SOURCE: "Evil Alchemists and Doctor Faustus," in her From Faust to Strangelove: Representations of the Scientist in Western Literature, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, pp. 9-22.

In the excerpt below, Haynes contrasts the sinister medieval view of Faust as a black hearted alchemist with more benign Renaissance humanist interpretations that see Faust as an inquisitive mortal striving to surpass his human limitations.

Remote as they may seem from twentieth-century atomic physicists or industrial chemists in white lab coats, surrounded by equipment costing more than their life earnings, the medieval alchemists were the predecessors of modern scientists. Not only were they at the cutting edge of experimental research into the mysteries of nature, but they contributed to the profession an aura of mystery, secrecy, suspicion, and, at times, irreligion from which it has never wholly succeeded in detaching itself, either in literature or in the public perception, of scientists.…

The...