by Michael Manhart
The movie Interstellar was buzzy in the science media when it came out in 2014, both because it prominently featured exotic astrophysical phenomena (time dilation, black holes, worm holes, and so forth) and because it had the involvement of a famous physicist, Kip Thorne, to vouch for its credibility. After having meant to watch it for several years — it’s long and I felt it a disservice to watch it on a plane — I finally got around to it recently.
While some of the physics content came across as a bit shallow to me (despite the movie’s scientific bona fides), the only part that bothered me was the lone genius trope, in which scientific work depends solely on the brilliance of one individual. Michael Caine’s character has supposedly been working on a “gravitational propulsion theory” to transport humanity off a deteriorating Earth, but on his deathbed he confesses to Jessica Chastain’s character that he discovered the idea wouldn’t work a long time ago. (Later, Chastain’s character succeeds him as the lone genius and solves the problem to save humanity.) So wait, NASA had only one person working on “Plan A” to save humanity, and no one bothered to check his work?
I get that the constraints of storytelling make it a lot more compelling to have a small number of characters, rather than a collective, drive the action. But personally I think the collective nature of science is one of its essential features: science doesn’t move forward when one person knows something, it moves forward when many people know something. An idea has to be understood and vetted by a lot of people for anyone to take it seriously, not to mention that most modern scientific ideas are sufficiently complicated or labor-intensive that substantial progress can’t be made by just one person anyway. This may sound pedantic, but I think the lone genius trope pushes people away from science, which is a pity because the reality of science is far more approachable: it depends on a lot of small contributions from a lot of regular people, rather than a breakthrough from a chosen one.
Can anyone suggest other movies or books that better portray the collective nature of scientific progress?
