Dramatis Personae
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The Queen of Hearts, who explains everything by shouting it louder
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The Cheshire Cat, who understands things by not being there
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Alice, who insists on sense, much to everyone’s inconvenience
[A croquet lawn. The mallets are clocks. The hedgehogs are equations. The Queen is already angry.]
QUEEN OF HEARTS:
Explanation must cause things! Otherwise how would anything happen? Off with its causes!
ALICE:
I don’t think causes wear heads, Your Majesty.
QUEEN:
Then how do explanations explain? Something must make things be the way they are! That’s what explanation means!
CHESHIRE CAT (appearing gradually, beginning with a grin):
Does it? I always thought explanation meant “Now I can see how this fits.”
QUEEN:
FITS?! Things don’t fit! They’re forced! Laws govern! Equations command! Particles obey!
ALICE:
Obey whom?
QUEEN:
THE LAWS, of course!
CHESHIRE CAT:
How fortunate for the particles that they’re such good readers.
[The Queen strikes a hedgehog. It refuses to roll.]
QUEEN:
See! Disobedience! The universe is falling apart!
ALICE:
Or perhaps the hedgehog simply isn’t the sort of thing that rolls.
QUEEN:
Nonsense! Everything rolls because something makes it roll!
CHESHIRE CAT:
I once rolled without being pushed at all. Of course, I was falling — but that’s a different sort of explanation.
ALICE:
Is falling caused by something pushing?
CHESHIRE CAT:
Only if you insist on blaming the ground.
QUEEN:
If nothing governs anything, then anything could happen!
ALICE:
Could it?
QUEEN:
Yes! Cats could turn into teapots! Time could run backwards! Signals could go faster than light!
CHESHIRE CAT:
They could — but then we wouldn’t be talking about this system anymore.
ALICE:
So the impossibility isn’t a punishment?
CHESHIRE CAT:
No. It’s a disappearance.
QUEEN:
I don’t like disappearances. They’re very ungoverned.
ALICE:
Your Majesty, when physicists say something is necessary, do they mean the universe has no choice?
QUEEN:
Of course! It must obey!
CHESHIRE CAT:
Or else what?
QUEEN:
…
(pause)
I hadn’t considered that.
CHESHIRE CAT:
If you remove the invariant, you don’t get rebellion. You get nonsense — the wrong kind.
ALICE:
So explanation isn’t about what forces something to happen…
CHESHIRE CAT:
…it’s about what must already be in place for the thing to make sense at all.
QUEEN:
Then what do laws do?
CHESHIRE CAT:
They don’t do. They hold.
ALICE:
Like the rules of a game?
CHESHIRE CAT:
Exactly — except no one is playing it on purpose.
QUEEN:
I demand an explanation that commands!
CHESHIRE CAT:
You may shout at the equations if you like. They will remain very polite and completely unmoved.
ALICE:
And yet everything still hangs together.
CHESHIRE CAT:
Which is rather the point.
QUEEN:
So the universe isn’t ruled?
CHESHIRE CAT:
No.
ALICE:
Is it explained?
CHESHIRE CAT:
Only to the extent that its relations are articulated.
QUEEN:
That sounds terribly weak.
CHESHIRE CAT:
It’s stronger than shouting.
[The Cat fades. The Queen sulks. Alice looks thoughtful.]
ALICE:
Then explanation doesn’t say why the world behaves.
CHESHIRE CAT (only the grin remains):
It says under what conditions the behaviour can be recognised as behaviour at all.
QUEEN:
I suppose that will have to do.
CHESHIRE CAT:
It always has.
[Curtain. The hedgehogs remain perfectly invariant.]
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