[arcadia]

[byblythe]

By Nature Desire To Know

The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's, must be beautiful;
the ideas, like the colours or the words, must fit together in an harmonious way.
Beauty is the first test, there is no place in the world for ugly mathematics.
- G. H. Hardy, mathematician.

Comments

[circe_tigana]

HANNAH: So what about politics? Economics?

VALENTINE: If there was a desperate need, that could just be history with some predictive statistics.

This is still my favourite bit. O MAH WASTED B.A.!

Heeee.

[blythely]

I'm certain you've made up the credits since then.

[anna_wing]

Reasoning from flaky analogy won't contribute to the sum total of human
knowledge. It just keeps people from working in marketing.

Oh yes indeed.

That was lovely. Thank you.

[blythely]

My absolute pleasure, thank you for reading :)

[lite_bright]

(this is brighty, in her other guise.)

I adored this story on the morning of the twenty-fifth, and I still adore it. It's a sneaky canon, and I think that in this, you struck a perfect balance between the erudition native to all of Stoppard's work, and a sense of fun and delight, in that this could really happen, and it would be wonderful.

I'd like to link to this on my own livejournal, if you don't mind?

[blythely]

Hallo! And thank you, again, for the opportunity--it was the story I wanted to write the most, and your request made me focus on Valentine, who was the perfect character for me to think more about. Of course you can link! :)

[askmehow]

Eeeeeeee!!!! I looooove this story to pieces. I remember reading this a while back, and being wowed by it then, and it's still as awesome as ever.

There are so many things that stuck with me: the tension and cross-currents in the first scene between Chloe's degree and Val's worldview (and between Chloe and Hannah, and Bernard), the image of the fern frond emerging on the wallpaper from Thomasina's equations... It's so note-perfectly Stoppard, the wit and humour and precision... It's hard for me to be coherent about this story, except to say that it just made me very, very happy. ♥ ♥ ♥