Love and Other Thought Experiments - Softcover

Ward, Sophie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593314301 ISBN 13: 9780593314302

Verlag: Vintage, 2021

Inhaltsangabe

This impressive debut novel, longlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize, takes its premise and inspiration from ten of the best-known thought experiments in philosophy—the what-ifs of philosophical investigation—and uses them to talk about love in a wholly unique way.

Married couple Rachel and Eliza are considering having a child. Rachel wants one desperately, and Eliza thinks she does, too, but she can't quite seem to wrap her head around the idea. When Rachel wakes up screaming one night and tells Eliza that an ant has crawled into her eye and is stuck there, Eliza initially sees it as a cry for attention. But Rachel is adamant. She knows it sounds crazy—but she also knows it's true. As a scientist, Eliza is skeptical. Suddenly their entire relationship is called into question.

What follows is a uniquely imaginative sequence of ten interconnecting episodes—each from a different character's perspective—inspired by some of the best-known thought experiments in philosophy. Together they form a sparkling philosophical tale of love lost and found across the universe.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

SOPHIE WARD is an actor and a writer. She has published articles in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, The Observer, The Spectator, Diva, and Red magazine, and her short stories have been published in the anthologies Finding A Voice, Book of Numbers, The Spiral Path, and The Gold Room. Her book A Marriage Proposal: The Importance of Equal Marriage and What it Means for All of Us was published as a Guardian short eBook in 2014. In 2018, Sophie won the Pindrop short story award for "Sunbed." She has a degree in philosophy and literature and a PhD from Goldsmiths, University of London, on the use of narrative in philosophy of mind.

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Rachel picked up the magazine that Eliza had left in the kitchen. The cover was a drawing of a tree with the roots embedded in a man’s head and above him a blowsy crown of leafed branches arched towards the sun. It wasn’t a typical image for Eliza’s reading matter. Rachel turned the page.
‘Thought experiments are devices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things.’
That’s a lot, thought Rachel. But she liked the sound of it. It tickled her to think of stories being used by scientists. I could be a thought experiment, something Eliza has dreamed up to challenge her hardened reasoning.
‘If I were a thought experiment,’ Rachel asked Eliza as they got into bed that night, ‘What one would I be?’
‘I’m not sure you can be a thought experiment,’ Eliza said. ‘They are supposed to help you think about a problem.’
‘If you can imagine it, then it is possible.’
‘That is one theory.’
‘So,’ Rachel pushed away the book Eliza had picked up and blinked at her girlfriend. ‘Imagine me.’
Eliza smiled and shook her head. ‘This is what happens when the fanciful encounter the factual.’
‘I’m not sure which is which here. Quit stalling.’ Rachel prodded Eliza’s armpit.
‘Fine! You want to be a thought experiment? You can be a zombie! No, no, I’ve got it. You would be, yes, Hume’s Missing Shade of Blue. The colour he has never seen but can still visualise. Happy?’
Hume’s Missing Shade of Blue, thought Rachel as she laid her head on the pillow. Yes. I can be that. ‘Tell me some more.’

1.
An Ant

Pascal’s Wager
The seventeenth-century mathematician Blaise Pascal argued that since God either does or does not exist and we must all make a decision about the existence of God, we are all bound to take part in the wager. You can commit your life to God because you stand to gain infinite happiness (in the infinite hereafter) with what amounts to a finite stake (your mortal life). If you do not commit your life to God you may be staking your finite life for infinite unhappiness in Hell. By this logic, the infinite amount of possible gain far outweighs the finite loss.
But there is here an infinity of an infinitely happy life to gain, a chance of gain against a finite number of chances of loss, and what you stake is finite.
Blaise Pascal Pensées 272

 ‘The ants have moved in here now.’ Rachel brushed the small body aside and turned the pillow over.
Eliza glanced up from her book.
‘The ants. In the sitting room. They’ve followed us in here,’ Rachel said.
‘Are you sure?’
‘I just saw one.’
‘No, are you sure it’s an ant? They’re so tiny, I don’t know how you could tell.’ Eliza returned to the hardback that was balanced on her bosom.
‘I don’t need glasses.’
‘Yet.’
Rachel prodded her. ‘Do ants bite?’
‘I’ve got to finish this for tomorrow.’
‘It’s definitely ants. The same ones that were on the sofa last summer. They got in through the gap in the window and now they’ve found a way in here. You couldn’t put a baby in a room with ants. Eliza?’
‘Yes?’
‘Did you see them before? When you slept on this side?’
‘No.’
‘You wouldn’t have noticed anyway.’
‘Maybe one.’
’Is that why we swapped sides?’
The book fell away from Eliza’s hand. ‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No. Tell me. You think I moved you to that side of the bed because it’s infested?’
‘It’s okay. Read.’ Rachel looked at her girlfriend. ‘I know. Sorry.’
Eliza didn’t go back to her reading but she kept the light on while Rachel fell asleep. She wondered whether she should get the pest controller from down the road to look at the flat. Mr Kargin. He had a second job repairing and selling old televisions. They had walked into his workshop one day, to buy an aerial for Rachel’s black-and-white set. The man spent a long time looking through cardboard boxes and muttering about outdated equipment.
Eliza saw Rachel trying not to mind the posters on the wall, each one with a picture of a cockroach or a rat, along with a method of extermination. There were so many different creatures and all the pictures were the same size so the termites were as big as the squirrels. Mr Kargin stared at them both for some time.
‘He stared at me,’ Rachel said when they walked away from the shop. ‘He was fine with you.’
He didn’t find an aerial and he was bad tempered about the entire transaction though it had been his idea to start rummaging through the boxes. Eliza didn’t imagine he made much money in television repairs but she thought the extermination business might be a means of expression as much as an extra income. She had promised Rachel they would never go back.
Rachel lay next to her, breathing heavily. It had been Eliza’s idea to change places because she had a new desk and it wouldn’t fit in the alcove on her side of the bed. It was a practical decision and even Rachel could see that it made sense. The flat was already crowded with furniture and the desk could double as a bedside table, but maybe the desk had disturbed a nest or maybe it was the time of year for ants to move indoors. Eliza had not deliberately changed sides because of the insects but now she would have to prove that she cared enough to fix the problem. Ever since they had talked about having a baby, Rachel had been testing the temperature of Eliza’s love.
Eliza wondered how many of her decisions were basically points of honour. Throughout her life, her job at the university, the bicycles and vegetarianism, even her haircut seemed as if they were chosen in reaction to the opinions of an invisible audience. She had become the sort of person she approved of but she wasn’t sure she had chosen anything she actually wanted. She checked the pillow one last time and turned off the bedside light. She would sort out the ants in the morning.
 
program

The next day, Eliza cycled past the television repair shop on the way to work. Smaller versions of the vermin posters were stuck inside the display window below precarious stacks of broken televisions. She thought of all the chemicals that the bad-tempered Mr Kargin would use in their flat. He seemed to radiate poison. Even ants didn’t deserve a murderer like that.
They had talked about the ants over breakfast and Eliza had googled ‘getting rid of ants’.
‘All these ants look regular-sized. I can’t find any photos of extra small ants.’
Rachel didn’t want to read about eggs and nests.
‘I don’t mind one ant. But not in our bed, and not hundreds of them. I keep thinking of that song . . . “just what makes that little old ant . . . “‘
‘Peppermint oil.’ Eliza twisted round from the screen to watch Rachel singing while she stacked the dishwasher. ‘It says here they don’t like peppermint oil. Well, that’s easy. I’ll get some later.’ She closed the page and went back to her emails.
‘I like the idea of the peppermint oil but I can’t see how it will stop the ants in the long term . . .” Rachel wiped down the kitchen surfaces and went to stand by Eliza’s chair. She rested a damp hand on Eliza’s shoulder....

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Vintage
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593314301
• ISBN 13: 9780593314302
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar