{"id":11612,"date":"2021-03-19T17:43:20","date_gmt":"2021-03-20T00:43:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=11612"},"modified":"2021-03-19T17:58:46","modified_gmt":"2021-03-20T00:58:46","slug":"nonfiction-notes-alan-lightmans-probable-impossibilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2021\/03\/19\/nonfiction-notes-alan-lightmans-probable-impossibilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonfiction Notes: Alan Lightman&#8217;s PROBABLE IMPOSSIBILITIES"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/LightmanPI_1000x1116..jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-11614\" src=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/LightmanPI_1000x1116.-269x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"269\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/LightmanPI_1000x1116.-269x300.jpg 269w, https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/LightmanPI_1000x1116.-768x857.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/LightmanPI_1000x1116.-918x1024.jpg 918w, https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/LightmanPI_1000x1116..jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 269px) 100vw, 269px\" \/><\/a>Alan Lightman: PROBABLE IMPOSSIBILITIES (2021)<\/p>\n<p>This is a new book of essays by a professor at MIT, author of earlier books including the well-regarded novel <b>Einstein\u2019s Dreams<\/b> (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Einstein%27s_Dreams\">Wikipedia<\/a>, way back in 1993) and most recently of essay collection <b>Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine<\/b>, which I reviewed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2019\/02\/07\/lightman-searching-for-stars-on-an-island-in-maine\/\">here<\/a> in 2019. I was dubious then about Lightman\u2019s straining for the kind of \u201cmeaning\u201d that doesn\u2019t actually exist in our vast, inhuman universe. Yet his insights are valuable; he is attuned to the patterns of the universe in a way few people are; and this book has some striking essays.<\/p>\n<p>The book consists of 17 essays, plus notes. Some of these essays are chatty, as when the author interviews various specialists. I\u2019ll just mention the highlights.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Title essay: How tracing your ancestors back through time leads to the beginning of life on earth. How every atom in your body was made in stars, and how we know this. How we live between two endpoints of the infinity of the small and the infinity of the large.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cBetween Nothingness and Infinity.\u201d About the value of imagination, which some scientists dismiss as non-science.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cWhat Came Before the Big Bang?\u201d Review of ideas by Einstein, Sean Carroll, Alan Guth. Perhaps time didn\u2019t exist before the Big Bang. Alexander Vilenkin, Hawking, Krauss.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cOne Hundred Billion.\u201d The coincidence: the number of neurons in our brain is about equal to the number of stars in a galaxy.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cSmile\u201d, page 86. <strong>The most striking essay of the lot.<\/strong> It describes, superficially, a man and woman leading their separate mornings, and then encountering each other at a lake, and smiling at each other \u2013 but deeply, a narrative told in terms of how many atoms, how many bits of light, how many such things occur so quickly, that led to that smile. In ordinary life we don&#8217;t appreciate the speed of chemical reactions that underlie every movement and thought that we have. (This struck me especially since reading <b>Fantastic Voyage<\/b> last week, the Asimov novel based on the 1966 film, which I happened to have just watched today, and which both film and novel I&#8217;ll explore in a review for <em>Black Gate<\/em> soon.)<\/li>\n<li>And similarly, \u201cThe Anatomy of Attention,\u201d how our brains are bombarded with inputs every moment, and how brains process them..<\/li>\n<li>\u201cImmortality\u201d; author muses on death. That the atoms of his body will eventually become parts of other people, is a kind of immortality. [This echoes my own essay here, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2020\/11\/08\/the-afterlives-part-2\/\">https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2020\/11\/08\/the-afterlives-part-2\/<\/a>, about the survival of the atoms, i.e. our bodies, but not of our minds.)<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIn Defense of Disorder.\u201d How we like asymmetry, predictability but also spontaneity. Sensibility to surprise and change. The \u201cwanderlust\u201d gene, that entails exploration and risk. Instead of thinking in terms of polar opposites, this in terms of useful balances, e.g. yin and yang. And author evokes the 3<sup>rd<\/sup> movement of Bruckner\u2019s 9<sup>th<\/sup>.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cMiracles.\u201d About the apparent contradiction of believing in miracles while trusting science. Perhaps because in the modern world we\u2019re increasingly distanced from nature. Yet that nature is lawful has been enormously useful and successful. All cultures have a concept of Mother Nature. Belief in the spiritual universe arises from the human desire from meaning. Yet physical principles reveal no evidence for miracles, or any other kind of reality.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cOur Lonely Home in Nature.\u201d Natural disasters: all evidence suggests nature doesn\u2019t care anything about us. Nature is mindless.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIs Life Special?\u201d How the Kepler observatory has found that about 10% of stars have habitable planets. Still, the fraction of living material in the universe is fantastically small.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cCosmic Biocentrism.\u201d Freeman Dyson and the future of the universe: how in 1998 it was discovered the universe\u2019s expansion is accelerating. How the Hindus projected long periods of time, and a cyclic universe. Lucretius had such thoughts. Life is a flash in the pan, considering the age of the universe.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cThe Man Who Knows Infinity.\u201d Citing Borges. What if time and space are infinite; there would be infinite copies of each of us somewhere out there. Citing Andrei Linde at Stanford: There may be a vast number of universes, each spawning new universes. Ideas of the universe: how it was once thought to be fixed under a dome; then thought to be infinite but eternal and static; then realized to be expanding. How Hawking challenged Linde, and how Linde explained how he was right after all.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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\u2019s Dreams (Wikipedia, way back in 1993) and most recently of essay collection Searching for &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2021\/03\/19\/nonfiction-notes-alan-lightmans-probable-impossibilities\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-notes","category-philosophy","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11612"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11625,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11612\/revisions\/11625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}