A theoretical physicist’s search for truth
Alan Lightman has written six novels, including the bestselling “Einstein’s Dreams,” and several books on science. His background as a theoretical physicist and as a teacher of both science and humanities at Harvard and MIT make him one of the best interpreters of the complexities of both outer space and subatomic particles for the lay reader.
For most of his career (he is 67), Lightman has kept religion at arm’s length, confident that science would eventually explain everything in the universe, reducing God to an expired mythology. But one recent summer evening he motored out the Maine shoreline to Lute Island, where his family has a cottage. Turning off the motor he lay in the bottom of the boat, staring up at a sky full of stars. He was overcome by the sensation of merging with something larger than himself — a grand and eternal unity, hinting at something absolute and immaterial.
Thus began this series of essays exploring the history of science and the paths of religions, in search of the “truth” — is the world uncertain and impermanent or are there absolute principles reflecting a creator at work?
The early history of science was not separate from the church. We all know that Galileo and Copernicus were attacked by the Catholic hierarchy for their theories that displaced the Earth as the centre of the cosmos.
Fast forward to current times and we know that Earth is but one of billions of planets that may support life. For religion, the mind stretch continues: is our notion of God infinite “enough” to accommodate life forms yet to be encountered?
It was that experience of transcendence in the boat that Lightman regarded as evidence for a spiritual world. This is different from “the received wisdom acquired from sacred books, it is intensely personal.” (And Lightman includes the Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Christianity and Islam — as well as Buddhism and Hinduism.) Do truth or beauty exist separate from human consciousness? He quotes Einstein and a Bengali philosopher, Rabindrath Tagore, discussing this in 1930. Einstein says, “I cannot prove that scientific truth must be conceived as truth independent of humanity, but I believe it firmly.” Tagore responds: “Truth, which is one with the Universal Being, must essentially be human … What we call truth lies in the rational harmony between subjective and objective aspects of reality …”
The exploration continues referencing both scientists (from Newton to Lee Smolin at University of Waterloo) and theologians (from Aquinas to Don Page, a University of Alberta quantum cosmologist and an evangelical Christian). Lightman revels in both the vastness of outer space, ever expanding from the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, and the vast spaces between subatomic particles. Science searches for and tests laws of physics, grounded in mathematics, within the doctrine that such laws apply throughout the universe. Religions are based on laws handed down from their founders from a God of infinite capacities, and develop doctrines to influence human behaviour.
He pauses in wonder at the visit of a hummingbird and the abundant insect life in a cubic inch of lichen on his beloved island. Perhaps it is the privilege of the theoretical physicist to do so. Grappling with infinities allows one to ignore the minutiae of politics, war and violence, and the seeming inevitability of catastrophic climate change. Still, we all need times of pause in our hectic culture, to stare at the stars in silence, dreaming of unity and permanence in the midst of flux.
Special to The Record