The Big Bang Theory and Philosophy: TV Scientists Outpace Academic Philosophers

The week of November 9, The Big Bang Theory held first place for its time slot, continuing its overall trend as a very popular television series for the past six years. (The show was renewed for a seventh season 2013-2014.)  Its ratings explain this tie-in, The Big Bang Theory and Philosophy: Rock, Paper, Scissors, Aristotle, Locke by Dean A. Kowalski, editor (John Wiley & Sons, 2012). The volume is part of a series that includes South Park and Philosophy, and The Big Lebowsky and Philosophy, among 28 titles, with more announced, including The Simpsons and Philosophy. The non-judgmental range of titles is internally consistent with the post-modernist presentation in this book. These seventeen essays come mostly from professors of philosophy who deny everything that makes The Big Bang Theory not just popular, but great. Myself, as a nerd and a philosopher who is a fan of the show, I found this book to be a big whimper of a disappointment.

 For myself, as an Objectivist, the book started out well with two essays based on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. “Aristotle on Sheldon Cooper: Ancient Greek Meets Modern Geek” by Greg Littman (professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville) asks: “Should you live like Sheldon Cooper? Think hard because you don’t have the luxury of not making a choice. Fourteen billion years after the Big Bang, evolution has finally produced a type of animal, human being, that must choose how it will live.” It is fundamental to objective morality that we need values because unlike plants and animals our modes of survival are not in-born. Beyond even the active learning of young animals, humans must choose not just their actions, but the standards of right and wrong for those actions. So, agreeing with the premise, I enjoyed the chapter. From there, entropy took over. I needed a few more chapters to identify the root problem.

 For example, in Chapter Two, editor and author Dean A. Kowalski (professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin Waukesha) invests some considerable time weighing Dr. Sheldon Cooper's “selfishness” without getting past the Utilitarians and completely ignoring Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand could be dismissed as a minor 20th century philosopher. This book does not cite Bertrand Russell among many others. However, any modern investigation that attempts to address “selfishness” without citing Ayn Rand lacks reference to the substantive literature of the field. But that still was not the fundamental error.

 Chapter 6 (Selfishness, Pleasure, and Virtue) by Gregory L. Bock and Jeffrey L. Bock baldly claims: “Ethical egoism doesn't have a wide following among philosophers because it's difficult to defend the view that only the agent's interests matter.” As a serious claim by an academic philosopher (Gregory L.) and the seemingly valuable employee of an Internet marketing firm (Jeffrey L.), this is another example of how capitalism suffers because altruists and mystics hold positions of responsibility. While it is (unfortunately) possible for a professor with anti-individualist beliefs to hold a position in academic philosophy, that the webmaster of an Internet marketing firm cannot justify self-interest is like a surgeon who cannot accept the need for anesthetic and antiseptic.

In Chapter Nine on the philosophy of science CUNY’s Massimo Pigliucci says that the humor in this show comes from the fact that the characters attempt to apply the methods of science to all of life and life’s problems. Life requires more than the scientific method, says Pigliucci. He denigrates scientists such as Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, and Richard Hawkins who challenge philosophy as a dead end, and for being as unproductive as theology in providing meaningful answers to useful questions. In point of fact, Thomas Kuhn famously called philosophy to question specifically because we still have philosophers advancing Aristotlean philosophy with Aristotlean essays (Chapter 1 and Chapter 2), but we do not have physicists and chemists advancing better forms of phlogiston theory. Philosophy has not abandoned its unworkable paradigms.

The erroneous lemma at the core of Pigliucci’s thesis is unstated, but its corollaries are explicit, though offered without proof. The scientific method is declared insufficient to provide spiritual improvements and artistic inspiration. The scientific method is dismissed as “scientism.” True enough, the rote application of methods without standards is wrong. Austrian liberal and free market proponent Friedrich A. Hayek warned of the “conceit of knowledge” evidenced by the scientism of Keynesians. In so doing, he was in the tradition of Robert Boyle (The Skeptical Chymist) and Richard Feynman (“Cargo Cult Science”). Piglucci’s unstated theorem is that the rational-empirical method (objectivism with lowercase o) is invalid for the most important endeavors: objectivism might work for chemistry and physics, but not for literature, painting, theater, or religion.

That the scientific method completely invalidates religion should end the discussion. Instead, post-modern philosophers only insist that this demonstrates that the scientific method is incomplete. Similarly, using your senses and your reason to identify good art is fully appropriate. Art that cannot survive scrutiny is bad art. Again, the post-modernists deny fact and reason, claiming that your inability to appreciate anything and everything called “art” is evidence of your own short-comings – and the failure of science.

And BBT is indeed good art. Prof. Pigliucci does not understand why. He asserts that the humor comes from the fact that the characters attempt to apply the methods of science to all of life and life’s problems. But that is not the case. The humor comes from their means of application, just as when in classic comedy the Three Stooges labored as plumbers or built a (functioning) airplane. The task is valid – science works – but it is only that the characters are self-limited—as are we all – or it would not be funny. Humor is only another path to catharsis. For catharsis to happen, you must be able to see yourself in the place of the hero. And we do, apparently millions of us each week. 

This failure to integrate the key variables underlies Chapter 4 by graduate student W. Scott Clifton who attempts to explain why it is permissible to laugh at Dr. Sheldon Cooper. Clifton accepts the pseudo-science that places “Asperger’s Syndrome” on a continuum leading to “autism.” The truth is that Dr. Hans Asperger was an Austrian nazi whose work was approved by the US military occupation of Germany because the Army intelligence interrogators thought that it was appropriate to socialize “little professors” by marching them through the woods singing songs just like the Boy Scouts they all were. In point of fact, the crass socialization of such institutions has as its specific purpose the illigitimization of Sheldon Cooper. That uncompromising fact is restated in Chapter 4.

W. Scott Clifton claims that the character of Dr. Sheldon Cooper lacks social skills, evidenced by his failing to understand simple statements of social intercourse. In truth the humor is that Cooper calls into question the common social parroting and echoing without consideration for meaning that most people are given to. Cooper forces us to think about our words. And of course that is funny! How could it not be in the days of “Obamacare”? (Is President Obama going to care for us? Or it is because he cares about us? Or something else?) To W. Scott Clifton, the question must be whether it is moral to laugh at Sheldon (Leonard, Raj, and the others), because he cannot see us laughing with them – or us laughing with them at him.

This ignorance is also reflected in Janelle Pötzsch’s essay on Wittgenstein. Sheldon is supposedly an object of our derisive humor when he insists on literal meanings of common phrases. “How have you been?” Penny asks. Sheldon replies: “Well, my existence is a continuum, so I’ve been what I am at each point in the implied time period.” For Pötzsch the obvious humor is that Sheldon Cooper misunderstands the common phrases of social engagement. In point of fact, the humor here is that “normal” people (personified by Penny) do not understand the ambiguities they parrot when they echo what they hear without analyzing the content. The four corners of the Earth… sunrise, sunset …to catch a cold…to fall in love… war on terror… war on drugs… public education… majority rule… family values… common sense...

In Chapter 5 “Is Wil Wheaton Evil?” librarian Donna Marie Smith quotes theologian Martin Buber who claimed that the Bible echoes historical evidence that “man introduced the lie into nature.” The scientific truth is that deception is a deeply evolved and widely inherited strategy among both plants and animals. That humans are somehow especially flawed because we deceive each other may be the claim of a mystic, but it cannot be an assertion from a scientist. Thus, the character of Dr. Sheldon Cooper is humorously self-contradictory in his (contextual) inability to lie and his (contextual) ability to carry one off so well. Humor depends on such intersections.

Author Jonathan Lawhead (doctoral candidate at Berkeley) cites William Whewell who coined the word “scientist” in 1834 for the pursuit of activities previously called “natural philosophy.” A quibble, perhaps, but according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online) entry on William Whewell: “In response to a challenge by the poet S.T. Coleridge in 1833, Whewell invented the English word “scientist;” before this time the only terms in use were ‘natural philosopher’ and ‘man of science’.” The word “science” already existed. The 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language by Noah Webster cites Dryden and Johnson among others for usage.

So, (though Lawhead himself fails to note this) capitalism made the scientist possible. That explains the anti-capitalist assumptions centered on the character of Stuart Bloom, the comic book store owner, whom Adolfas Mackonis assumes is necessarily beneath the physicists in his grasp of truth (Chapter 12: “I am Afraid You Couldn’t be More Wrong”). However, Stuart has achieved the status of a regular, and rightfully so.  Like the others, Bloom holds an academic degree: his is in fine art. He certainly shares their passions for graphic novels, super heroes, and science fiction. He even stood in at gaming for Howard Horowitz while Howard was on the ISS.

 Writing about counterfactuals, Adolfas Mackonis (doctorate from Vilnius University, Lithuania), asserts the post-modernist view that any conditional is valid: anything we can imagine is perhaps real. The topic is degrees of wrongfulness. In the comic book store Stuart Bloom says that Sheldon Cooper could not be more wrong. Cooper replies that wrong is an absolute state having no degrees. Stuart responds that it is somewhat wrong to claim that the tomato is a vegetable, but very wrong to claim that it is a suspension bridge. From that, Dr. Mackonis goes on to find six ways that a counterfactual world would include tomatoes as suspension bridges (man-made, not edible, a structure, etc.). In fact, these are completely arbitrary and irrelevant. We may contemplate a counterfactual world where George Washington remained a loyalist. It makes no sense to posit his being a polar bear, or a Polar Bear ice cream bar. Post modernism cannot distinguish between a conditional and the ridiculous.

Mackonis gives credence to David Hume's claim that it is equally valid to expect the sun to rise or not, as empirical evidence gives no reason to believe either. Even in David Hume’s own time (1711-1776) theoretical astronomy was strong enough to predict analytically (logically) synthetic (evidentiary) celestial events. Modern philosophers cannot escape the work of Friedrich Bessel (1838) and Léon Foucault (1851) who demonstrated what Newton’s Principia (1687) showed must be true about the apparent motion of the sun. Leonard Peikoff demolished the so-called “analytic/synthetic dichotomy” and his work was amplified by Gregory Browne’s Necessary Factual Truth. In short, that which is capital-T True (objectively true, necessarily true) is both empirically verifiable and rationally explicable.

Even though all of these writers are young, nominally in and of the current generation, they have come no further than Wittgenstein. They do not know the advances in rational-empiricist (objectivist) philosophy discovered and invented by Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, David Kelley, David Harriman, Michael S. Berliner, Gregory Browne, and Andrew Bernstein.

The college philosophers in this anthology are on a lagging curve of knowledge in every field they address. Even when considering gender role differences among the women and men, it never occurs to the writers that the humor would not be possible if the roles had not changed in the previous generation. Leslie Winkle can correct Sheldon Cooper's math independent of her sex or gender. Cooper is upset at being found wrong. Winkle's being a woman never enters the equation: she is his peer. Winkle does call Cooper “That arrogant, misogynistic East-Texas doorknob that told me I should abandon my work with high energy particles for laundry and child bearing?”  But the subtext is clearly that he was yanking her chain. Nothing to this point in the series (Season 1, Episode 13: see http://bigbangtrans.wordpress.com/) supports the claim that Cooper denigrates women in general. The reciprocal relationship is that if Sheldon Cooper really were as dumb as a doorknob, Winkle would not deign to notice him.

The show does deliver plenty of sexual humor, but gender discrimination is not an attribute of this universe where contributor Prof. Mary L. Fisher (author of 60 papers and a book on gender) would be out of a job, unable to explain and enjoy the neurphysiology of gender differences on par with Dr. Leslie Winkle, Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler or Dr. Bernadette Rostankoswki. Perhaps the most telling fact is that actress Mayim Bialik, who plays Dr. Amy Farrah Fowler, is actually a Ph.D. neuroscientist herself. Her doctoral dissertation is downloadable from Google Books.

Doctoral candidate in political philosophy Ruth E. Lowe displayed the typical ignorance of her field in Chapter 13 (on tolerance and toleration) when she asserted that “scientists told us the Earth was flat.” They did not. Astronomy in the Middle Ages was actively supported by the Church which depended on accurate calculations for Easter. No one who was educated really thought that Earth is flat. The evidence of ancient Roman coins displays the fact most people even then assumed that Earth is a sphere, as Aristotle argued conclusively about 350 BCE; and as Eratosthenes assumed when he used the sphericity of the Earth to calculate the distance to the Sun and Moon in 240 BCE.  But do not take my word for it: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth.

 Lowe joins others here in claiming that science only approximates truth, getting ever closer, but never achieving it. This is a cliché among philosophers who never consider what this “truth” is that science seems always to approach but never touch. Being familiar with Zeno’s Paradox, you would expect them to have figured it out long ago – or maybe that particular tortoise still outpaces them.

Likewise, Mackonis seems to think that if a statement is 80% likely to be true, then this somehow creates a multi-valued logic with an included middle, blanking out on the meaning of the claim that if something is 80% likely then the claim is exactly that and not .8 x .8 x .8 x… ad infinitum …But A or non-A means that there is no “included middle” even if A is a statement of probability with a level of confidence and a margin of error.

 These philosophers are the real bullies who pick on nerds, only instead of hanging out in alleys and locker rooms, they occupy university classrooms. That those rooms are lighted, heated (or cooled), furnished and finished must seem to be some sort of metaphysical given to the writers of this anthology. That without Sheldon, Amy, Leonard, Leslie, and even Penny who brings them the food they do not prepare, they would be worse off than savages seems never to dawn upon them.