Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine

by Alan Lightman Narrated by Bronson Pinchot

Overview

From the acclaimed author of Einstein's Dreams, an inspired, lyrical meditation on religion and science, with an exploration of the tension between our yearning for permanence and certainty versus modern scientific discoveries pointing to the impermanent and uncertain nature of the world

As a physicist, Alan Lightman has always held a purely scientific view of the world. Even as a teenager, experimenting in his own laboratory, he was impressed by the logic and materiality of the universe, which is governed by a small number of disembodied forces and laws. Those laws decree that all things in the world are material and impermanent. 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-a grand and eternal unity, a hint of something absolute and immaterial.

Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine is the result of these seemingly contradictory impulses, written as an extended meditation on an island in Maine, where Lightman and his wife spend their summers. Framing the dialogue between religion and science as a contrast between absolutes and relatives, Lightman explores our human quest for truth and meaning and the different methods of religion and science in that quest. Along the way, he draws from sources ranging from St. Augustine's conception of absolute truth to Einstein's relativity, from a belief in the divine and eternal nature of stars to their discovered materiality and mortality, from the unity of the once indivisible atom to the multiplicity of subatomic particles and the recent notion of multiple universes. What emerges is not only an understanding of the encounter between science and religion but also a profound exploration of the complexity of human existence.

Editorial Reviews

The New York Times Book Review - Michael Shermer

Science needs its poets, and Alan Lightman is the perfect amalgam of scientist…and humanist…and his latest book, Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, is an elegant and moving paean to our spiritual quest for meaning in an age of science. The book consists of 20 tightly composed essays on a variety of topics (stars, atoms, truth, transcendence, death, certainty, origins and so on) with a single narrative thread running through them: the search for something deeper in the materialist worldview of the scientist…Ultimately, scientists must convince other scientists that their theory of the absolute is true (or at least not false), and to do so they must leave the mystical realm of personal experience and return to the lab. But Lightman's aim in this insightful and provocative musing is to remind us of the centrality of subjectivity in all human endeavors, including those of science.

Publishers Weekly

★ 12/11/2017
Novelist and physicist Lightman (The Accidental Universe) mesmerizes in this collection of essays that explores the connections between scientific ideas and the wider world. He sets his stage neatly, with an evocative memory of gazing up at the starry night sky while in a little boat drifting near a small island off the coast of Maine. There he found himself “falling into infinity” as he gazed into the cosmos: “I felt a merging with something far larger than myself, a grand and eternal unity, a hint of something absolute.” Absolutes, Lightman writes, are comforting because they allow humans to “imagine perfection.” This idea echoes in essays that focus on such topics as ants, stars, death, and truth. Lightman discusses the big bang, prehistoric cave paintings, the nature of humanity, and more as he moves lithely from Galileo to van Gogh, Einstein to Emily Dickinson, and St. Augustine to Arctic explorer Robert Peary. More philosophy of science than hard science, this is a volume meant for savoring, for readerly ruminations, for thinking about and exploring one essay at a time. Lightman’s illuminating language and crisp imagery aim to ignite a sense of wonder in any reader who’s ever pondered the universe, our world, and the nature of human consciousness. Agents: Jane Gelfman and Deborah Schneider, ICM Partners. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

An elegant and moving paean to our spiritual quest for meaning in an age of science.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Delightful. . . [Lightman’s] elegant and evocative prose draws in the reader.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Once again, this deft wordsmith has effortlessly straddled the divide between the hardest of the hard sciences and the nebulous world of existential doubts and longings.” —Nature
 
“A lyrical and illuminating inquiry. . . . [Emerges] with that rare miracle of insight at the meeting point of the lucid and the luminous.” —Brain Pickings

“Contemplative, elegant and open-minded, [Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine] is an engaging companion to understanding our longing for connection with the infinite.” —Charleston Post and Courier
 
“This is a volume meant for savoring, for readerly ruminations, for thinking about and exploring one essay at a time. Lightman’s illuminating language and crisp imagery aim to ignite a sense of wonder in any reader who’s ever pondered the universe, our world, and the nature of human consciousness.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
“An illuminating, deeply human book.” —Booklist
 
“Lightman’s artful and questioning narrative style easily conveys complex concepts from physics to philosophy. Both believers and nonbelievers will find much to ponder in this discussion of science and religion, which reads like a soothing meditation.” —Library Journal

MAY 2018 - AudioFile

Lightman, who is a physicist, reflects on both the material world, which he studies, and the world of religion, which humans have for eons used to explain the material world. Recognizing the impermanence of the material, he senses that there may be something eternal in the universe. This interesting work is adroitly narrated by Bronson Pinchot, whose soft voice and deliberate pacing match the text perfectly—it is almost as if one is having a conversation with the author about things both physical and spiritual. Moving from astronomy to subatomic particles to numerous other topics, Pinchot’s confident, soft delivery and intonation deliberately engage listeners and hold their attention throughout. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2017-12-05
One of our most reliable interpreters of science offers a slender book of ruminations that venture wide and deep.Theoretical physicist Lightman (Practice of the Humanities/MIT; Screening Room, 2015, etc.) rarely ponders a scientific principle or development without considering its significance in human terms, an approach that is very much in the tradition of Lewis Thomas. Lightman focuses on the logical and mathematical underpinnings of the material world as it relates to concepts of "reality" and to spirituality broadly defined. Throughout, the author makes his points clearly. Discussing the finality of death vs. notions of immortality, for example, he writes, "I accept that science and the scientific view of the world may not encompass all of existence….Still, I ask for some kind of evidence for all things I believe." So remarkable is the material world we experience, the author suggests, that humans persist in finding supernatural explanations for its wonders. Lightman also acknowledges that while "the materiality of the world is a fact…facts [alone] don't explain the experience." To him, after millennia of philosophical and theological speculation, the most profound questions about the origins of the universe may open themselves to science or may have no answers that seem possible. Lightman makes cogent, generally unassailable arguments, provided readers share his basic precepts. He weighs in on free will vs. determinism, the vitalistic vs. mechanistic concepts of human life, the multiverse, the grandeur of consciousness, and the illusion of "self." A leitmotif of the book is humanity's innate desire for absolutes, even though few exist in a relative world. Lightman locates those that do in science and philosophy rather than religion.From Newton and Galileo to Einstein and Aristotle, from St. Augustine and the Buddha to contemporary theological thought, Lightman presents a distilled but comprehensive survey of the search for meaning, or the lack thereof, in our longing to be part of the infinite.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940169723779
Publisher:	Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Publication date:	03/27/2018
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

For many years my wife and I have spent our summers on an island in Maine. It’s a small island, only about thirty acres in size, and there are no bridges or ferries connecting it to the mainland. Consequently, each of the six families who live on the island has their own boat. Some of us were not nautical people at first, but over the years we have all learned by necessity. Most challenging are trips to the island at night, when the land masses are only dim shapes in the distance and you must rely on compass headings or faint beacons to avoid crashing into rocks or losing your way. Nevertheless, some of us do attempt the crossing at night.
(Continues…)

---

Excerpted from "Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine"
by .
Copyright © 2019 Alan Lightman.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---

Videos