I try to live life appreciatively. One thing I do appreciate is seeing notes, reviews or announcements of books I did not know existed, but which I now want to read. That just happened with a small review of a new book by Alan Lightman, entitled Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine. Lightman is a professor at MIT, prolific astrophysicist and author. As I read more about him, I discovered how fascinating he really is. He is one of the few people who can write both for the scientist and the humanities person.
Diane Scharper is the person who wrote the little review, which I saw. I want to share a few tidbits from that review that hopefully might whet your appetite to pursue some of Lightman’s stuff. Scharper’s opening line hooked me. She writes, “Alan Lightman, professor and author of more than 15 books, including the best-selling novel Einstein's Dreams, says he is not a believer in God. But he wishes he were.” I almost laughed out loud at that last description. I am not sure I know many people who don’t believe in God, but wish they did. It makes me want to meet and talk to Lightman. I think I would like him!
Sharper describes Lightman’s book in this fashion. “Part memoir, part scientific observation, part discussion of religious and metaphysical beliefs, the book contains 20 chapters focusing on topics like origins, atoms, ants, motion and truth.” As I read this description, it brings to mind Annie Dillard’s classic, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I have used this book numerous times in class. Unlike Lightman, Dillard is a believer, but not an ordinary believer.
Scharper puts us on alert, however, when she says reading this book is not going to be easy. She admits, “To the mix, he adds his own personal experiences, which makes this poetically written though challenging book more palatable for a nonscientific reader…” I don’t plan to let this stop me from reading the book. Let’s just say, I am now prepared.
I was particularly fascinated by Scharper lifting up the focus on death, one of the topics Lightman treats. I found one of the review’s paragraph especially informative. Scharper writes, “Death, he writes, is the gradual diminishment of consciousness. According to science, a person is made of about seven thousand trillion trillion atoms. ‘The totality of our tissues and muscles and organs is composed of these atoms. And, according to the scientific view, there is nothing else,’ he says. We are ‘simply assemblages of atoms. And when we die, this special assemblage dissembles.’” Let’s unpack this paragraph.
I can understand and appreciate his definition of death. It is the gradual diminishment of consciousness. There are other things we can add, like death stops the physical process of life and begins a disintegrating process. Interestingly, Lightman continues to think about death by reflecting on life. I smiled when he describes how many atoms constitute us. I don’t even know how to think about seven thousand trillion trillion! That’s a lot. It is fascinating to think that these atoms somehow become conscious and I can talk about “me” as a single entity. And it is that “me” that somehow “dies,” along with all my atoms.
We are simply an “assemblage of atoms.” No doubt, most of us think about ourselves as more than this! In spite of being “only atoms,” I think about myself as “atoms made in the image of God” and somehow being a child of God. I guess this is the move that Lightman can’t make. And I understand and appreciate that. I think we are still soul friends.
Lightman apparently talks some about the intellectual quest he has travels. Becoming an astrophysicist is no easy thing. I can’t imagine what it is like to study a black hole. As a scientist, he is on a quest for knowledge and, in some real sense, for truth. I would hope people of faith could say the same thing---knowing full well that often science is pitted against religion. I am afraid that when science and religion are seen as antagonists, religion often is revealed as the less noble. This is why I like where Lightman goes.
Scharper tells us that Lightman says, “explanations that work today may not work tomorrow.” Religion should hold things loosely like this. I think this is one reason Quakers always affirmed a belief in continuing revelation. Lightman’s next assertion brought this question of continuing revelation into focus. He acknowledges, “Science doesn't deal in certainty so much as in the search for certainty — which, he suggests, makes science more similar to religion than scientists like to admit.”
A search for certainty---that says it all. That is why spiritual folks talk about faith---it is what we trust in the moment. At least, I know faith is not certainty. But faith is a search for certainty. And that is what Lightman is talking about and seeking.
That’s why I feel like a soul friend with him. And I long to see what else he can teach me.
Diane Scharper is the person who wrote the little review, which I saw. I want to share a few tidbits from that review that hopefully might whet your appetite to pursue some of Lightman’s stuff. Scharper’s opening line hooked me. She writes, “Alan Lightman, professor and author of more than 15 books, including the best-selling novel Einstein's Dreams, says he is not a believer in God. But he wishes he were.” I almost laughed out loud at that last description. I am not sure I know many people who don’t believe in God, but wish they did. It makes me want to meet and talk to Lightman. I think I would like him!
Sharper describes Lightman’s book in this fashion. “Part memoir, part scientific observation, part discussion of religious and metaphysical beliefs, the book contains 20 chapters focusing on topics like origins, atoms, ants, motion and truth.” As I read this description, it brings to mind Annie Dillard’s classic, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. I have used this book numerous times in class. Unlike Lightman, Dillard is a believer, but not an ordinary believer.
Scharper puts us on alert, however, when she says reading this book is not going to be easy. She admits, “To the mix, he adds his own personal experiences, which makes this poetically written though challenging book more palatable for a nonscientific reader…” I don’t plan to let this stop me from reading the book. Let’s just say, I am now prepared.
I was particularly fascinated by Scharper lifting up the focus on death, one of the topics Lightman treats. I found one of the review’s paragraph especially informative. Scharper writes, “Death, he writes, is the gradual diminishment of consciousness. According to science, a person is made of about seven thousand trillion trillion atoms. ‘The totality of our tissues and muscles and organs is composed of these atoms. And, according to the scientific view, there is nothing else,’ he says. We are ‘simply assemblages of atoms. And when we die, this special assemblage dissembles.’” Let’s unpack this paragraph.
I can understand and appreciate his definition of death. It is the gradual diminishment of consciousness. There are other things we can add, like death stops the physical process of life and begins a disintegrating process. Interestingly, Lightman continues to think about death by reflecting on life. I smiled when he describes how many atoms constitute us. I don’t even know how to think about seven thousand trillion trillion! That’s a lot. It is fascinating to think that these atoms somehow become conscious and I can talk about “me” as a single entity. And it is that “me” that somehow “dies,” along with all my atoms.
We are simply an “assemblage of atoms.” No doubt, most of us think about ourselves as more than this! In spite of being “only atoms,” I think about myself as “atoms made in the image of God” and somehow being a child of God. I guess this is the move that Lightman can’t make. And I understand and appreciate that. I think we are still soul friends.
Lightman apparently talks some about the intellectual quest he has travels. Becoming an astrophysicist is no easy thing. I can’t imagine what it is like to study a black hole. As a scientist, he is on a quest for knowledge and, in some real sense, for truth. I would hope people of faith could say the same thing---knowing full well that often science is pitted against religion. I am afraid that when science and religion are seen as antagonists, religion often is revealed as the less noble. This is why I like where Lightman goes.
Scharper tells us that Lightman says, “explanations that work today may not work tomorrow.” Religion should hold things loosely like this. I think this is one reason Quakers always affirmed a belief in continuing revelation. Lightman’s next assertion brought this question of continuing revelation into focus. He acknowledges, “Science doesn't deal in certainty so much as in the search for certainty — which, he suggests, makes science more similar to religion than scientists like to admit.”
A search for certainty---that says it all. That is why spiritual folks talk about faith---it is what we trust in the moment. At least, I know faith is not certainty. But faith is a search for certainty. And that is what Lightman is talking about and seeking.
That’s why I feel like a soul friend with him. And I long to see what else he can teach me.
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