Arcadia, written in 1993 by Tom Stoppard, deals with the relationship between order and disorder, past and present, certainty and uncertainty. The action is divided between two timelines that unfold in a room of an English manor, Sidley Park, almost two hundred years apart. The first narrative describes the estate's brilliant daughter, Thomasina Coverly, being tutored by Septimus Hodge in 1809. While, in 1933, scholars Hannah Jarvis, Bernard Lightingale and Valentine Coverly attempt to reconstruct the history of the estate from Thomasina's notes. . Stoppard alternates between both these narratives and two timelines. This non-linear narrative addresses a wide range of scientific topics, including thermodynamics, fractals, and chaos theory. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay First of all, I think math and science play a huge role in Arcadia. Stoppard takes contemporary science as his topic. This can be seen from the fact that the characters' lives revolve around science. For example, Thomasina's scientific curiosity is shown from scene 1. Even while eating her rice pudding she tries to find scientific explanations for the world around her. Something similar actually happens to Valentine when he wonders where the cream disappears once added to a cup of coffee, claiming that it is "(...) as mysterious to us as the sky was to the Greeks" (scene 4). Furthermore, the aforementioned paradoxes of the work are visualized through the discourse of science. Furthermore, greater truths about humanity and social issues in general are revealed through the study of different theorems. The relationship between human situations and scientific principles can be easily seen throughout the work. Arcadia certainly references many scientific principles through the metaphorical use of Science and Mathematics. There are three metaphorical threads that can be followed in the show: "the action of bodies in heat", which refers to thermodynamics; the unpredictable and the predetermined, which refer to chaos theory, and plot and iteration, which are also related to chaos and mathematics. These ideas are explored by many characters, particularly Thomasina, and all relate to describing the disorder and irregularity of systems. Thomasina's first discovery, the second law of thermodynamics, is glimpsed in scene 1 and confirmed in scene 7. In short, this law states that the energy in the universe is gradually moving towards disorder. Furthermore, this law imposes a direction on time: while every other physical law would work the same whether time goes forward or backward, this is not true of the second law of thermodynamics. Thomasina points this out when she says that Newton's equations can go forward or backward, but the “heat equation” can only go in one direction. He manages to explain thermodynamics in familiar terms, stating that “You can't move things,” which reinforces the idea that Science plays a prominent role in the characters' daily lives. This seems to be the strength of Thomasina's scientific thinking, she can think of complex ideas in familiar terms. Furthermore, there is a hidden metaphor in Thomasina's discovery. When he confirms his intuition about the second law of thermodynamics in scene 7, his words are ambiguous. When her mother asks her what she is studying, she describes it as “The action of bodies in heat,” despite having read an essay that refers to the same phenomenon as “the propagation of heat in a solid body.” Thomasina's words are not naive, since she hasnoticed that Lady Croom passionately played the piano with Count Zelinsky. Once again, this demonstrates how Science is used metaphorically to refer to human situations. On another note, the increased disorder is also embodied by the garden, which loses its order due to Mr. Noakes' work. Aside from that, the second law of thermodynamics is at work throughout the play, causing degradation rather than progression: Thomasina will die and the researchers will have difficulty finding information. Arcadia demonstrates this law in relation to time; Stoppard alternates between two time periods in a physics-defying way. There is an initial order between the scenes, until the last scene where the two periods are shown at the same time. The work itself is guided by this law, acting like a “body in heat”. Another metaphorical thread in Arcadia can be seen through Valentine's ambiguous speech as he investigates chaos theory. This theory is a branch of mathematics focused on the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. In his speech, Valentine points out that theories only describe the “very large and the very small” (scene 4). As far as I'm concerned, Valentine is suggesting that even human situations, even the fate of the characters in the play, are tied to mathematics and theorems. He is implicitly saying that even the most insignificant things can have a big impact. Similarly, Chloe manages to connect science to ordinary human situations in scene 7. Here, she expresses that people might like people who are not supposed to like them, so this breaks Newton's thinking. law. Newton's laws and those of gravity supported the idea that the universe worked like a clock and that everything that happened on Earth or in the Solar System could be predicted and explained. Newton's explanation of the universe adheres to determinism, which can be briefly described as the belief that all events, including thought, are caused by prior circumstances and that people have no real ability to make choices or control what they it happens. However, Stoppard manages to address Newton's theory through Chloe's ideas and connect physics to human feelings. Finally, the final metaphorical thread of interest here refers to the relationship between plot and iteration and the structure of the work. In mathematics, the act of tracing is a translation of written symbols into visual representation: once plotted, an equation becomes a graph. When Thomasina announces that she will “trace this leaf and deduce its equation” in scene 3, she reverses this process. As I see it, this concept is related to the way Stoppard wrote the play, alternating between two narratives, going back and forth in a non-linear way. On the one hand, the plot of Arcadia deals with ideas such as disorder or chaotic behavior. On the other hand, these ideas provide us with models through which we can interpret the work. Iteration in mathematics refers to the process of iterating a function, that is, the repeated application of a function, using the output of one iteration as the input for the next. This topic is explored by Valentine and Hannah, and I think the ambiguity regarding this topic comes down to the fact that Arcadia has a number of recurring topics that mostly revolve around sex, literature, science, and gardening. Not only are the characters firmly linked to Science, but so is the underlying structure of the narrative. While Science is used to explore ordinary questions like stirring a cup of coffee, it is also used to ask the deepest questions humans can ask. The characters constantly question extinction