Posted by Lari muth on January 27, 19103 at 11:22:48:

In Reply to: Was Faust a scientist? posted by Juliana Campideli Neves on August 06, 19101 at 12:03:38:

Do you mean the historical Faust or Goethe's ?

The Faust-story came into being during the 16th century, and during that time there was not such a clear distinction between what was "science" and what was religion or philosophy.
During that time, plenty of alchemists, astrologers and mystics were paving the way for natural sciences like chemistry, anatomy, biology and astronomy (to name a few). Their procedures were not always scientific, but sometimes they got scientifically viable results, and the foundations for a scientific system were lain.

The "deal with the Devil" was often used (not least by the church) as an argument against new ideas, and many versions of the Faust-myth deal with Faust using the Devil to gain knowledge "man was not meant to know".
This view of science as a means of making man into a god can be found in many legends, you could do worse than to check out Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" or the classical Greek Prometheus-myth.

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