Arcadia (play) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Arcadia (play) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Arcadia explores the nature of evidence and truth in the context of modern ideas about history, mathematics and physics. It shows how the clues left by the past are interpreted by scholars. The play refers to a wide array of subjects, including mathematics, physics, thermodynamics, computer algorithms, fractals, population dynamics, chaos theory vs. determinism (especially in the context of love and death), classics, landscape design, romanticism vs. classicism, English literature (particularly poetry), Byron, 18th century periodicals, modern academia, and even South Pacific botany. These are the concrete topics of conversation; the more abstract philosophical resonances veer off into epistemology, nihilism, the origins of lust, and madness.

The themes presented within Arcadia are based in a series of dichotomies. The most prominent of these is the idea of chaos versus order, presented through Stoppard's discussion of chaos theory within the play. The action of Arcadia and the characters within it reflect this theory; everything is gradually dispersing into a state of chaos and entropy (represented by the final scene), and yet within that chaos, order can be found. Valentine summarizes this idea: 'In an ocean of ashes, islands of order. Patterns making themselves out of nothing.' Within the chaos that develops over the course of the play—through the overlap of time periods, through increasingly complicated ideas that are presented, through the variances between what is correct and what is assumed—connections and order can still be recognized. The characters attempt to define the order of the world through their ideas and theories, and they are continually overturned (as with Bernard's theory). Yet order manages to resurface when they manage to exert their free will over fate: Bernard accepts the defeat of his ideas, Septimus refuses Thomasina's invitation."