Postby Technomancer » Sat Oct 13, 2007 6:41 am
The Day the Earth Stood Still is a great movie, but I don't think I'd have called it science-based. In the same way, Contact does a good job on the science but wasn't that great of a movie (read the book, seriously). Personally, I'd have put The Ganymede Project on the list before either of those. Admittedly, it is hard to come up with a list of good science-based movies, since the writers are usually hideously incompetent when it actually comes to the science.
The scientific method," Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, "is nothing but the normal working of the human mind." That is to say, when the mind is working; that is to say further, when it is engaged in corrrecting its mistakes. Taking this point of view, we may conclude that science is not physics, biology, or chemistry—is not even a "subject"—but a moral imperative drawn from a larger narrative whose purpose is to give perspective, balance, and humility to learning.
Neil Postman
(The End of Education)
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge
Isaac Aasimov