A large part of the reason why Victor does not want to study the contemporary scientists suggested by Mr. Krempe is because he simply does not like the man. Although Victor admits that the professor is "deeply imbued in the secrets of his science", he calls him "an uncouth man...a little squat man with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance". The first time they meet, Krempe cannot hide his amazement that Victor has been focusing his studies on ancient masters such as Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus, and rebukes him bluntly, saying,
"Every minute...that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names. Good God! In what desert land have you lived, where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies which you have so greedily imbibed are a thousand years old and as...
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musty as they are ancient?"
On a visceral level, Victor is not inclined to follow the advice of a man who treats him so rudely and insultingly. He is a romantic, and apt to follow his emotions, even when doing so flies in the face of logic.
Victor admits that he had long ago come to the conclusion himself that the authors he had been studying were pretty much "useless", but he has "a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy" as well. He realizes that the goals of ancient alchemists had been to achieve a certain immortality and power, and that those objectives were "futile"; still, to Victor, they had a sense of grandness about them of which he is not yet ready to let go. Victor sees modern scientific philosophy, in contrast, as being focused solely on destroying "those visions on which (his) interest in science was chiefly founded". Victor is not ready to embrace the teachings of more recent masters in science, because to him, it would require and exchange of "chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth" (Volume 1, Chapter 2).
In Frankenstein, why does Victor reject studying the scientists suggested by M. Krempe?
In Volume I, Chapter 3 of the novel Frankenstein we meet the character of M. Krempe. He is described by Victor as a
little squat man, with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance.
As a professor of Natural Philosophy, M. Krempe has a huge admiration for things that are logically explained. When he asks Victor about his progress in the diversity of branches of Science, Victor confesses that he has been spending a lot of time reading books about alchemy and other hidden sciences.
M. Krempe is arrogant, uncouth, and basically insults Victor by denigrating Victor's choice of study and he gives Victor a number of treaties that he should read which, in his opinion, can actually make Victor smarter.
However, Victor denies it because, in his own words:
As a child, I had not been content with the results promised by the modern professors of natural science. With a confusion of ideas only to be accounted for by my extreme youth, and my want of a guide on such matters, I had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time, and exchanged the discoveries of recent inquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchemists. Besides, I had a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy. It was very different when the masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed.
Basically what Victor is saying is that he prefers to mix things that are real with things that are deemed fantastic because this is the same method of study that the ancient greats would do: Astrology, for example, is one of such studies that mixes the natural with the supernatural. That is what Victor preferred to do.
We should question, however, if Victor's ambitious nature is not already leading him to believe that he is above everyone when it comes to intelligence. In this chapter we already can see that Victor does not use words lightly. He actually intends to search in the realms of immortality and the creation of man. He is therefore already smitten by the possibility of creating the impossible. Therefore, Victor refuses due to his own arrogance, his ambition, and his idea that he can do something really extraordinary.