Seppanen, Ritva. "Squaring the Circle : An Examination of Scientific Ideas in James Joyce’s Ulysses." Masters, Concordia University, 1980.

Related topics:

Beginnings and Endings
Music
Science
Thought and Action
Union and Division

Link to citation page: https://www.worldcat.org/title/squaring-the-circle-an-examination-of-scientific-ideas-in-james-joyces-ulysses/oclc/74356618&referer=brief_results

Link to full text: http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/4290/1/MK49684.pdf

Seppanen's master's thesis, comprised of an introduction and three chapters, examines scientific ideas in Ulysses largely in the context of the historical development of scientific thought, from ancient Greece to the early twentieth-century. Seppanen focuses on the split that occurred between the "medieval disciplines of the trivium (grammar, logic, rhetoric) and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy)... by the rise of science or the quadrivial arts to prominence" (4) in order to show how both modern and ancient science are figured as parody in the characters of Bloom and Stephen, respectively. The problem from antiquity of squaring the circle becomes the cardinal symbol for Seppanen's argument that all the science and technology in the novel are being dissolved back to myth, and that Joyce, in spite of what we might expect, ultimately resists reuniting the concrete and abstract, which science had separated.

Chapter I draws on several scientific journals, encyclopedias, and essays in order to weave scientific and philosophical contributions from Aristotle, Archimedes, Bacon, Plato, Netwon, and Galileo into character analysis of Bloom and Stephen. She argues, for instance, "the unlikelihood of [Bloom's] ever coming to an understanding of the significance of the details he manages to accumulate" (48) by pointing out that his knowledge of the stars is simply an accumulation of facts, rather than a conceptual understanding of astronomy, therefore echoing Baconian philosophy. In another conflation of ideology with character analysis, Seppanen argues for Stephen's rejection of "Plantonistic mysticism" (87).

Chapter II traces the influence of Darwin's theory of evolution on Bloom, referencing Bloom's thoughts about the dirty eaters in "Lestrygonians" (U 8.701-03): "Everyfellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp . . . Eat or be eaten. Kill! Kill!" (Seppanen 66). Seppanen also analyzes the relationships Bloom and Stephen have with music, noting how Bloom thinks of music mathematically and Stephen relates to it religiously, and connects music to the mythic and the technological.

Finally, chapter III unites the ideas presented in the first two chapters under the trivium/quadrivium distinction, and illustrates how both are undermined in "Ithaca" (U 17). Seppanen contends that there is no stable philosophical or theological worldview in Ulysses, but rather a dissolution of the dominant views dissolving into their mystical equivalents: "mathematics becomes numerology, astronomy astrology, and musical harmony an undistinguished diminished seventh..." (101). The final sentiment is that the circle is, in fact, not squared.

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