Tom Stoppard Quotes
The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean it's trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren't supposed to be in that part of the plan.
Stoppard, Tom. Arcadia. Faber and Faber, 1993, p. 73.
This quotation was from a mathematician who was in the midst of the expansion of mathematics in the late 19th century to include the then rapid and rich development of Probability. This required mathematicians, scientists and others who would use the new mathematics to think in a very different way. For the existing mathematicians his quote clearly states the dilemma for them. Today, scientists and mathematicians have little trouble with “laws of probability” and realize that Probability is governed and controlled in the same way as other fields of mathematics; they are comfortable with different results occurring under the exact same experimental conditions, and those different results are unpredictable in any particular instance, but exactly predictable in terms of frequency of each possible occurrence. This makes Quantum Mechanics rational. However, few non scientists have had their thinking expanded and are comfortable with this thinking. Law and public policy makers are particularly vexed by not being able to think and work in this paradigm where consequences of something can be described for a population precisely, and yet be impossible to describe for any particular individual. This will improve over time, as politicians and other community leaders become better educated mathematically and scientifically.
Sir Tom Stoppard OM CBE FRSL HonFBA is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for television, radio, film, and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, Travesties, The Invention of Love, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.
