The reaction of reviewers to Tom Stoppard's Jumpers … reflects the critics' suspicion that in his plays Stoppard indulges in startling stage antics, erudite allusions, and involved puns in order to disguise deficiencies in insight and make shallow plays appear profound. (p. 354)

Jumpers, one of Stoppard's most erudite works, illustrates the problems his use of research can pose for the reviewer. The philosopher-protagonist, George Moore, spends most of his time arguing for a belief in God and moral absolutes and against the materialism and moral relativism of the "jumpers," the logical positivists who compose the philosophical establishment at his university. Besides being uncertain about the relevance of the murder plot to this argument, reviewers were unsure about the very basic question of which side, if either, Stoppard intended to have win the argument…. Other difficulties posed by the play are why Stoppard chose to name his hero G. E. Moore after the British intuitionist philosopher, and whether Bones, a major character, is merely an appendage to the mystery plot or relates to the philosophical debate in a significant way.

An explication of Jumpers in the light of the major tenets of logical positivism will show that the murder of McFee is integral to George's debate with the materialists, that the debate also includes Bones, that nothing in the play is gratuitous or pointless, and that, far from adding complications or allusions solely for the sake of dazzling the audience, Stoppard fashions the language and action of Jumpers into a highly particularized and apt portrait of the intellectual and moral uncertainty modern man feels when confronting his world. An integral part of this portrait is the implication that George, however sympathetic his character and attractive his beliefs, fails in his efforts to give life a satisfying meaning through philosophy. Further, since Jumpers does form a unified and meaningful whole, not all of Stoppard's works may be dismissed as shallow displays of stage pyrotechnics. (pp. 355-56)

Much of the satire in Jumpers extends beyond logical positivism to materialistic philosophy in general. (p. 356)

The world of Jumpers is carefully constructed to give dramatic form to some of the questions pondered by the logical positivists. For instance, a distinguishing trait of logical positivism is its focus on language. This focus was inspired by Wittgenstein's Tractatus, which is concerned with the relation between a logical language and the world of which that language purports to give us a picture; distortions in the language that shapes the picture, Wittgenstein believed, can lead to an unclear picture of reality…. In Jumpers, much of the action and humor hinges on linguistic ambiguities and confusions. These confusions mirror larger ambiguities present in the reality represented in the drama. (pp. 356-57)

The most pervasive verbal joke in Jumpers is the "cognomen syndrome," a psychological condition in which one's name corresponds to one's role in life. (p. 357)

The central tenet of logical positivism is the principle of verification, which holds that no statement is "literally significant" or "meaningful," no statement is truly about the world unless its truth or falsity can be empirically verified. (pp. 358-59)

Jumpers demonstrates some of the drawbacks to the logical positivist attitude toward reality. For one thing, treating McFee's death as a problem of waste disposal leaves no room for sorrow over McFee the man, the unique individual who will never again know life on this earth. Archie's first reaction to his colleague's death is glib and callous: "It's a great pity," Dorothy quotes him as saying, "but it's not as though the alternative were immortality."… The play ties this careless devaluation of life to the "emotive theory of ethics," the logical positivist doctrine that ethical statements are expressions of the speaker's feelings, not of absolutes, and the corollary principle that morality is the totally relative product of one's culture…. Stoppard represents this position as leading to the abandonment of ethics altogether. In this way, McFee's espousal of the emotive theory of ethics contributed to a climate of amorality in which his own murder became more likely.

A second drawback is that logical positivism cannot, by virtue of its materialistic assumptions, give Dorothy the spiritual comfort and reassurance she craves. (p. 363)

Although the original George Moore could find no convincing evidence that God exists, the George of Jumpers affirms God's existence on several traditional grounds…. (p. 364)

Even to George himself, it sounds like he believes because he believes: "All I know is that I think that I know that I know that nothing can be created out of nothing, that my moral conscience is different from the rules of my tribe, and that there is more in me than meets the microscope—and because of that I'm lumbered with this incredible, indescribable, and definitely shifty God."…

Whatever may be Stoppard's personal views about God, Jumpers does not endorse George's position at the expense of those of Bones and Archie. It does not show a brilliant Sherlock Holmes outwitting the bumbling representatives of Scotland Yard and triumphantly proving that the murderer is the one person we would never suspect. At the end, we have not discovered the identity of the murderer or the nature of his motive, but have merely listened to several inconclusive speculations and received some inkling of the plethora of possible culprits, the variety of their motives, and the ambiguities of the evidence. McFee's puzzling murder forms a dramatic image of a reality as striking, as full of menace, and as enigmatic as the sharp sound made by the closing of the secretary's purse. That sound of closure is all the answer man gets when he seeks knowledge of life's ultimate mysteries, yet the presence of the detectives in Jumpers testifies that he will never stop seeking. (p. 368)