Movies and the Meaning of Life

Some of [the experimental method’s] obvious elements are willingness to hold belief in suspense, ability to doubt until evidence is obtained; willingness to go where evidence points instead of putting first a personally preferred conclusion; ability to hold ideas in solution and use them as hypotheses to be tested instead of as dogmas to be asserted; and (possibly the most distinctive of all) enjoyment of new fields for inquiry and of new problems.

It’s a hot, windy evening in the middle of the desert. You’re sitting alone at the base of an imposingly large satellite dish—a telescope for detecting radio waves from insanely distant objects like quasars and pulsars. Only it turns out that you’re not exactly alone. Your laptop is plugged into the dish, and what before was static in your headphones forms itself into a distinct and haunting rhythm. The aliens are calling, and they want to talk to you. You feel a shiver down your spine, a blend of elation and terror. Elation, because you have spent your scientific career poised to hear some hint of order in the cosmic chaos, and your professional credibility hinges on this moment. Terror, because—well, they are aliens, after all. It’s an awesome experience. But now anxiety presses itself upon you. What on earth will you do with this information? What can it possibly mean? How does it affect your place in the cosmos? How can you even be sure that what you are experiencing is real, not an illusion or hoax? How will others respond to you? Will they believe you? Why should they?

In Contact,1 such is the experience of Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster), a scientist working with S.E.T.I., the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Based on the 1985 science-fiction novel by the astronomer Carl Sagan,² Contact tells the story of what a first encounter between humans and intelligent extraterrestrial beings might be like. It also details the complexities of faith and belief in a world where religion and science often come into conflict—a favorite theme of Sagan’s, and a major subject in the history of philosophy.

This chapter explores tangles of faith and belief through the lens of philosophy and the characters and concepts of Contact. We pay special attention to Sagan’s mouthpiece Ellie Arroway, who embodies the practice of doubting as essential to living a life rich in insight and meaning. While this is far from the sole philosophic quandary raised by the film, it is perhaps the central one.

Perhaps, like us, you are a bit of a geek. Not of the stereotypical techno-crazed pocket-protector-wearing klutzy misfit variety, but simply someone more often transfixed by ideas than fashions and trends. Thinking matters more to you than what’s on tonight at 8:00 or whether you’re a Size 8. It’s okay. You’re not alone.

In an 1877 article titled “The Fixation of Belief,” Peirce explores this human predicament. He describes ways in which people’s beliefs become “fixed” (in the sense of “hardened,” not “repaired”). We are all too aware of how people become “set in their ways” just as plaster becomes fixed or set. Peirce writes as though his descriptions are neutral, but he does not hold that all approaches are created equal. To the contrary, he implies that some ways of believing are more reliable than others. This may appear controversial, but consider his descriptions in turn. We’ll discuss them alongside corresponding characters in Contact.

According to Peirce, one very popular approach to believing is the “method of tenacity,” better known as the “ostrich mentality.” We are all experts at using this method. People sidestep their rational capacities and stubbornly avoid situations that might provoke doubt. In Peirce’s words: “When an ostrich buries its head in the sand as danger approaches, it very likely takes the happiest course. It hides the danger, and then calmly says there is no danger.”⁴ Many people are remarkably skilled at hiding from all that could challenge their beliefs. This is the method of a religious terrorist in Contact. He simply won’t—or can’t—tolerate the obvious upshot of a message from outer space: the universe doesn’t revolve around humanity! So he denies access to the evidence by setting off a bomb in the heart of the machine. He and many others are killed in the massive explosion (a required element for all science-fiction films!), including David Drumlin (Tom Skerrit), the scientist who edged out Ellie in the bid to represent humanity to the ETs. This is indeed a dangerous and deadly method of believing.

According to the eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, the problem with those who follow the method of authority is not “lack of intelligence, but lack of determination and courage to use that intelligence without another’s guidance. Sapere aude! Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence.”⁶ Recognizing the dangers of methods such as tenacity and authority, Peirce, like the philosopher John Dewey in the epigraph to this chapter, turns to science for a model of experimental, community-engaged, and error-correcting thinking. As Ellie sees it, religious believers like Palmer follow tenacious and authority-influenced methods when developing what she regards as their unquestioned and unanalyzed faith. Meanwhile, she exemplifies an approach to “fixing” her beliefs through constant questioning, probing experimentation, and hard evidence: the method of science. Ellie, Sagan, and Peirce believe this method to be best suited to the quest for truth.7

The philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote in 1903 that science reveals us alone in a hostile and purposeless universe, our loves and beliefs “the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms.”⁸ We must, says Russell, revolt in active defiance of this meaningless void. Like Russell, Ellie does not believe science supports traditional religious beliefs about a divine cosmic plan. But in contrast with Russell’s pessimism, science gives meaning to Ellie’s life. By opening the doors to contemplation of the sublime vastness of the universe (“billions and billions of stars surrounded by billions and billions of galaxies,” as Sagan was reputed to say), science reveals that we Earthlings may be far from alone in the universe. If not, as Contact tirelessly repeats, “It’d be an awful waste of space.”

Yet science is not just about conclusions; it is a way of living and thinking that embraces intellectual suspense and constant questioning. Suspense is endured gladly in films, novels, and magic. It is not always welcomed, much less enjoyed for its own sake, in matters of real world beliefs—particularly religious, moral, and political ones. To Ellie, a scientific turn of mind spells an end to the dogmatism and fanaticism that mark the idea that beliefs can be declared true without worldly testing. Consider the feeling of absolute certainty that drove the Inquisition and that today drives terrorism, genocide, and nationalism. To whatever extent a belief is held scientifically, it is tentative and hypothetical. Through testing, we ask the world to answer back, and the answer we hear is always open to ongoing questioning.

When the machine is sabotaged (killing Drumlin), Ellie’s dreams of cosmic contact seem destined to remain unfulfilled. However, the mischievous and ingenious S.R. Hadden arranges for Ellie to travel on a secret, second machine that has been built in Japan. The massive machine’s arms spin to create a highly charged vortex. Her pod is dropped into the energy field. The moviegoer shares her experience, which she describes as a trip through some kind of wormhole. Ellie apparently arrives on a planet that resembles a picture of Pensacola, Florida that she drew as a child. An alien greets her in the comforting form of her late, beloved father. Contact made, culminating in promises for future small steps in developing an Earth-extraterrestrial relationship, Ellie travels safely home after an eighteen-hour adventure. A baffled mission control, relieved that she was not injured, struggles to detect the source of what seems to them an obvious malfunction: her spacecraft appears to have fallen unimpeded through the machine straight into the water below. Only a few Earth seconds have elapsed.

We’re prone to think the opposite of belief is disbelief—that, for example, the opposite of belief in God is atheism. While accurate as far as formal logic goes, this captures nothing of any relevance to how we think. The psychological opposite of belief is doubt, uncertainty about what to believe. To doubt that we’re alone in the universe is not to assert its opposite. Ellie’s doubt reveals her readiness to re-open her mind to other interpretations; this is what it means to have an open, rather than an empty, mind. She is not indifferent or slacking, nor is she merely putting on an act of doubting; she is simply unwilling to make claims that outstrip her knowledge. Peirce describes this scientific spirit: it “requires a man to be at all times ready to dump his whole cartload of beliefs the moment experience is against them. The desire to learn forbids him to be perfectly cocksure that he knows already.”¹¹

In this spirit, the great philosopher (and ancient geek!) Socrates is reported to have said “the unexamined life is not worth living.”12 In 399 B.C.E., Socrates was put on trial by his fellow citizens for “corrupting the young,” but he in fact aided young and old by showing that those who claimed to have wisdom often did not. Unlike those he daily questioned in the Athenian marketplace, Socrates was wise enough to recognize his own ignorance. Unlike his accusers, Socrates was not afraid of examining beliefs, and he encouraged such activity in others. He described himself as a “gadfly.” Just as a horsefly buzzing around your hammock makes it impossible to doze, Socrates pestered his fellow citizens whenever they were sleepwalking through life. He wouldn’t let them intellectually doze, resting on whatever beliefs they happened to have picked up. While most of his neighbors mistook their unexamined beliefs for knowledge, Socrates creatively disturbed himself and others.

In contrast, because of David Drumlin’s willingness to say whatever he thinks will get him aboard the machine (without opening himself up to self-examination and doubt), he gives up his integrity. J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield would have called Drumlin a “phony.” Two thousand, four hundred years ago, the unexamined beliefs of Socrates’s accusers had disastrous consequences: he was executed by the state. Drumlin’s life was also unjustly taken as a result of fanaticism, but he left little legacy of integrity and humility.¹³

In the hearing, Kitz ridicules Ellie’s claim that she traveled in the machine through a wormhole. He hypothesizes that either she is lying or that she is the victim of a malicious scheme of Hadden’s. When Kitz asks Ellie if she expects him to take her word on faith, she replies in a way that embodies experimental thinking and open-mindedness:

ELLIE: Is it possible that it didn’t happen? Yes. As a scientist, I must concede that, I must volunteer that.

KITZ: Wait a minute, let me get this straight. You admit that you have absolutely no physical evidence to back up your story?

KITZ: You admit that if you were in our position you would respond with exactly the same degree of incredulity and skepticism?

TO THINK ABOUT

1. Should we approach all aspects of our lives with Ellie’s skepticism? Moral beliefs? Political beliefs? Religious beliefs? Scientific beliefs?

2. By including hard-to-dispute evidence of Ellie’s ET encounter (the eighteen hours of static), has director Robert Zemeckis made our experience of Contact more, or less, meaningful? Would having to wrestle with doubt about the reality within the film be a more meaningful, provoking, and fitting way to end Ellie’s story?

3. Some people have claimed that science has its own area of expertise and explanation, while religion occupies another. Neither account can give us the entire view of the nature of the universe. Do you think Contact supports such a position?

TO READ NEXT

John Dewey. Democracy and Education, Volume 8 of The Collected Works of John Dewey: The Middle Works, edited by Jo Ann Boydston. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985 [1916].

William James. Pragmatism. Indianapolis: Hackett. 1997 [1907].

Charles Sanders Peirce. The Fixation of Belief. In Justus Buchler, ed., Philosophical Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce (New York: Dover, 1955).

Plato. Apology. In Five Dialogues (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002).

Carl Sagan, The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Random House, 1996.

Michael Shermer. Why People Believe Weird Things. Second edition. New York: Owl Books, 2002.

1 Contact, Directed by Robert Zemeckis, 2 hr. 30 min. Warner, 1997. Video-cassette.

² Carl Sagan, Contact (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), based on the story by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. Sagan gained national fame in the early 1980s as host of the PBS television series, Cosmos. He died in 1996. The last book he published before his death was The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Random House, 1996).

³ Thomas Vernor Smith, Creative Sceptics: In Defense of The Liberal Temper (Chicago: Willitt, Clark, and Co., 1934), p. 7.

⁴ Charles Sanders Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief” in Philosophical Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Justus Buchler (New York: Dover, 1955), p. 12.

⁵ Peirce, p. 14.

⁶ Immanuel Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?” in Marvin Perry, et. al., eds., Sources of Western Tradition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), pp. 54–55. Kant replaces the method of authority with an a priori approach that, according to Peirce, is not much better than what it replaces.

⁷ For more on science, pragmatism, and meaning, see Steven Fesmire, John Dewey and Moral Imagination (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), Chapter 2.

⁸ Bertrand Russell, “A Free Man’s Worship,” in Why I Am Not A Christian (London: Allen and Unwin, 1957), p. 107.

⁹ It should be underscored that this is a deeply misleading statistic, particularly in light of atheistic perspectives in Asia.

¹⁰Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, p. 172.

¹¹In Smith, p. 232.

¹² Plato, “Apology” in Five Dialogues (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), p. 41.

¹³ Drumlin’s character is much more nuanced in Sagan’s novel, from which the movie is loosely adapted.

¹⁴ Smith, Creative Sceptics, p. 233

¹⁵ William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act. II, Scene II, in The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, edited by William Aldis Wright (New York: Garden City Press, 1936), p. 830.

¹⁶ For viewing Contact and offering suggestions and insights, thanks to Tatiana Abatemarco, Joshua Bakelaar, Daniel Guentchev, Elizabeth Howe, Charlotte Norris, David Rasmussen, and Alisha Rogers.