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From Fears of Entropy to Comfort in Chaos: Arcadia, The Waste Land, Numb3rs, and Man's Relationship With Science

Auburn University, USA

Through the use of some purposeful anachronisms, Tom Stoppard uses his 1993 play Arcadia to explore the effects on man's psyche of the transition from Newton's Laws to the laws of thermodynamics and from thermodynamics to chaos theory. However, remarkably similar reactions to these changes are also reflected in works from the actual time periods following these shifts in scientific understanding. Modernist literature is believed by many to reflect a sense of depression about the implications of the second law of thermodynamics, which is exemplified in T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land. Likewise, the comfort provided by the revisions to thermodynamics made by chaos theory are reflected frequently in contemporary popular culture, such as in the current television series Numb3rs. Through the invocation of science, all three works suggest that man is uncomfortable with too much predictability and that comfort can instead be found in chaos and unpredictability.

Key Words: Stoppard • Arcadia • Eliot • The Waste Land • Numb3rs • sabermetrics • Newton's Laws • chaos theory • thermodynamics • entropy • determinism

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