Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine
From the bestselling author of Einstein's Dreams--"an elegant and moving paean to our spiritual quest for meaning in an age of science" (The New York Times Book Review). - The basis for the public television series SEARCHING with Alan Lightman.
As a physicist, Alan Lightman has always held a scientific view of the world. 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--an eternal unity, something absolute and immaterial. The result is an inspired, lyrical meditation from the acclaimed author of Einstein's Dreams that explores these seemingly contradictory impulses. Lightman draws on sources ranging from Saint Augustine's conception of absolute truth to Einstein's theory of relativity, and gives us a profound inquiry into the human desire for truth and meaning, and a journey along the different paths of religion and science that become part of that quest. This small but provocative book explores the tension between our yearning for certainty and permanence versus the modern scientific view that all things in the physical world are uncertain and impermanent.
As a physicist, Alan Lightman has always held a scientific view of the world. 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--an eternal unity, something absolute and immaterial. The result is an inspired, lyrical meditation from the acclaimed author of Einstein's Dreams that explores these seemingly contradictory impulses. Lightman draws on sources ranging from Saint Augustine's conception of absolute truth to Einstein's theory of relativity, and gives us a profound inquiry into the human desire for truth and meaning, and a journey along the different paths of religion and science that become part of that quest. This small but provocative book explores the tension between our yearning for certainty and permanence versus the modern scientific view that all things in the physical world are uncertain and impermanent.
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Quotes
"I will admit that the incoming stimuli are not forming patterns to my personal satisfaction. A major obstacle is this (and now I am truly baring my material soul): I've always thought that for something to have meaning, it has to be permanent, or at least last a very long time. (I'm aware that a whole branch of philosophical thought deals with the question: What is the meaning of meaning?) Permanence is the Absolute that attracts me the most. What's the point, I ask myself, of anything that's here today and gone tomorrow-like a meal or a letter or a pair of shoes? By contrast, people still discuss and perform King Lear hundreds of years after it was written. People still gaze in awe at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. People still study the ideas of justice and government of Confucius and of Plato. Isn't that longevity a sure sign of meaning? I've always believed so. And, unconsciously, I measure my own strivings and the strivings of others on that basis. But I'm a materialist. And as a materialist I know that nothing lasts. Even King Lear might be forgotten in a thousand years. Or if a thousand isn't long enough for your personal idea of a long time, what about ten thousand years? Ten thousand years is the blink of an eye to the cosmos. Everything I see around me at this moment- the trees, my house, the books on my shelves, my children and their children and their children- will be gone without a trace in a few thousand years.
Sometimes I ask myself: Does meaning require some external agency, capable of recording events and precious moments in a permanent repository? God, if such a Being exists, could be that agency. Wouldn't any other agency also pass away after a certain lapse of time? What if we had a second external agency, grander and far longer-lived than the first, and suppose all the information and meaning recorded by the first agency was eventually inherited by the second? Yet this new arrangement would save the situation for only a limited time. Because the second agency, being finite, would also pass away after a time.
In fact, does anything we do on our modest planet- only one among billions of planets in our galaxy, which is only one among billions of galaxies in the observable universe - have any meaning on a grand scale? What do creatures on planet XUFK, a thousand galaxies away, know or care about anything that happens on earth? Unless there exists an infinite and permanent observer such as God - some absolute authority or scaffold by which to judge and preserve meaning- then the situation seems hopeless to me. On the other hand, perhaps my starting assumption, that meaning requires permanence, is erroneous. Or perhaps meaning itself is an illusion. After all, why should I insist on meaning? Fish and squirrels get by quite well without it."
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"I will admit that the incoming stimuli are not forming patterns to my personal satisfaction. A major obstacle is this (and now I am truly baring my material soul): I've always thought that for something to have meaning, it has to be permanent, or at least last a very long time. (I'm aware that a whole branch of philosophical thought deals with the question: What is the meaning of meaning?) Permanence is the Absolute that attracts me the most. What's the point, I ask myself, of anything that's here today and gone tomorrow-like a meal or a letter or a pair of shoes? By contrast, people still discuss and perform King Lear hundreds of years after it was written. People still gaze in awe at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. People still study the ideas of justice and government of Confucius and of Plato. Isn't that longevity a sure sign of meaning? I've always believed so. And, unconsciously, I measure my own strivings and the strivings of others on that basis. But I'm a materialist. And as a materialist I know that nothing lasts. Even King Lear might be forgotten in a thousand years. Or if a thousand isn't long enough for your personal idea of a long time, what about ten thousand years? Ten thousand years is the blink of an eye to the cosmos. Everything I see around me at this moment- the trees, my house, the books on my shelves, my children and their children and their children- will be gone without a trace in a few thousand years.
Sometimes I ask myself: Does meaning require some external agency, capable of recording events and precious moments in a permanent repository? God, if such a Being exists, could be that agency. Wouldn't any other agency also pass away after a certain lapse of time? What if we had a second external agency, grander and far longer-lived than the first, and suppose all the information and meaning recorded by the first agency was eventually inherited by the second? Yet this new arrangement would save the situation for only a limited time. Because the second agency, being finite, would also pass away after a time.
In fact, does anything we do on our modest planet- only one among billions of planets in our galaxy, which is only one among billions of galaxies in the observable universe - have any meaning on a grand scale? What do creatures on planet XUFK, a thousand galaxies away, know or care about anything that happens on earth? Unless there exists an infinite and permanent observer such as God - some absolute authority or scaffold by which to judge and preserve meaning- then the situation seems hopeless to me. On the other hand, perhaps my starting assumption, that meaning requires permanence, is erroneous. Or perhaps meaning itself is an illusion. After all, why should I insist on meaning? Fish and squirrels get by quite well without it."
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