Epistemology is another core concept of philosophy which seeks to explain the authorities in which we place our trust while seeking truth. There are many different ways to validate knowledge—God, science, God as science, experience, sensory perceptions, feeling, the self, etc.
Max embarks upon a quest to use mathematics and known patterns in nature ultimately to find a much-sought-for pattern in the stock market. Others seeking nature’s universal pattern indiscreetly worship his mathematical and technological genius and offer him the luxuries of wealth and belonging in exchange for his insight. Like these determined outsiders, Max also puts his trust in himself, acknowledging that he has been given a special gift. His anecdote to validate his genius, “When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun, so once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood.”
Although Max puts his trust in the forefathers of mathematics, the functionality of his scientific equipment, and the experiences of his mentor Sol, he comes to discover the hopelessness of it all. The movie’s tagline reads: “Faith in chaos.” What are the limitations of our current means for describing this world and predicting what is to come? Why is it that we hear countless stories of accidental discoveries—gravity coming of an apple that hit Newton on the head, Penicillin coming of Fleming’s mucous dropping into a Petri dish he was about to discard, and Sol’s example of Archimedes heeding his wife’s advice to take a bath leading to his discovery of displacement? Can we really trust anything while coexisting with the fatalism of chaos?
