization."⁷ While science as an intellectual endeavor was increasingly regarded as striving to transcend all worldly matters in search of objective truth, scientists themselves were becoming more and more involved in the military-industrial complex.⁸ Tension between their traditional role as public advisors on social problems and their new role as secret advisors to the government and the military created a potentially dangerous position for scientists, who were, in turn, regarded with a growing distrust among the American public.⁹

Ben-David was well aware of the problems that the scientist's role in society could entail. Public trust in a science that could remain autonomous in the pursuit of knowledge, while its practitioners nevertheless became involved in political and military affairs, was based on Ben-David's belief that knowledge had intrinsic moral value.¹⁰ That belief was fueled by recent scientific successes that he believed raised "utopian expectations of a cognitive re-ordering of the world."¹¹ Few periods in history have seen a "utopian belief in the power of science to solve all the problems of mankind" as strong as that prevalent in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and few documents from that era depict the subsequent moral crisis of science as strikingly as the movies directed by Jack Arnold between 1953 and 1959. Arnold began his work in science fiction with a critical appreciation of the potential for science to shape society, a utopian vision he brought to the screen in the 1953 film It Came from Outer Space. In his subsequent movies, however, Arnold began to explore the difficulties inherent in the relationship between science and society, leading him to criticize, reject, and ultimately ridicule the utopian idea, which Ben-David would continue into the Seventies, that science could morally improve the human condition. While Arnold's films of this period belong to a variety of genres and are the products of different production backgrounds, they can be viewed as forming a coherent narrative about science and its relation to society – a narrative of skepticism that is remarkable for its resonance and style.

Arnold is most famous for his B-grade science-fiction movies, produced by William Alland for Universal Studios, although a number of these were shot with budgets in excess of $500,000.00, which set them apart from most Bs...