Contact

If the pursuit of truth is held sacred, then scientists and preachers can love one another too

Adapted from Carl Sagan’s Contact, the film shifts away from the novel’s focus on women’s social experience and instead discards most of its hard science fiction outer shell to turn toward the question of science and religion.

So I want to explore science and religion against this near-”deus ex machina” backdrop. I was previously acquainted with the work of American philosophers like Wilfrid Sellars, who proposed “scientific realism” — the view that “theoretical entities of science genuinely exist, emphasizing the objectivity of scientific methods, rules of inference, and concepts.” What is obvious is that this raises a further question: if science is real, how can we know this real science? It is like a Mobius strip, endlessly looping, and the middle term is religion. One might say that religion is both the beginning of science and an obstacle to its development. The film shows the extreme frenzy religion can provoke around scientific questions — some people celebrate, others commit suicide. This is the manifestation of encountering religious symbols, and it can also be seen as a kind of worldview. The film presents three such worldviews: science of pure reason, a conciliatory blend of the two, and religion of pure emotion.

In the final hearing, the director has the protagonist, Arroway, shift from absolute rationality to pure emotion, and has a believer speak the line: “But we both share the same goal — the pursuit of truth.”

In this respect, the film’s central thesis comes into full view: “But we both share the same goal — the pursuit of truth.”