Pi

 Pi is an science fiction movie. Pi was basically about a guy who lives in an apartment with his computer is going mad over numbers. He believes that there is some kind of pattern in numbers that has yet to be discovered. He is trying to figure out this pattern.  He believes if he figures out this pattern he will be able to figure out anything. This pattern technically doesn't exist, so he appears to be insane. Pi is am different take on science fiction. Pi does not have the traditional outer space and alien aspect of science fiction. Pi seems to be realistic to people who are not math wizards. Well, at least to me it appears to be real. This film is very complicated because so many things are going on at once. This guy is going crazy because he is trying to find these numbers.
Insane is to do the same thing over and over looking for different results. Max has basically dedicated his life to trying to figure out these numbers. Men are trying to capture him for his brain and knowledge. He eventually takes a drill to his head to end his trauma. I do not know if Max felt successful or not with his personal experimentation. But, i feel that a lot of people have mental battles these days just like he did in the film. I sometimes have the urge to figure out things that I do not know exist but, the fact that he went to the extreme he did makes him appear "crazy".
Hume relates to this Film because Max is searching for a number that will always stay the same and Hume is talking about things that are still here after death. Numbers will always be the same forever.  Sometimes when people do not understand you they tend to judge you. A lot of times when you are not like them they do not see u as normal because you are their standards.

There is such a thing as too much Pi

  The movie Pi starts out with the quote, “When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six I did. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal. I was terrified, alone in that darkness. Slowly, daylight crept in through the bandages, and I could see. But something else had changed inside of me. That day I had my first headache.”  It is about a man named Maximillian, who is extremely good with math. He is a genius but in turn, it makes him go mad. He goes crazy trying to figure something out and once he does begin to realize the true nature of things, he starts to be in a state at which he cannot survive. He becomes obsessed and paranoid.  He thinks he has found something special when he finds this sequence of 216 numbers and there are people that think so as well, but for different reasons. Max, I think, has problems deciphering what is real and what isn't as well. 

Throughout the film he has strange headaches with a very loud, piercing, shrieking noise all the while and he pulls at his hair and rubs a certain spot on his head. He uses a lot of drugs to try and remedy his headaches but nothing works. He also has weird visions. One was of an empty subway and a brain on the stairs. He poked the brain and there was a loud noise and he saw a train and a bright light coming towards him and then he woke up on the subway with a bloody nose. There is also another scene in which there is a brain but this time it is in a sink. In the end, he rids himself of his madness by drilling into his own head. When the movie ends, Max, smiles and I think it is the only time throughout the movie that he does. He is finally happy even though he thought that finding those numbers is what would do so. Is it because he doesn't have that pressure weighing on him anymore? I was also curious as to if he remembered everything he went through.  I have seen this movie three times and each time, this movie still tends to confuse me because it is hard to tell what is really happening at times, compared to what is only in his head. There are some scenes that are obvious, such as the ones with the brain, but there are other times where it seems less obvious. His senses confused him about what is real and imaginary. It is probably because he stared at the sun at a young age and when he could see, “something changed inside of him”.  It’s almost as if he was challenging his senses. Or maybe he was just rebelling against his mother. Who knows? But it is crazy to think that all because he stared into the sun for too long, it messed up his mind so much.  

Hume says, On the Immortality of the Soul,   “Having found such contradictions and difficulties in every system concerning external objects, and in the idea of matter, which we fancy so clear and determinate, We shall naturally expect still greater difficulties and contradictions in every hypothesis concerning our internal perceptions, and the nature of the mind, which we are apt to imagine so much more obscure, and uncertain. But in this we should deceive ourselves. The intellectual world, though involved in infinite obscurities, is not perplexed with any such contradictions, as those we have discovered in the natural. What is known concerning it, agrees with itself; and what is unknown, we must be contented to leave so.”

Max, instead of accepting things in the intellectual world, like math and the numbers that he finds, he decides to bring math into his metaphysical world. Because he had done so, he made things that he should have just accepted have bigger expectations. In turn, this makes him go insane because it is not natural. He needed to get out of what he thought was his reality. 

Pi and the clarity before the crash

     The first few lines of the movie did a great job of setting up its premise. In it, Max, the protagonist, states that when he was younger his mom told him not to stare at the sun, so he did it and became blind for a while. It was terrifying for him to not know whether he would ever see again. but with time, he finally regained his sight. Interestingly enough, he is well aware of this connection in the midst of his downward spiral in to obsessive insanity. Later he states (whether this actually happened or if this amendment is just some sort of self-justification trick is unclear) that before he went blind, everything became in focus, and he achieved some sort of clarity.

    This idea is an overwhelming theme of the movie, with the "icarus" story being mentioned more than one time. This pattern of "flying too close to the sun" was even repeated in isolated incidents within the movie before it happened to the main character. In fact one of the things that helped push him into his downward spiral is the bit where the computer spits out the magic number before it fries. According to his mentor, this came as a result of the computer becoming too "self-aware." A connection that is easily drawn to Max's claim to clarity.

    In his obsession, however, Max clearly does not see the overwhelming Irony in his journey. In Descartes's  theory on the "Great Deceiver" we see that through doubt we can obtain that there is a possibility that we are no more than a brain in a vat being poked into simulations of experiences. This idea is manifested literally in multiple scenes where he hallucinates his brain being covered by ants (a representation of his obsession) that causes sensory stimulation with a result of overwhelming anxiety and paranoia, not to mention his chronic migraines. He even pokes his own brain with a pen, causing hallucinations of a train. This idea is also manifest less literally in his consumption of drugs (too many to be justified by his migraine). In other words, Max's brain is indeed in a vat, and he is the one poking it. The Ironic bit is how Max actually thinks that by poking his brain enough resulting in hallucinations and delusions, he might achieve the clarity he is looking for. And yet it is plain to see that he is his own great deceiver. Descartes hypothesized that there is a possibility that the men he sees in the street wearing hats and coats might not be men at all, but robots. If Descartes was in Max's state of mind, he would have convinced himself that they actually are robots.

Hume, Pi, and the Soul of God

Pi very clearly draws a comparison to Descartes. The protagonist is wrapped up in a quest to understand the world through numbers. He discovers a sacred set of numbers and begins using them to understand the world. It is very much about what lies behind the veil of our reality.

I also see notes of Hume in the film though. The entire movie is about searching for the numbers that can be used to understand the world. Even though it is more about the constants of the world and not immortality of the individual there are still parallels. Trying to figure out the patterns in the world and what stays the same is both about the veil of reality and the immortality of things in the world.

Some Jewish men were studying the kaballah. Hebrew letters correspond to numbers. The sacred set of numbers he found were said to be the true name of God. When they tried to coerce the numbers out of the protagonist he said it's not the digits, it's the syntax between them that is important. The interaction between the pieces is where God lies. He also used the numbers to understand the world. The most interesting part is the climax of the movie where he really connected with himself after stopping his medication. He drilled a hole in his head with his drill. It then cut to him talking with someone and basically he lost his mathematical gift. But he had smiled for the only time in the movie.

 It says something that his gift was driving him crazy and ultimately led him to reduce his intelligence. The movie addresses the idea of the soul of the world or reality, what stays the same and repeats. Which isn't specifically what Hume meant but it is a very apt comparison.

The writing by Hume is considering what may be left after death. This is why the name of the writing is "The immortality of the soul." The soul is the embodiment of the material which might be left after death. In this way the number could be said to be what stays constant while the world changes.

The protagonist's search for the meaning of the world through numbers is a search for immortality. Not his own but in looking for God he searched out for the immortal elements of the world. In a way he did find them, but it only lead to him crippling himself intellectually. The ending is open ended but is interpreted as immortality being out of the reach of humans