Chaos Chaos Everywhere, But I Always Find My Underwear

     Chaos here. Chaos there. Chaos everywhere. In my room papers and books are scattered about the floor. The sheets on my bed are flung in every which way. Month old unwashed clothes spew out of my laundry basket. Empty packs of cigarettes, discarded hamburger wrappers, and crusty dishes finalize the chaos that is my room.  However, out of the chaos, which is my lifestyle, there is a strange and eerie order that arises. In between Culture Shock and The Vintage Book of Contemporary Short Stories is my checkbook, nestled in the space between a bookshelf and a wall is my favorite guitar pick, and on my nightstand buried under old to do lists is a partially smoked emergency joint. Chaos, chaos everywhere, but I always find my underwear. There is a method to all this madness. Though its unpredictable where a book, piece of paper, or guitar picks might be in my room from day to day, I can always find some kind of order in a room that is seemingly complete disorder. Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia examines this notion that “Chaos is not about disorder”, but about “the very essence of order” (Chaos 41).

     Before we delve into the orderly chaos of Arcadia lets first try and understand what exactly is chaos theory. James Gleick in Chaos writes, “chaos theory predicts that complex nonlinear systems are inherently unpredictable, yet at the same time chaos theory also insures often, the way to express such an unpredictable system lies not in exact equations, but in representation of the behavior of a system or in plots of strange attractors or in fractals” (63). All right so what the hell does this mean?  Basically what Gleick is saying is chaos theory incorporates order into things that don’t necessarily fellow a particular line. Chaos theory by its very nature is chaotic, however within the theory if basic behavior is understood then the chaos doesn’t become random at all, but becomes a highly predictable course of understandable events. “Though simple systems may actually produce complex behavior, complex systems may actually have a simple underlying order” (Chaos 33).  Everything in the universe is chaotic, but how do we cope with and understand the chaos? This is where things get interesting.  To understand what seem to be random events we must understand time’s relationship with its insane girlfriend chaos.

     Through time we are able to understand chaos and incorporate some kind of rational system into the chaos. This is the basic idea of always being able to find my underwear and Thomasina’s understanding of the iterated algorithm. We are now left with one question, “How does time affect chaos and the predetermined and unpredictable?”

     Graffito said, “Time is nature’s way of preventing everything from happening at once.” This is a brilliant way of looking at how time affects the chaotic nature of chaos. My room is entirely chaotic. Everything is in upheaval, yet I’m still able to find my underwear when I need to find it. The reason why, a tornado doesn’t go ripping through my room causing everything to become disorderly at once, the disorder gradually occurs and because of that I’m able to incorporate a system into the disorder. In an odd way my own lifestyle chaos has become very orderly. The only answer would be I’ve been this way my entire life. Twenty-three years of time has passed for me to understand my personal chaos.  For me, time has slowed down in the relation to the chaos within my room. The general belief when it comes to the law of time and chaos is if there is a large amount of chaos in a process, then the more time it takes for significant events to occur (finding my underwear). The opposite is very true as well, as order increases, the time period between salient events decrease.  The latter part of that law is where I’m at right now. The law of time and chaos is very applicable to the rice pudding scene in Arcadia.

     Thomasina and Septimus are in the middle of their tutoring session and Thomasina has a bit of an epiphany:

THOMASINA: 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 backwards, the jam will not come together again.  Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this odd?

SEPTIMUS: No.

THOMASINA: Well, I do. You cannot stir things apart.

SEPTIMUS: No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it forever (Arcadia 4-5).

     From this passage two things are very much so apparent, Thomasina believes in the law of time and chaos and Septimus is more inclined to believe Newton and his second law of thermodynamics. Thomasina realizes the implications in reference to the universe. She understands that there is a continued chaos whether thirty seconds or a billion years has past. It is impossible to stir things apart and this is the very nature of the law of time and chaos. Septimus feels that eventually everything becomes “unchanging and unchangeable” and this is very much so false.  Everything is always changing and is never stagnant because there is always a continued chaos. If things were to become unchangeable then by the very meaning of the second law of thermodynamics (disorder will increase until all energy is dissipated and all light and life are extinguished) we would all cease to exist. The pudding becomes permanently pink, however that doesn’t mean chaos and time ceases to affect the pudding.  The pudding by all means is a fractal under the influence of chaos and time.

VALENTINE: If you knew the algorithm and fed it back say ten thousand times, each time there’d be a dot somewhere on the screen.  You’d never know where to expect the next dot. But gradually you’d start to see this shape, because every dot will be inside the shape of this leaf.  It wouldn’t be a leaf, it would be a mathematical object.  But yes.  The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is.  It’s how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and the snowstorm (Arcadia 47). 

     The pudding is the Sierpinski Hexagon in pudding form. Time and chaos continue to change the pudding, just as the time and chaos continue to change the snowflake into a snowstorm. The chaos never ends. The chaos is always around. The pudding gradually becomes pink because of the chaos of the spoon stirring the jam into it, and because of the amount of time the chaos is being applied to the pudding. Yes, eventually the pudding can become no pinker, but the chaos of the spoon stirring the pudding never stops. If the stirring did stop, then we would cease to exist.

     “Chaos is not about disorder”, but about “the very essence of order” (Chaos 41). James Gleick is right about this idea, however it takes time in order to understand that chaos. To understand chaos we must first understand its behavior. The pudding example is perfect because as the chaos of the spoon stirring blends more and more of the jam into the pudding we begin to see the behavior of the spoon in relation to the pudding and the jam and know the pudding will soon become pink. It’s all about behavior and the understanding of behavior. I’m able to find my underwear because I understand my own snobbishness. As much as one may be lead to believe that chaos is about complete and utter disorder, which is definitely not the case. Time and chaos are two of the must confusing things in the world, yet they bring an understanding that only time and chaos can bring.