Math, determinism, and the future: A review of "An Abundance of Katherines," by John Green

If someone could tell you the path of every romantic relationship you would ever have using mathematics, would you want to know?

John Green explores just such a concept in his young adult novel, "An Abundance of Katherines," which was the first book I read in 2014. As you read the novel, you follow Colin through the aftermath of his nineteenth break-up with a girl named Kathrine. More importantly, however, you get to follow Colin as he tries to understand whether or not he "matters."

I think almost any person reaching a new point of departure in life has to struggle with this dilemma. We reach the edge of some part of us--intelligence, relationship skills, confidence in a skill, etc.--and we wonder, "Why should anyone care about who I am?" Green uses Colin, a high school graduate and "former" child prodigy to take this idea to the extreme. Colin is a person who has been pushed to the edge of his abilities since he was young, by parents, himself, and others. It is what made him different, notable, and simultaneously unpopular with most.  But, what do you do when this thing that defines you is no longer so special and different? How can you know that you matter?

I do not want to spend a lot of time laying out the plot of this book. You can go to wikipedia for that. Rather, I wanted to focus a little bit on the concepts of determinism and free will that Colin is challenged by in this story and how those concepts connect to a sense of self-worth. Colin spends much of his time trying to create a mathematical formula that would express each of his previous nineteen break-ups. He tries to express in an equation how variables, such as popularity, determine who will break up with whom in a relationship. Despite his best efforts and, indeed, succeeding to graph his previous relationships, he eventually has to grapple with the fact that this equation cannot predict the future for new relationships. 

The question I asked myself when Colin comes to embrace this new found freedom in the face of his mathematical work is, "What does this say about determinism and relativism?" Colin's work to reduce his relationships down to abstract graphs shows a common human desire to be able to pin down every last detail, to know in advance. Think of all the science fiction where one tries to escape their own death after seeing the future. Does our failure to know the future or to know it and still fail to prevent it show that seeking knowledge is useless?

I do not think that is the point to take away from this book. Rather, I am drawn to the fact that Colin did not know very much about himself (or others) at the beginning of the story, and it is that deep reflection and study of his previous relationships that sets in motion all the things that allow him to break the cycle and start creating new patterns in his life. He has to understand his old sense of self-value in relationships (and in his intellectual pursuits) before he can see his self-worth that exists beyond those things.

At any rate, I would whole heartedly recommend this book to anyone interested in YA literature. It was a quick read full of laughter and good points for anyone pondering their mattering. Full disclosure: I am a pretty big fan of John Green. This is the fourth book by him I have read, and I follow the Youtube project that John does with his brother Hank Green, vlogbrothers. I might be biased. :)