Synthesizing Dichotomies in Tom Stoppard’s Play Arcadia

The research paper connects thematic complexities in Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia (1993) with paradigm shifts in science. A remarkable illustration of science as a metaphor for human behaviour, Arcadia alternates between the early 1800s and 1993, interlinking the scientific pursuits of characters across time periods. Stoppard dexterously introduces Chaos Theory into the play through a young girl, Thomasina Coverly, who intuitively anticipates Fractals in the early nineteenth century. The playwright takes his readers through a world first ruled by Newton's laws, then one where those laws are revised by the laws of Thermodynamics, and then one where they are revised yet again by Chaos Theory. The paper brings out a series of dichotomies latent in the plot structure of the play - Classicism versus Romanticism, Science versus Humanities and Newtonian Determinism versus the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which signify the presence of order and purpose amid the apparent randomness and disorder in the universe. Arcadia is an apt exemplification of how order arises from chaos.