First Installment - The Big Bang Theory - Lucas Rogers (12)

I am doing my final report on the TV show, The Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang Theory, is one of the most popular TV shows that airs. Many people find it comical, and the way the characters act and compose themselves. Not many people realize how it relates to many philosophers’ views. A short background of the show is, 2 friends named Sheldon and Leonard are colleagues that have an apartment together. They are physicists, and have 2 good friends Howard, a mechanical engineer, and Raj an astrophysicist. They are the stereotypical nerdy friends, who like science, video games, and comic books. They also have a lot of trouble talking and dating girls, until a girl named Penny moves in across the hall. Suddenly Leonard becomes more interested in her, while Sheldon stays in his belief that science is the only thing that matters.

Sheldon lives for science, and believes that if he isn’t learning or solving something at every moment, then he isn’t living right. Sheldon was in a lot of ways just like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, who all believed that intellect was more important than bodily pleasure.

In Season 5 Episode 7, Sheldon begins to talk about Friedrich Nietzsche, who was a German philosopher. Leonard is about to go out on a date with a girl named Alice, but he already has a girlfriend that is in India. He is in a moral crisis, and Sheldon being the genius he is, knows a lot about philosophy. So he starts to talks about Nietzsche, and tells Leonard,” Friedrich Nietzsche believed that morality is just a fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior men.” Not only does the show and characters sometime relate to philosophy, they even talk about famous philosophers.

Sources:
The Big Bang Theory and Philosophy: Rock, Paper, Scissors, Aristotle, Locke by: Dean Kowalski