Jurassic Park Science

Jurassic Park may be more of suspense thriller with dinosaurs than a science fiction novel, but who's counting? Science is totally a big deal in this baby. We'll be honest: the book may not be anti-science, but it's definitely kind of anti-scientist. Now, not every scientist in the book comes off as a fool—Grant and Sattler, for example, put their scientific knowledge to good use—but the plot basically involves scientists being stupid. Then, there's Ian Malcolm, the primary ethical voice of the novel, who's totally critical of the methods and the pride of the scientists in the novel. According to him, scientists are destroyers as much as they are discoverers.

Questions About Science

1. Who are the scientists in Jurassic Park? What are their specific sciences?
2. What scientific knowledge did Henry Wu lack when building on the dinosaur DNA?
3. In what ways did Jurassic Park fail because of scientific failures?
4. What is Malcolm's criticism of Grant and Sattler's scientific work?

Chew on This

Malcolm is largely right about scientists.

Malcolm is a scientist himself.