The inhibition of the pursuit of knowledge is shown in the passage where Thomasina is expressing her disdain for Cleopatra and by saying that Cleopatra was a poor leader due to her allowance of emotion to govern international political decisions that ultimately slowed the progression of human innovation due to the loss of the Alexandrian library. …show more content…
She describes Cleopatra as “making noodles of our sex” the word noodles being suggestive of a very weak being that lacks structural integrity as a result of emotion. A noodle being used could be because a noodle becomes soft and malleable as a result of moisture and heat, these two conditions could be considered to draw similarities between the noodle and females whilst sexually aroused. Noodles could also be in reference to the fact that women are typically seen as easily defeated or devoured. Therefore Thomasina was suggesting that Cleopatra was incapable of making rational decisions as a result of intense emotional barriers and as a result doomed the entire sex to be seen as weak willed. This links to the attraction that newton left out, sex, and chaos theory as sex and human emotions make decisions illogical, that is assuming that one perception of logical does not deviate from another individual’s concept of logicality. The idea of perception varying from one …show more content…
Emotions both positive and negative have the potential for the corruption of order. We can see the exact moment when emotions influence Thomasina and she is diverted off of the path of knowledge: “Is it Cleopatra? – I hate Cleopatra!” The use of the question mark and the hyphen are the point in which emotion takes hold and she begins her tangent on why she dislikes Cleopatra. The question mark symbolises the realisation and the final event which began from Cleopatra allowing love to cloud her judgement to this point which diverts Thomasina off of the path of intellect in this particular moment and possibly preventing Thomasina from realising her full potential as a scholar which could possibly have halted the advancement of mathematics by a considerable length of time due to the fact that Thomasina was using iteration decades before it was considered a true form of mathematics. The word “hate” could be suggestive of Thomasina’s hatred for Cleopatra or it could be interpreted as her hatred for the way that Cleopatra makes her feel towards Cleopatra as a result of Cleopatra’s actions, not the person specifically but possibly only the ideals that she stands for. It is possible to theorise that if Cleopatra had