science

The Principle

The Principle is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Principle rather than just read about it. In short: The Principle is a 2014 American independent film produced by Rick DeLano and Robert Sungenis. It rejects the Copernican principle and supports the long-superseded notion and pseudoscientific principle that Earth is at the center of the universe.

Key takeaways

The Principle belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Principle to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Principle from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Principle is a 2014 American independent film produced by Rick DeLano and Robert Sungenis. It rejects the Copernican principle and supports the long-superseded notion and pseudoscientific principle that Earth is at the center of the universe. The film is narrated by Kate Mulgrew and features scientists such as Lawrence M. Krauss and Michio Kaku. Mulgrew and scientists who were interviewed in the film have repudiated the ideas advocated in the film and stated that their involvement was the result of being misled by the filmmaker.

Release The film was released on October 24, 2014, when screened at the Marcus Addison Cinema in Addison, Illinois, according to the distributor Rocky Mountain Pictures. Box office receipts were $86,172.

Complaints from featured actors and scientists

The film was criticized by some of the interviewed physicists, who say they were misled into appearing in the film, claiming that the documentary makes an invalid philosophical assumption that defining physical relationships among objects in space, one way or another, necessarily must limit what one can say about the relationship between God and humanity in theology, and treats science as a belief system dealing with the same matters as religion. The movie rejects the scientific consensus that the Earth orbits the Sun, and distorts other aspects of the actual Copernican principle. Following the release of the film's trailer, narrator Kate Mulgrew said that she was misinformed about the purpose of the documentary and that Sungenis' involvement, which would have been a dealbreaker had she been hitherto aware, was not disclosed to her. Max Tegmark explained that DeLano "cleverly tricked a whole bunch of us scientists into thinking that they were independent filmmakers doing an ordinary cosmology documentary, without mentioning anything about their hidden agenda." George Ellis corroborated. "I was interviewed for it but they did not disclose this agenda, which of course is nonsense. I don't think it's worth responding to — it just gives them publicity. To ignore is the best policy. But for the record, I totally disavow that silly agenda." Michio Kaku said that the film was probably using "clever editing" of his statements and bordered on intellectual dishonesty, and Lawrence Krauss said he had no recollection of being interviewed for the film and would have refused to be in it if he had known more about it. British physicist Julian Barbour said that he never gave permission to be in the film. The filmmakers responded to these allegations in a short documentary, Thought-Crime: The Conspiracy to Stop "The Principle".

References

External links Official website The Principle at IMDb

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Principle

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Principle claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Principle before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Principle ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Principle

In research: The Principle appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Principle in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Principle is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 2014 American films, 2014 English-language films, 2014 documentary films, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Principle outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “The Principle” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study The Principle in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Principle means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Principle out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Principle in simple terms?

Why does The Principle matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Principle?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Principle.