But some do have a clue actually since the science within the central
focus of the plot is usually addressed very well. Since a
Circumstantial ad Hominem is a fallacy in which one attempts to attack
a claim by asserting that the person making the claim is making it
simply out of self interest and or circumstances. In some cases, this
fallacy involves substituting an attack on a person's circumstances
(such as the person's religion, political affiliation, ethnic
background, etc.) instead of and in place of the truth or falsity of
the claim being made and a person's interests and circumstances have
no bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made, how can
you make the claim that circumstance determine the truth or falsity of
the thesis at hand? While a person's interests will provide them with
motives to support certain claims, the claims stand or fall on their
own. It is also the case that a person's circumstances (religion,
political affiliation, etc.) do not affect the truth or falsity of the
claim. This is made quite clear by the following example: "Bill claims
that 1+1=2. But he is a Republican, so his claim is false."
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/circumstantial-ad-hominem.html
Look here is some old "science" fiction; please read this excerpt and
tell me if you think that the science is good enough;
The Time Machine is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine
The Time Traveller (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) was
expounding a recondite matter to us. His grey eyes shone and twinkled,
and his usually pale face was flushed and animated. The fire burned
brightly, and the soft radiance of the incandescent lights in the
lilies of silver caught the bubbles that flashed and passed in our
glasses. Our chairs, being his patents, embraced and caressed us
rather than submitted to be sat upon, and there was that luxurious
after-dinner atmosphere when thought runs gracefully free of the
trammels of precision. And he put it to us in this way—marking the
points with a lean forefinger—as we sat and lazily admired his
earnestness over this new paradox (as we thought it) and his
fecundity.
“You must follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two
ideas that are almost universally accepted. The geometry, for
instance, they taught you at school is founded on a misconception.”
“Is not that rather a large thing to expect us to begin upon?” said
Filby, an argumentative person with red hair.
“I do not mean to ask you to accept anything without reasonable ground
for it. You will soon admit as much as I need from you. You know of
course that a mathematical line, a line of thickness nil, has no real
existence. They taught you that? Neither has a mathematical plane.
These things are mere abstractions.”
“That is all right,” said the Psychologist.
“Nor, having only length, breadth, and thickness, can a cube have a
real existence.”
“There I object,” said Filby. “Of course a solid body may exist. All
real things—”
“So most people think. But wait a moment. Can an instantaneous cube
exist?”
“Don't follow you,” said Filby.
“Can a cube that does not last for any time at all, have a real
existence?”
Filby became pensive. “Clearly,” the Time Traveller proceeded, “any
real body must have extension in four directions: it must have Length,
Breadth, Thickness, and—Duration. But through a natural infirmity of
the flesh, which I will explain to you in a moment, we incline to
overlook this fact. There are really four dimensions, three which we
call the three planes of Space, and a fourth, Time. There is, however,
a tendency to draw an unreal distinction between the former three
dimensions and the latter, because it happens that our consciousness
moves intermittently in one direction along the latter from the
beginning to the end of our lives.”
“That,” said a very young man, making spasmodic efforts to relight his
cigar over the lamp; “that ... very clear indeed.”
“Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,”
continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness.
“Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some
people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it.
It is only another way of looking at Time. There is no difference
between Time and any of the three dimensions of Space except that our
consciousness moves along it. But some foolish people have got hold of
the wrong side of that idea. You have all heard what they have to say
about this Fourth Dimension?”
“I have not,” said the Provincial Mayor.
“It is simply this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is
spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length,
Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three
planes, each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical
people have been asking why three dimensions particularly—why not
another direction at right angles to the other three?—and have even
tried to construct a Four-Dimension geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb
was expounding this to the New York Mathematical Society only a month
or so ago. You know how on a flat surface, which has only two
dimensions, we can represent a figure of a three dimensional solid,
and similarly they think that by models of three dimensions they could
represent one of four—if they could master the perspective of the
thing. See?”
“I think so,” murmured the Provincial Mayor; and, knitting his brows,
he lapsed into an introspective state, his lips moving as one who
repeats mystic words. “Yes, I think I see it now,” he said after some
time, brightening in a quite transitory manner.
“Well, I do not mind telling you I have been at work upon this
geometry of Four Dimensions for some time. Some of my results are
curious. For instance, here is a portrait of a man at eight years old,
another at fifteen, another at seventeen, another at twenty-three, and
so on. All these are evidently sections, as it were, Three-Dimensional
representations of his Four-Dimensioned being, which is a fixed and
unalterable thing.”
“Scientific people,” proceeded the Time Traveller, after the pause
required for the proper assimilation of this, “know very well that
Time is only a kind of Space. Here is a popular scientific diagram, a
weather record. This line I trace with my finger shows the movement of
the barometer. Yesterday it was so high, yesterday night it fell, then
this morning it rose again, and so gently upward to here. Surely the
mercury did not trace this line in any of the dimensions of Space
generally recognized? But certainly it traced such a line, and that
line, therefore, we must conclude was along the Time-Dimension.”
“But,” said the Medical Man, staring hard at a coal in the fire, “if
Time is really only a fourth dimension of Space, why is it, and why
has it always been, regarded as something different? And why cannot we
move in Time as we move about in the other dimensions of Space?”
The Time Traveller smiled. “Are you sure we can move freely in Space?
Right and left we can go, backward and forward freely enough, and men
always have done so. I admit we move freely in two dimensions. But how
about up and down? Gravitation limits us there.”
“Not exactly,” said the Medical Man. “There are balloons.”
“But before the balloons, save for spasmodic jumping and the
inequalities of the surface, man had no freedom of vertical movement.”
“Still they could move a little up and down,” said the Medical Man.
“Easier, far easier down than up.”
“And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the
present moment.”
“My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the
whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away from the
present movement. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have
no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform
velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel down
if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth's surface.”
“But the great difficulty is this,” interrupted the Psychologist. “You
can move about in all directions of Space, but you cannot move about
in Time.”
“That is the germ of my great discovery. But you are wrong to say that
we cannot move about in Time. For instance, if I am recalling an
incident very vividly I go back to the instant of its occurrence: I
become absent-minded, as you say. I jump back for a moment. Of course
we have no means of staying back for any length of Time, any more than
a savage or an animal has of staying six feet above the ground. But a
civilized man is better off than the savage in this respect. He can go
up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that
ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the
Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way?”
“Oh, this,” began Filby, “is all—”
“Why not?” said the Time Traveller.
“It's against reason,” said Filby.
“What reason?” said the Time Traveller.
“You can show black is white by argument,” said Filby, “but you will
never convince me.”
“Possibly not,” said the Time Traveller. “But now you begin to see the
object of my investigations into the geometry of Four Dimensions. Long
ago I had a vague inkling of a machine—”
“To travel through Time!” exclaimed the Very Young Man.
“That shall travel indifferently in any direction of Space and Time,
as the driver determines.”
Filby contented himself with laughter.
http://xahlee.org/p/time_machine/tm-ch01.html
http://xahlee.org/p/time_machine/tm.html
