Science and Mathematics Everywhere
How far can science and mathematics take us in explaining what life is about? In efforts to answer this question, Tom Stoppard has mathematics playing a vital role throughout his play known as Arcadia. It features two mathematicians, Valentine and Barnard, and a young mathematical prodigy, Thomasina. Throughout the play, these characters use reason and opinion to discuss the meaning of life, and whether science and mathematics can tell us the meaning of it. In the opening act, Thomasina stated, “When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backwards, the jam will not come together …show more content…
As Thomasina asked Septimus what he thinks of God and free will, Septimus responded, “If everything from the furthest planet to the smallest atom of our brain acts according to Newton's law of motion, what becomes of free will?" (2884). Septimus raises the question of whether the laws of science can explain what free will. Free will is fundamental to human life, and some believe it is what dictates life itself. Tom Stoppard brings to light whether free will really exist or not, more specifically, he ponders the possibility of mathematics being able to predict our future. As Thomasina proposed to Septimus a theory of the future, stating, “If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were real, really good at algebra you could write the formula; and although nobody can be so clever to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could." (Page 2884). Although Thomasina recognized that no one as of now could create this formula for the future, it is possible. And if this formula for the future were to be made, is free will really just a set of calculated decisions and outcomes? With this statement, Thomasina recognizes that with mathematics, anything can be …show more content…
A constant reemerging topic within Arcadia is the idea of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, using it to explain the different occurrences in life. In the poem Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold, a very similar topic is used. Within the poem, Matthew Arnoold refers to the beauty of nature constantly, attempting to analyze the meaning behind it. Towards the end of the poem, Matthew Arnold stated, “To lie before us like a land of dreams, / So various, so beautiful, so new, / Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; / And we are here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, / Where ignorant armies clash by night”. This is very similar to the idea of the Second Law of Thermodynamics and how no matter how much we humans want to discover and embrace the world’s beauty, we are still subjected to this law. The gradual increase in disorder will increase causes greater chaos and will eventually reach a point in which all the energy dissipates at once extinguishing time and life. Although science and mathematics may be able to explain a lot about life, it does not explain everything. As stated by Valentine, “A theory of everything. But they only explained the very big and the very small. The universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary