Content tagged "Alan Lightman"
-
In Praise of Wasting Time
Professor Alan Lightman investigates the creativity born from allowing our minds to freely roam, without attempting to accomplish anything and without any assigned tasks.
-
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine
As a physicist, Alan Lightman has always held a scientific view of the world. As a teenager experimenting in his own laboratory, he was impressed by the logic and materiality of a universe governed by a small number of disembodied forces and laws that decree all things in the world are material and impermanent. But one summer evening, while looking at the stars from a small boat at sea, Lightman was overcome by the overwhelming sensation that he was merging with something larger than himself–a grand and eternal unity, a hint of something absolute and immaterial. Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine is Lightman’s exploration of these seemingly contradictory impulses.
-
Video, podcast, and summary: “Ultimate Truths: Comparing Science and the Humanities”
James Carroll, Rebecca Goldstein, Alan Lightman, and Robert Weinberg talk with Seth Mnookin on “the differences and similarities in the kinds of knowledge available through inquiry in the sciences and humanities.”
-
Ultimate Truths: Comparing Science and the Humanities
This Communications Forum special event will explore the differences and similarities in the kinds of knowledge available through inquiry in the science and humanities, and the ways that knowledge is obtained.
-
Video, podcast, and summary: Science in Fiction
A Communications Forum featuring authors Hanya Yanagihara and Alan Lightman and moderator Seth Mnookin.
-
Science in Fiction
Hanya Yanagihara, Alan Lightman, and Rebecca Goldstein discuss the unique challenges of respecting the exacting standards of science in fictional texts.
-
Mr g: A Novel About the Creation
“’As I remember, I had just woken up from a nap when I decided to create the universe.’ So begins Alan Lightman’s playful and profound new novel, Mr g.”
-
The Accidental Universe
“These phenomena have been explained as necessary consequences of the fundamental laws of nature. This long and appealing trend may be coming to an end.”
