Omar Azam
The Two Cultures Problem
1992
The Ultimate Devil's Advocate
In our study of the two cultures thus far, we have debunked, and read literature that debunks, much of what we took for granted before this course. However, one generalization that was not addressed until We was the multi-faceted world of mathematics. Although mathematics and science are inherently linked, this does not mean that they share the same tendencies. More accurately, math is a tool used in science, and oftentimes their truths are contradictory. Zamyatin, well-versed in calculus and geometry, uses mathematics throughout his novel as a metaphor for both rationality and irrationality. We see the narrator's views on math change while he himself changes, and in the end, D- 503 comes full circle and returns to his former self and returns to his former view of mathematics.
Before D-503's sickness, he is a very logical mathematician and scientist, who is open about the limitations of man, society and mathematics. He rationalizes everything. He is a product of the mathematically precise One State. On the first page of the novel, an excerpt from the One State Gazette gives us a glimpse of how machine-like and precise this world is: "you will integrate the infinite equation," "we bring them mathematically infallible happiness...." The reason that the One State and its numbers are so fearless is because they can rationalize everything in mathematical terms. It seems logical and therefore correct to us, the readers, that happiness = desires divided by envies. At times D-503 is incorrect, for example in his analysis of dance (pg. 4), where he describes it as unfreedom. This assumption is debatable to us, but to D-503, this statement is mathematically correct because all the variables add up....
In the Fifth entry, the motif on an "X" is introduced. The x, as in mathematics is an unknown variable, and D-503 is confronted with more and more unanswerable questions relating to I-330. For example, D-503 can rationalize why he hates I-330, but he doesn't know why he is attracted to her or why her own seemingly illogical arguments make as much sense as his.
As time goes on , the "perfect squares" and "divine spheres" that D-503 rambled on about in the earlier chapters are gone, replaced by distorted curves and ellipsoids. As he is introduced to the Ancient House, he is introduced to a completely unknown world of irrationalities: colors, sexual attraction, love, drugs. And he cannot close the door to them nor explain why they exist or why he is attracted to them. Basically, D-503 has been introduced to the irrational side of the human being, and of the world. Math has no verity in the world of true desire and envy, and D-503 cannot deal with any of this new strangeness.
In the height of his sickness, D-503 has lost all sense of security. Before, he used to find refuge in the idea that infinity is divisible and that 2+2= 4. Now, he has lost all sense of time (he often fails to remember how long an event occurred, or when it took place), and space. Like a (Steven) Kern-esque model, D-503 is living in an Einsteinian world of relative motion. And with this shift in D-503's existence comes a shift in his mathematics. Before, D-503 lived in a Euclidian and Newtonian world of fixed norms, but now D-503 is living in a world where Love is a Function of Death, and entropy is as powerful as energy. D-503 has finally found the chaos and the paradox in mathematics, along with the fact that math is abstract and does not share the same constants as the real world (e.g. mathematically, an atom should have no mass whatsoever, it should be the same as a point; this is not true). This is the reason that D-503 has been coming up with all the weird equations relating to incalculable emotions: because he assumes everything can be mathematically expressed. After he realizes this falsehood, he stops bothering with math and writes very much like a stream of consciousness ascientific artist.
In the last few pages of the book, we are introduced to D-503's neighbor, who has proved that there is no infinity, by reconciling the real world with the world of mathematics. This discovery is right along the lines of D-503's thought processes. Math and the real world are not the same, and they must be integrated before they are used to solve problems in the real world, such as problems of the heart, of the mind, and of the human body. But just as D-503's hope returns, he is given the Operation, and is returned to his world of perfect lines, of machines, of fantasy in its highest sense.
What Zamyatin shows through this revolution is that a society's whole premise can be disproved very easily, and judging from his views on society it is safe to say that he believes in continual revolution. Human beings are constants, but governments are not, and should not try to be. Like Einstein, Zamyatin realizes that change is the only constant, and since everything in our human sphere is relative, even mathematically logical principles are not correct. As a matter of fact, there is no such thing as correct, because everything is relative: even math can be proved irrational.
Copyright 2003 Omar Azam