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Alien Encounters - Outline of the Play

Author(s): 
Gavin Hitchcock

 

 

PROLOGUE TO ACT 1: The presumption of man
 

 

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) in a monastery garden, circa 1658.
 


 

ACT 1: Confusion and paradox
 

John Wallis (1616–1703), Antoine Arnauld (1612–1694), Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716), in conversation, circa 1690. Leonhard Euler (1707–1783) giving front-stage commentary as a young man, circa 1730.

 


 

PROLOGUE TO ACT 2: The courage of the quest
 

 

Blaise Pascal, circa 1694, in the after-life.
 


 

ACT 2: Introducing the strangers
 

Scene 1 : Nicholas Saunderson (1682–1739), in a Cambridge lecture room, circa 1730.

 

Scene 2 : Leonhard Euler, dictating to an untutored and inexperienced scribe in his St. Petersburg house, circa 1770.

 

Scene 3 : Pierre-Simone Laplace (1749–1827), at the École Normale in post-Revolution Paris, circa 1796.

 


 

EPILOGUE: Forward in Faith!
 



Jean d'Alembert, reading from a volume of the great Encyclopédie, in 1783—the year of his death.

 


 

LAST WORD: The humbling of science
 


 

The spirit of Pascal pronounces on the past and prophecies the future.
 


 

Gavin Hitchcock , "Alien Encounters - Outline of the Play," Convergence (May 2011)

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