The stones in the film represent a collection of ideas. According to Richard Dwakins' meme theory, it is a combination of a bunch of memes. It can be religion, it can be some kind of doctrine, it can be some kind of doctrine. The theories they construct seem to be perfect, but they are often inconsistent in practice. It may only take a simple question to expose its vulnerability. Like, for the Yeti, maybe What's holding up the mammoths?
For the proponents of the geocentric theory, it may be the strange trajectory of Mars that stops and goes, and is retrograde from time to time.
Then again, the "heliocentric theory" that many people defended with their lives turned out to be not the truth. The sun is not at the center of the Milky Way, let alone the entire universe. The initial theories of the SES members in the film are actually far from the truth: they believe that Smallfoot's clothes are shed skin, that the trekking poles are Smallfoot's horns, and even regard a roll of toilet paper as a "wisdom scroll".
This is because truth is fluid. Scientifically speaking, even if there is a so-called absolute truth, we can only approach it step by step. From Newtonian mechanics, to the theory of relativity, and then to quantum mechanics, this is how human beings, step by step, understand nature. New ideas may be far from the truth and even laughable in hindsight, but they are still valuable. Because they come from the spirit of questioning, from the most precious curiosity of human beings.
The only thing stronger than fear is curiosity. Questions lead to knowledge.
From this perspective, perhaps the Nobel Prize should be awarded to the first person who dares to question an old idea, rather than the first person to propose a "correct" new idea.
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