Search Results for: alan lightman

Nonfiction Notes: Alan Lightman’s PROBABLE IMPOSSIBILITIES

Posted on Friday 19 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Alan Lightman: PROBABLE IMPOSSIBILITIES (2021) This is a new book of essays by a professor at MIT, author of earlier books including the well-regarded novel Einstein’s Dreams (Wikipedia, way back in 1993) and most recently of essay collection Searching for … Continue reading →

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Alan Lightman on Cosmology and Human Meaning

Posted on Tuesday 22 December 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Yesterday I mentioned the Harper’s essay by Alan Lightman, What Came Before the Big Bang?, which concerns a couple different theories for that question: one by Sean Carroll and Alan Guth, a so-called “Two-Headed Time” theory, and another by Ukrainian/US … Continue reading →

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Alan Lightman, The Accidental Universe

Posted on Wednesday 24 June 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Alan Lightman’s THE ACCIDENTAL UNIVERSE (2014) is a short book of seven essays, most previously published, on various ways the universe is not obviously what it appears to be, or is at odds with what humans might prefer. (Lightman is … Continue reading →

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Lightman: SEARCHING FOR STARS ON AN ISLAND IN MAINE

Posted on Thursday 7 February 2019 by Mark R. Kelly

Alan Lightman is the best known of the three authors reviewed today; he’s published numerous books before, including the novels EINSTEIN’S DREAMS and THE DIAGNOSIS, as well as numerous volumes of essays, out of all of which I’ve only read … Continue reading →

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Academic Freedom, Good Citizens, and Moving Forward

Posted on Tuesday 6 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Alan Lightman on academic freedom; Alan Lightman and Martin Rees on how scientists can be good citizens; Rewatching Conclave, and recalling two key quotes, about certainty, and moving forward. – – – The very idea of academic freedom, of freedom … Continue reading →

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Two Thought-Provoking Pieces, and Notes about the Fringe

Posted on Wednesday 6 March 2024 by Mark R. Kelly

Adam Frank on science and the need to account for human experience; How “entropy bagels” and other complex structures emerge from simple rules; Headlines about the fringe: that North Carolina GOP nominee; how Trump is degenerating; his empty pseudo-religion; his … Continue reading →

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Progressions

Posted on Wednesday 29 March 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Topics in this post: The success of wokeness. How the least religious nations are among the healthiest along many measures. Partha Dasgupta on how the GDP should account for the cost of what we use. Julian Baggini on philosophy and … Continue reading →

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Michio Kaku: THE GOD EQUATION (Doubleday, 2021)

Posted on Friday 1 July 2022 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a book I thought suspect on two or three counts, but which turned out to be quite worthwhile. It’s a succinct, crisp history of physics, from the Greeks to the present, and ending with, though not dwelling too much … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Science Matters, 18 Mar 2021

Posted on Thursday 18 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Catching up on things that have caught me eye the past week or two. How humans have remade the Earth; about Daylight Saving Time; Dark Matter; How time might flow in two directions; the Nature of mathematics.

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A Hierarchy of Human Needs

Posted on Saturday 6 March 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Like the hierarchy of morality (discussed here), this one is not mine. It’s an idea first proposed by psychologist Abraham Maslow in 1943. Wikipedia has this entry about it. It runs like this, from the most basic:

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