In Interstellar, Christopher Nolan depicts a world in which mankind must leave Earth behind in favor of a more habitable world. The film focuses primarily on Cooper as he leads the voyage to determine which faraway planet would best serve as humanity’s next home. As film-goers journey with these pioneering astronauts, Nolan makes statements about humanity, hope, and the importance of survival through various means. Before launch and intermittently throughout the film, however, we also get a glimpse at the Earth they left behind. We get preview into their world of education, a slight understanding of their job market, and even a look into their world of science, which isn’t exactly flourishing under the barren condition of their Earth. Some of the interactions on Earth illustrate a sociological phenomena that sociologists today have identified, and we can understand that phenomena through the film.
Physicist Max Planck made a statement about the adoption of scientific innovation into the mainstream belief system, that has since been referenced as the “Planck Problem.” He said, "An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out and that the growing generation is familiarized with the idea from the beginning.” Social scientist Jay Stuart Snelson refers to this as “ideological immunity.” he expands and explains Planck’s statement by saying, “the more knowledge individuals have accumulated, and the more well-founded their theories have become, the greater the confidence in their ideologies.” Snelson says the problem is further exasperated by humans’ tendency to seek information that conforms to their established views, and dismiss information that contrasts it. So, in total, Planck’s problem states that people grow too solid in their beliefs to appropriately amend them to consider new information, and the problem is exasperated as people collect new information, given that they follow the tendency for people to find information that supports their views and dismiss information that does not support it.
We can use Interstellar to understand Planck’s problem; there are three instances where I believe this social phenomena is displayed in the film. The first example comes early in the film and doesn’t get much screen time, but still serves as a jarring example of just how different this world is from ours. Early in Interstellar Cooper goes to a parent-teacher conference, and while there his daughter’s teacher tells Cooper that she believes, and is teaching, that humans have never been to the moon. She says this in defiance of Cooper’s statement that the United States indeed landed on the moon. Although there is no further information presently by either side, which makes this an imperfect example of people’s defiance of new information in favor of their beliefs, it does serve to show how intrenched both the teacher and Cooper are in their own beliefs to serve as an example of Planck’s problem.
Later in the film, Murph is trying to convince her brother, Tom, to move his family and try something new, in light of the growing health issues his son has developed from the environment. Tom refuses to consider this, saying that he intends to continue farming, the only thing he knows. Murph once again uses his son’s health, and Tom’s deceased son, as examples of why this current course of action is detrimental to the health of his family. Ultimately, Murph must resort to trickery to evacuate Tom’s family, as Tom is too entrenched in his habits of farming to consider a new possibility, which shows the inability to accept information that defies established views that is expressed by Planck’s problem.
The last example of Planck’s problem that I’ve identified is the most complete depiction of the phenomena in this film. Dr. Brand, the head of NASA, has been working on an equation that is supposed to be of vital importance to the mission for much of his lifetime (surely a non-communications major could explain why it is important, but I’ve learned to just accept that it is). We see in one scene where Murph looks at Dr. Brand’s incomplete equation, and starts to see where his shortcomings lie. Dr. Brand is quick to whisk Murph away in an attempt to guard his own pride. A bit later, Dr. Mann explains to Cooper that Dr. Brand knew the equation was unsolvable prior to Dr. Mann’s launch, which was decades prior to this point in the film.
At this point in the film, Dr. Brand passes away, using his last breaths to apologize to Murphy for making her believe the equation was solvable and that she would see her father once again. However, as soon as he dies, we see Murphy take it upon herself to solve the problem and, ultimately, she saves the world. In this sense, we literally had to wait for Dr. Brand to die to solve the issue. This is a more textbook example of Planck’s problem than the other two, also, because it the more information Dr. Brand got, the more he was certain the problem couldn’t be solved. It was indeed his tendency to find support for his preformed hypothesis that cemented him into his false conclusion all the more. As the movie hinted, all it took were fresh eyes that had no conclusion formed, in this case, Murphy, to find the errors and a truer conclusion. Through this example, and the other given, we can use Interstellar to get a better understanding of Planck’s problem, and see how it can play out in the worst of scenarios.
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