Introduction -- Evil alchemists and Doctor Faustus -- Bacon's new scientists -- Foolish virtuosi -- Newton: a scientist for God -- Arrogant and godless: scientists in eighteenth-century satire -- Inhuman scientists: the romantic perception -- Frankenstein and the creature -- Victorian scientists: doubt and struggle -- The scientist as adventurer -- Efficiency and power: the scientist under scrutiny -- The scientist as hero -- Mad, bad, and dangerous to know: reality overtakes fiction -- The impersonal scientist -- Scientia gratia scientiae: the amoral scientist -- Pandora's box -- Robots, cyborgs, androids and clones: who is in control? -- The scientist as woman -- Idealism and conscience -- Watershed: the new scientists