The Three-Body Problem follows the United States, the USSR, and Communist China racing to find extraterrestrial life at the height of the Cold War. Although these different superpowers share a common scientific goal, science acts not as a unifying force but as something that only sows more division among the powerful governments. In China, where the novel is set, the government is clear in its intention to recruit aliens as allies against the Russians and Americans, and people across the globe agree that the “significance” of even symbolic contact with extraterrestrials “would be comparable to an overwhelming advantage in military and economic power.” On a geopolitical level, then, the governmental thirst for power ends up overshadowing the broader value of scientific discovery. But the same is true on a smaller scale, as individual scientists—even those who resent or oppose their governments—find that policies they may not even believe in disallow or alter their work. As a scientist during the Cultural Revolution, astrophysicist Ye Wenjie has to disavow theories or discard useful experiments simply because those experiments have the wrong kind of “political symbolism.” And when inventor Wang Miao finds himself obsessed with a virtual reality astronomy game, he learns that even in the alternate reality of the game, his scientific theories have to be altered or rejected based on ideological context. Ultimately, then, The Three-Body Problem suggests that seemingly objective scientific discovery is always shaped by human beliefs. Rather than creating a set of shared facts, scientific discovery therefore often acts as fodder for political strategy that ultimately leads to an even more divided reality.
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Scientific Discovery and Political Division Quotes in The Three-Body Problem
The weapons attacking her were a diverse mix: antiques such as American carbines, Czech-style machine guns, Japanese Type-38 rifles; newer weapons such as standard issue People's Liberation Army rifles and submachine guns, stolen from the PLA after the publication of the “August Editorial”; and even a few Chinese dadao swords and spears. Together, they formed a condensed version of modern history.
Should philosophy guide experiments or should experiments guide philosophy? […] Truth emerges from experience.
The farmer hypothesis on the other hand has the flavor of a horror story: every morning on a turkey farm, the farmer comes to feed the turkeys. A scientist turkey, having observed this pattern to hold to that change for almost a year, makes the following discovery: every morning at 11, food arrives. On the morning of Thanksgiving, the scientist announces this law to the other turkeys. But that morning at 11, food doesn't arrive; instead, the farmer comes and kills the entire flock.
“The Stable Era will continue. The universe is a machine. I created this machine. The Stable Era will continue. The universe…”
Wang turned his head. The voice belonged to Mozi, who was already on fire. His body was encased within a column of tall, orange flame, and his skin crinkled and turned into charcoal. But his two eyes still shone with a light that was distinct from the fire consuming him. His two hands, already burning pieces of charcoal, held up the cloud of swirling ashes that had once been his calendar.
It's important to take the time out of our busy schedules to do something entirely unrelated to our immediate needs. This project has allowed us to give some thought to issues we have never had time for. Indeed, we can think through them only when we take a sufficiently high vantage point. This alone is enough to justify the Red Coast project. How wonderful it will be if the universe really contains other intelligences and other societies! Bystanders have the clearest view. Someone truly neutral will then be able to comment on whether we're the heroes or villains of history.
“This is Galileo,” said Aristotle. “He advocates understanding the world through observation and experiment. He is an unimaginative thinker, but his results demand our attention.”
“Mozi also conducted experiments and observations,” Wang said.
Galileo snorted. “Mozi’s way of thinking was still Eastern. He was nothing more than a mystic dressed as a scientist. He never took his own observation data seriously, and he constructed his model based on subjective speculation. Ridiculous!”
Below them, a magnificent phalanx of thirty million Qin shoulders was arrayed on the ground. The entire formation fit inside a square six kilometers on each side. As the sun rose, the phalanx remained still like a giant carpet made of 30 million terra-cotta warriors. But when a flock of birds wandered above the phalanx, the birds immediately felt the potential for death from below and scattered anxiously in chaos. Wang performed some computations in his head and realized that even if the entire population of earth were arranged into such a phalanx, the whole formation would fit inside the Huangpu District of Shanghai. Though it was powerful, the phalanx also revealed the fragility of civilization.
“What is your impression of the Aztecs?”
“Dark and bloody,” the author said. “Blood-drenched pyramids lit by insidious fire seen through dark forests. Those are my impressions.”
The philosopher nodded. “Very good. Then try to imagine: if the Spanish conquistadors did not intervene, what would have been the influence of that civilization on human history?”
“You are calling black white and white black,” the software company vice president said. “The Conquistadors who invaded the Americas were nothing more than murderers and robbers.”
“Even so, at least they prevented the Aztecs from developing without bound, turning the Americas into a bloody, dark great empire. Then civilization as we know it wouldn't have appeared in the Americas, and democracy wouldn't have thrived until much later. Indeed, maybe they wouldn't have appeared at all. This is the key to the question: no matter what the Trisolarans are like, their arrival would be good news for the terminally ill human race.”
“I'm Raphael, from Israel. Three years ago, my fourteen-year-old son died in an accident. I had his kidney donated to a Palestinian girl suffering kidney failure as an expression of my hope that the two peoples could live together in peace. For this ideal, I was willing to give my life. Many, many Israelis and Palestinians sincerely strove toward the same goal by my side. But all this was useless. Our home remained trapped in the quagmire of cycles of vengeance. Eventually, I lost hope in the human race and joined the ETO. Desperation turned me from a pacifist into an extremist.”
“You want to aim a super powerful radio beam at the red sun. Have you thought about the political symbolism of such an experiment?”
Yang and Ye were both utterly stunned, but they did not think Lei’s objection ridiculous. Just the opposite: they were horrified that they themselves had not thought of it. During those years, finding political symbolism in everything had reached absurd levels. The research reports you turned in had to be carefully reviewed by Lei so that even technical terms related to the sun could be repeatedly revised to remove political risk. Terms like “sunspots” were forbidden.
The insanity of the human race had reached its historical zenith. The Cold War was at its height. Nuclear missiles capable of destroying the earth ten times over could be launched at a moment's notice, spread out among the countless missile silos dotting two continents and hiding with ghost-like nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines patrolling deep under the sea a single Lafayette- or Yankee-class submarine held enough warheads to destroy hundreds of cities and kill hundreds of millions, but most people continued their lives as if nothing was wrong.
There was a movie called Maple recently. I don't know if you've seen it. At the end, an adult and a child stand in front of the grave of a Red Guard who had died during the faction civil wars. The child asked the adult, “Are they heroes?” The adult says no. The child asked, “Are they enemies?” The adult again says no. The child asks, “Then who are they?” The adult says, “history.”
Now is truly the age of mass extinctions! So, my child, what you're seeing is nothing. This is only an insignificant episode in a much faster process. We can have no seabirds, but we can't be without oil. Can you imagine life without oil? Your last birthday, I gave you that lovely Ferrari and promised you that you could drive it after you turn 15. But without oil, it would be a pile of junk metal and you would never drive it. Right now, if you want to visit your grandfather, you can get there on my personal jet and cross the ocean in a dozen hours or so. But without oil, you'd have to tumble in a sailboat for more than a month…These are the rules of the game of civilization: the first priority is to guarantee the existence of the human race and their comfortable life. Everything else is secondary.
The ETO had once tried to develop membership among the common people, but these efforts all failed. The ETO concluded that the common people did not seem to have the comprehensive and deep understanding of the highly educated about the dark side of humanity. More importantly, because their thoughts were not as deeply influenced by modern science and philosophy, they still felt an overwhelming, instinctual identification with their own species. To betray the human race as a whole was unimaginable for them. But intellectual elites were different: Most of them had already begun to consider issues from our perspective outside the human race. Human civilization had finally given birth to a strong force of alienation.
If I tell you more, you really won't be able to sleep. Forget it. What's the point of worrying? We should learn to be as philosophical as Wei Cheng and Shi Qiang. Just do the best within your responsibility. Let's go drinking and then go back to sleep like good bugs.
The second time I came to Panama was in 1999, to attend the ceremony for the handover of the canal to Panama. Oddly, by the time we got to the Authority’s building, the Stars and Stripes were already gone. Supposedly the US government had requested that the flag be lowered a day early to avoid the embarrassment of lowering the flag in front of a crowd…Back then, I thought I was witnessing history. But now that seems so insignificant.
“Even in nature, the destruction of universes must be happening at every second—for example, through the decay of neutrons. Also, a high energy cosmic ray entering the atmosphere may destroy thousands of such miniature universes…You're not feeling sentimental because of this, are you?”
“You amuse me. I will immediately notify the propaganda console and direct him to repeatedly publicize the scientific fact to the world. The people of Trisolaris must understand that the destruction of civilizations is a common occurrence that happens every second of every hour.”
