An essay on the adaptation modes of the film Arrival has been taking up my time. As I read the original short story that the movie is based on, Stories of Your Life by Ted Chiang, I found something very interesting that the film has left out—Fermat’s Principle. It is illustrated in the book that the ray of light travels the path that takes up the least time. We all know that the shortest way between two points is the straight line that links them and that the ray of light refracts when entering another medium(air to water to glass: gas, liquid and solid). According to Fermat’s Principle, the light is strangely teleological. It does not just enter the water and refracts, but calculates the path that saves most time to travel. The light knows the destination before reaching it.
What else might be teleological? What if we know the future?
sourced book: Chiang, T 2016, Arrival, Picador, London. //
