I decided to take a scientific approach on my research when I first realized how Thomasina’s simple discovery of rice pudding in the beginning of the play was actually the grounds for a very famous discovery involving heat transfer in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. What I found interesting was the fact that this concept of being unable to reverse things held true for many situations and relationships throughout the play. It was foreshadowed in the beginning of the play when Thomasina makes a reference to stirring jam into rice pudding to her tutor Septimus. She points out how once you stir jam into rice pudding, it is impossible to stir backward and bring the jam together again (Stoppard 9). She says, “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 backward, the jam will not come together again” (Stoppard 9). This discovery was then followed up at the end of the play during the modern era when Valentine looks at Thomasina’s essay and the diagram she drew with Septimus and realizes that her observation was actually the basis for a famous physics discovery (Stoppard 97). It is evident that Stoppard found it important to draw attention to Thomasina’s discovery in the beginning of the play and then follow it up with scientific evidence in the modern day. This realization made me curious of what the impact of the discovery of thermodynamics has on the overall significance of the play.

To seek further information on this topic, I read some research on this famous physics discovery known as The Second Law of Thermodynamics. I learned that the law was discovered in 1824 by French engineer and physicist Nicholas Leonard Sadi Carnot. He discovered that in a closed system of energy transferring from one body to another, some energy will be lost at some point in the process (Grant). The law was then developed more in 1850 by German physicist and mathematician Robert Clausius when he added that heat cannot pass from a colder body to a warmer body by itself (Grant). What the law says now is that in a process involving heat transfer from a warm body to a cold body, the entropy, or measure of disorder, will either increase or stay the same (Klyce). In other words, when things naturally play out such as heat transferring into different bodies, the likelihood if things falling into disorder increases if each of the bodies involved behaves naturally because the system only moves in one way. I was able to understand this better when thinking about heat transfer between solid and liquid water. For example, when an ice cube is taken from a cold place to a warmer place, it will melt which is considered the state of disorder, otherwise known as entropy. This is a natural outcome of the situation and happens because heat only moves from a warmer to a colder source and not the other way around (Feynman).

Studying this law gave me a better sense of the overall significance of Stoppard’s Arcadia. Although the Second Law of Thermodynamics is talking specifically about heat transfer, this concept can apply to other situations as well. The relationships between different people in this play tend to fall into disaster because of the many people in the house behaving naturally. Much like the relationship between a cold and warm body in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, relationships between characters in this play tend to only go one way, towards disorder. For example, the dispute between Septimus and Ezra Chater leads towards chaos when Chater first finds out that Septimus slept with his wife and challenges him to a duel. In comparison to the transfer of heat, Septimus would be considered the “heated” character because he provoked the disorder. The heat then transfers to a cooler body or in this comparison, the heat, or chaos between characters transfers to Mr. Chater. When Septimus behaves the way he does, it increases the disorder in the system, and in the relationship between these two characters in the house. Septimus continues to provoke Chater by writing a bad review on one of his poems. This is just one of the many chaotic moments in the play between two characters that spirals downward. However, the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that this is the way things are supposed to play out because characters are behaving naturally. Therefore, it is very clear that Stoppard placed so much emphasis on this concept because it explained the disaster and chaos that occurred due to characters interacting with one another.

-Anna Widdison

father of thermodynamics

French engineer and physicist Nicholas Leonard Sadi Carnot, known as the Father of Thermodynamics. Source: nndb.com

Works Cited

Feynman, Richard P, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands. The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1963.

Grant, Alan Woods and Ted. “Reason in Revolt: Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science.” In Defence of Marxism. In Defence of Marxism, 18 July 2005. Accessed 26 Apr. 2017.

Stoppard, Tom. Arcadia. GROVE, 2017. Print. Accessed 09 Apr. 2017.