Science as Ritual

H.P. Lovecraft -- The Mountains of Madness

Others have commented on the technical descriptions that feature so prominently in Lovecraft's tale of an ill-fated antarctic expedition.  I'm intrigued, though, by the importance of information and science -- and the strange roles they play in the story.  In many ways, this is a story about the limits, malleability, and breakdown of human knowledge.  It begins, after all, with the statement "I am forced into speech because men of science have refused to follow my advice... It is altogether against my will that I tell my reasons for opposing this contemplated invasion of the antarctic..."  Here is a man of science struggling against his colleagues, and describing himself as powerless ("forced into speech").

Early in the story, the veneer of scientific confidence and precision quickly crumbles, revealing poetry (Poe's Mount Yaanek), myth ("the dreaded Necronomicon"), and art (the paintings of Nicholas Roerich).  Along with measurements of latitude and longitude, we hear "Distant mountains floated in the sky as enchanted cities, and often the whole white world would dissolve into a gold, silver, and scarlet land of Dunsanian dreams..."  The boundaries upon which rationality depend begin to dissolve: "the tendency of snowy earth and sky to merge into one mystical opalescent void with no visible horizon to mark the junction of the two."

Once the landmark discoveries begin to be revealed we have biological, geological, and paleontological lists that begin to sound like the convoluted, fabricated mythology of Cthulhu and his apocalyptic entourage.  Thus, "Early in the boring the sandstone had given place to a vein of Comanchian limestone full of minute fossil cephalopods, corals, echini, and spirifera, and with occasional suggestions of siliceous sponges and marine vertebrate bones -- the latter probably of teliosts, sharks, and ganoids."  It is tempting to argue that, in the course of its gradually erosion by the "madness" of earth's secret history, the expedition performs science not as a rational endeavor, but as an arcane ritual -- an act of magic inspired by the monstrous forces that threaten to consume it.

Nor is this an erudite, careful ritual.  It is an act of urgent, even reckless violence.  The "remarkable drill devised by Prof. Frank H. Pabodie" is vital to the story, but more than that we get descriptions like "We extend search area underground by hacking away stalactites."  Then, of course, there is the fateful dissection of the supposedly fossilized Elder Ones: "Nothing like delicacy or accuracy was possible with instruments hardly able to cut the anomalous tissue..."  The explorers are eager to amass as much information as they can, as quickly as possible, but it only serves to spiral towards revelations that will ultimately destroy them.