Godel's Theorem of 1931 postulates that some principles of mathematics cannot be proven mathematically, but only by external methods of logic. The epistemological significance of this theorem appears to be that some things must be taken on faith.
Oh, yeah? Hey, Kurt, I doubt if you'd be so big on faith if you'd seen what's been done to you and your cohorts in physics and higher math in the new low-Q "I.Q.," which opens tomorrow.
In fact, the movie seems to offer a new theory of relativity: E (instein) = MT (empty) squared.
In it, that merry old physics genius Einstein, played by a sprightly Walter Matthau, gives up on decoding the universe and pitches all his energies into matchmaking. He's the Dolly Levi of Princeton, N.J., in the '50s. Hello, Albert, it's not very nice to see you where you don't belong. You're looking, swell, Albert. I can tell, Albert. You're still crowing, you're still growing, but you're too boring.
The movie initially seems to be constructed as a kind of philosophical debate between the four elderly brain boys of the Institute for Advanced Studies on the nature of the universe: random or orderly. In an orderly universe, indeed, Einstein's lovely niece Catherine (Meg Ryan) would fall for and marry a pompous British psychologist (Steven Fry).
But in a chaotic universe, where the unexpected can happen, and class and educational laws are suspended so only hormonal attraction counts, Catherine might fall in love with and marry a big lug of a mechanic named Ed, particularly if he were played with effervescent earnestness by Tim Robbins.
So, like a geek chorus, the four -- the others are Lou Jacobi as Godel, Gene Saks as Podolsky and Joe Maher as Liebknecht -- decide to short-circuit the rules and arrange it so that Catherine ends up with Ed.
Now, a movie's premise is a movie's premise and, since without it there isn't a movie, real world logic needn't apply. So, if screenwriters Andy Breckman and Michael Leeson want to have the four wise men invent silly putty, anti-gravity shoes, flubber, love potion No. 9. or Chanel No. 5 as a method for getting the two kids together, that's fine.
But I was irritated by the one ridiculous thing they do choose: scientific hoax.
If anything is central to the scientific method, it is the idea that researchers reach the conclusion they reach. The truth of the paper is the fundamental iron law of science.
So why do a movie in which four world-class physicists and mathematicians subvert their deepest value to get Tim Robbins a date? Why choose the one plot that offends the culture it pretends to admire?
Though Matthau is charming, the movie never recovers from a long sequence in which poor Robbins pretends that an old scientific paper of Einstein's is actually his own and briefly becomes the new wunderkind of the Advanced Studies Institute. None of this paints a particularly attractive picture of Ed. He's so dense and slow and malleable that by the time the movie contrives to get him together with Catherine, you wonder if he deserves her.
"I.Q." is dumber and dumbest.
'I.Q.'
Starring Walter Matthau, Meg Ryan and Tim Robbins
Directed by Fred Schepisi
Released by Paramount
Rated PG
**