Customer Reviews

The Philosopher at the End of the Universe: Philosophy Explained Through Science Fiction Films

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Let me begin by saying that I met the author, Mark Rowlands, on several occasions while he was teaching at University College, Cork, in Ireland. Let me also say that I was extremely jealous when I first came across this book in a bookshop in Cambridge, England. For years I have shown my students clips from science-fiction films such as "The Matrix" (re: Descartes's first Meditation) and "The Terminator" (re: machines without sensation -- Descartes again) and "Total Recall" (re: Descartes's first Meditation again, and Locke's memory theory of identity) when teaching my Modern Philosophy course. But Rowlands beat the rest of us to it and wrote a book in this vein -- an introduction to philosophy by way of popular science-fiction films.

This Winter Term (2005), for the second year in a row, I will be assigning this book for my Modern Philosophy course. (Last time I had to order the books from England; this time they are available in the US). In 2004 my students enjoyed the book tremendously and it proved very useful, especially the sections on Descartes (chapters 2 and 3 on skepticism about the external world and the mind-body problem -- "The Matrix" and "The Terminator"), Locke (chapter 4 on personal identity -- "Total Recall" and "The Sixth Day") and Hume (chapter 5 on free will -- "Minority Report").

The author, Rowlands, is known best for his work in the philosophy of mind and applied ethics (especially the ethical status of animals). I believe that the earlier parts of the book, dealing with philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology, are easily the best. The final parts of the book dealing with ethics -- chapter 6 on "Hollow Man" (why should we be ethical?), chapter 7 on "Independence Day" and "Aliens" (should the scope of ethics extend to aliens?) and chapter 8 on "Star Wars" (good vs. evil) -- are not quite up to standard. Somewhere in between, standard-wise, are the parts dealing with the meaning of life -- chapter 1 on "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" and chapter 9 on "Blade Runner".

The book is written primarily for undergraduates. It normally does a nice job of presenting philosophical ideas and problems in an appealing and direct fashion. You can tell that the author is part of the generation that grew up watching Star Wars and then Buffy, but has a D.Phil from Oxford and can write about supervenience or Doug Lenat's CYC project.

This makes it all sound far too serious and educational, however. The most important thing about this book is that it is funny. It's funny about philosophy, and it's funny about films too. Exhibit A: ""Minority Report"... also has Tom Cruise in it, not a man you normally associate with complex philosophical issues. I mean, scientology? Give me a break." (p. 121) Rowlands is nothing if not irreverent, and you will laugh out loud while reading this.

So far, I have found only a few factual errors (references are to the English Ebury Press 2003 paperback edition). Heidegger's "Being and Time" was published in 1927, not 1926 (p. 7). Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-philosophicus" was completed in 1918 and published in 1921, not published in 1916 (p. 53). And the Cameron Crowe movie starring Tom Cruise is "Vanilla Sky", not "Vanilla Skies" (p. 121). The only philosophical error I have found is that he refers to Occasionalism as "parallelism" (p. 72) (parallelism is a different position and can be espoused by a Dual Aspect theorist such as Spinoza). But that is just something discussed in a footnote.

I am usually not happy with Rowlands' quick resolutions of various matters in the final sections of his chapters. But it would be unfair to beat him over the head about this. I also find some of the humor to be too laddish for my taste. It's not particularly funny to say how much you love beer and imagined sex with Sarah Michelle Gellar, and it becomes painful to say it the n-th time. But these are minor criticims of a refreshing read, on the whole.

A great primer for philosophical thought that does not put one to sleep. In fact, this was such a good read, it kept me up late into for several evenings. Professor Rowlands also happens to be one funny man. Very well done.

Just finished reading the book The Philosopher at the End of the Universe by Mark Rowlands. The feature of the book is that it uses many sci-fi movies to elaborate on the various theories of philosophy, making the dry subjects much more interesting to read. The author said that the book is equivalent to university year one course on philosophy. I did not study philosopher in college. So comments from those who know better are welcome. The theories discussed include the meaning of life, reality, identity, free will and morality. Each topic has one or two chapters and relates to a movie.

One of the topics I like is on reality. The author refers this to the movies Matrix trilogy where the perceived reality was actually a virtual world projected by a computer with intelligence to the minds of captive men. It is not simply a case of virtual reality. A normal human in the movie spent the entire life in the world falsely created for him and never knew anything else, so to him it was the real world. There was a paradox in that Keanu Reeves was Mr Anderson in the virtual world, but he was also Neo who fought kung fu in the virtual world. In the last episode, we saw Agent Smith transformed into a person in the "real" world. This called into question which is the real and which is the virtual world.

The concept was not created by the Wachowski brothers. I recall seeing several movies deploying the same concept. There is Existenze where players entered a virtual reality game. There is also the Thirteenth Floor where a laboratory resided there worked on virtual reality so real that a murder was committed inside the virtual world; it then turned out that the laboratory was actually a virtual reality created by another group of supreme scientists.

The concept of reality, or the lack of it, dated back to 300 BC from the Greek philosopher Pyrrho who said that it was impossible for human to know things in their own nature. We also know well the story of Chuang Tzu at about the same time (300 BC) on the dream of the butterfly, where he questioned whether the butterfly was the dream of Chuang Tzu, or Chuang Tzu was the dream of the butterfly.

The thought was made famous by Rene Descartes of the seventeenth century. He proposed that it is possible what we call the world does not really exist; that it is merely a dream. Descartes hypothesized that the world could be ruled by an evil demon who is very powerful and decides to deceive all mankind for fun. All we perceive through our senses are only what the evil demon makes us believe. In fact, nothing of what we believe is true. Indeed there is no world as such, as every feature of the world is supplied by the demon in trickery. Descartes was arguing for the theory of scepticism, which is a view that we cannot have any real knowledge. We may think there is a world around us, but we really don't know it at all; we merely believe it very strongly.

However, this is not the goal of Descartes' argument. Having proposed the possibility that we could be tricked in all our senses, he went on to state that there is only one thing we could be absolutely sure: our existence, so that we are able to be sceptical; thus the famous expression Cognito, ergo sum, or in English I think, therefore I am. The author specifically clarified that "it does not mean anything silly like we exist only as long as we think". The main point is: we can think of the possibility that the world is not real, but we cannot think that we do not exist, the reason being we must exist to do the thinking. Or, doubting our existence automatically guarantees our existence, because otherwise we could not be around to do the doubting. Not matter how much the evil demon tries to deceive us, unless we exist he cannot be deceiving us. The conclusion drawn by Descartes is one on dualism, that the body and the soul are two different entities.

But the dust has not settled and there are problems with the claim that I think, therefore I am. The nineteenth century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche identified the problem. He proposed that the existence of self could just be a collection of thoughts, and some of the thoughts were thoughts to the effect that these thoughts belong to a certain person. But there need to be no person at all. All that is needed is the thoughts that all these thoughts belong to the same person. Nietzsche argued that all we can really be certain of is that there are thoughts, we cannot be certain of the existence of the person to whom the thoughts belongs. This point was made earlier by another philosopher David Hume that when we look in on ourselves, all we find are various mental states, i.e. thoughts, beliefs, desires, feelings, emotions, but we do not come across any self or person who has these mental states. So there is still a possibility that ourself and the world we sense, do not really exist. We are just made believed by the evil demon of Descartes, or we are actually in the Matrix.

The author quoted a scene where Neo met the turbaned boy engaging in spoon-bending action. Boy: Try not to bend the spoon, for that is impossible. Instead, try to realize the truth. Neo: What is that? Boy: That there is no spoon. Then instead of bending the spoon, you see that what is really bending is yourself.

Spoon-bending with the mind is a phenomenon reported many times in our world. So are we living in a real world and can we realize the truth? Philosophers stop short of providing an answer.

Who knew that we would see big-screen heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves, and Tom Cruise take their rightful places beside the likes of Descartes, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Plato? And I don't mean at the Oscars!

In this book Rowlands has brought together several areas of popular interest: philosophy, movies, and science fiction, in a way that benefits all three. It is a rollicking romp through often-dry philosophical fields such as the meaning of life, theory of knowledge, the mind-body problem, personal identity, free will, and ethics.

While the tone is tongue-in-cheek, the content took me deeper down the rabbit-hole of philosophy than many such popular offerings.

This was a great book.

It made me appreciate these movies on a whole new level, (with the exception of the Matrix which I now enjoy for the FIRST time!)

By applying philosophical concepts to movies the author brilliantly breaks them down into proverbial 'apples & oranges'. Be warned though... once you pick it up its hard to put down half way through a chapter! So allow the time!

If I had to have a criticism it would be that some (maybe one, two at most) chapters go a little into overkill... but hey! Better a little more than a little less.

Hope this guy writes another book along similar lines!

Philosopher Mark Rowlands uses science fiction movies to teach major philosophical concepts and deal with major philosophical issues, like "is there a self?" and "what is the meaning of life?" His approach works and rests on the premise that science fiction mirrors back to us unusual aspects of ourselves via its fantastical notions, like robots who feel, time travel and the like. Rowlands' philosophical perspective is from the "inside/outside" school, so to speak. In other words, the major backdrop for each of his sci-fi case studies is that when looking at a situation, say the self, from the inside, things seem to work, but when looked at from the outside, they don't. For example, a person can see themselves as a significant being from the inside, with feelings, opinions, thoughts, etc, but from the outside, that same person is just one in six billion whose life will come and go in a relatively short-period of time, for the most part to be forgotten. Yikes!

The use of this dichotomy does not always work, however, and who's to say that the outside view should prevail, as Rowlands claims. Also, if I read and interpret Rowlands correctly, there is ultimately no thing as a self and all our actions are deterministic and we have no will. If so, then some of his claims are inconsistent, as he proceeds to talk about morality as defined by deeds of a self, but if no such self exists, then who is doing these deeds that define morality? There are other instances like this of inconsistency. Not surprisingly, after taking an occasional jab at Christianity, Rowlands spend a significant portion of a chapter describing the horrors of raising chickens for eggs and cooking. A lot of that may be true, but I find an odd match between people who are atheists and are also animal rights activists. I am not sure why there often seems to be that connection.

The other problem with the book is that Rowlands seems to be trying desperately to communicate that despite being a philosopher, he is also funny and cool. His humor more often than not works, but at times he resorts to cheap shots. Despite these drawbacks, the sci-fi movie approach works as a way of teaching philosophical concepts in general. After reading this book I am eager to view for the first time or again movies like The Matrix and Blade Runner, with a keen eye to the philosophical themes described by Rowlands.

Most books on philosophy are a bore because a) unlike art, which is ideas in motion, philosophy is merely ideas (no matter how wonderful nor complex they may be), and b) most philosophers (who claim that title in primacy) are simply bad writers- the two most notable exceptions to that rule being Plato and Friedrich Nietszche. And one of the main reasons why most philosophers are bad writers is that they eschew the notion that good writing (or good art, for that matter) has to entertain, as well as enlighten. Often the medicine must be put into a sugar lump, or, the exact opposite way the modern publishing industry, and Hollywood studios, work.

A notable exception to this comes in the form of a 2003 book by philosopher Mark Rowlands, called The Philosopher At The End Of The Universe: Philosophy Explained Through Science Fiction Films, which takes its name from the Douglas Adams book, The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, part of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. The book takes the novel approach of explaining some of the basic `big' problems of philosophy via some of Hollywood's biggest sci fi smashes. While Rowlands admits, early on, that he is no great wordsmith, in the sense of being able to craft prose that poesizes itself into the nooks and crannies of mind and soul (thus I will not be quoting from it, as I would merely be recapitulating the same things available in the Modern Library's European Philosophers From Descartes To Nietszche), his book is well written in the most prosaic sense. It is concise, cogent, and witty. There is precious little waste in the small book's 258 pages (excluding a glossary of handy philosophic terminology).

While I would have liked to have seen the inclusion of such sci fi classics as Star Trek, The Planet Of The Apes, Solaris, Forbidden Planet, and 2001: A Space Odyssey, for all of those films and series raise serious philosophic queries, none of them has an overarching theme, the way some of the films Rowlands describes (decidedly lesser films, but better didactic examples of simply laid out problems) do, for they are necessarily more complex and multifarious, as well as being more grounded in purely scientific (or sociological), rather than just philosophic, conundra....Overall, the book entertains and uses the idea of the films in service to the idea, while sometimes the reverse might have been the better approach. Although he disdains arts films, one cannot help but wonder what Rowlands would make of some of the classics of Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Mizoguchi, Angelopoulos, and films that do not merely reflect a philosophic idea(l), but immanently employ it. Nonetheless, The Philosopher At The End Of The Universe is one of the best primers on the world of ideas that I've ever read, making a nutritious meal out of the junk food of Hollywood; i.e.- getting something from nothing, creatio ex nihilo. Oh, wait, now that's theology. One wonders the filmic references a book like that could make!

Rowlands does a good job of explaining basic human philosophy as filtered through the lens of various science fiction films. There's an organization and humor to this book to rival much of what you'll find concerning layman's philosophy. The book has a few logical hiccups from time to time (for example, Rowlands sees a goal as something that is either achieved or unachieved at a particular point in time; this boolean perspective doesn't allow for a goal that is achieved in degrees).

I recommend it.