As he's demonstrated in highly original novels like Einstein's Dreams and Mr g, Alan Lightman possesses the mind of a theoretical physicist and the soul of an artist. Those qualities animate each of the seven elegant essays of The Accidental Universe, as he enlightens us about the "many universes within our one universe, some visible and some not."
There's no better example of Lightman's ability deftly to reconcile the two sides of his intellectual heritage than "The Spiritual Universe." He's a self-described atheist, though not of the Richard Dawkins fire-breathing variety. Indeed, he's critical of Dawkins's "wholesale dismissal of religion and religious sensibility." Despite his lack of belief, Lightman argues that there is "room for both a spiritual universe and a physical universe," and that science and religion share a "sense of wonder." Another essay, "The Temporary Universe," begins with a description of the pain he experiences on the day of his daughter's wedding as he muses about the swift passage of time and ends with a description of the cereus, a plant that blossoms for only one summer night, "as delicate and fleeting as a life in the universe," wrapping the affecting stories around a wistful meditation on our mortality. At the book's end, "The Disembodied Universe" reveals the scientist's dismay at how, through technology, we have "marginalized our direct sensory experience."
For the less scientifically minded, the title essay may offer some challenges. In it, while expounding on the notion of the multiverse--the idea that our universe is only one of many and our survival here likely nothing more than a happy accident--he introduces abstruse concepts like dark energy and the anthropic principle. "The Symmetrical Universe," which describes the Higgs boson subatomic particle, is at times heavy going. But before the humanists among us flounder too badly, the essay morphs into a lovely discussion of our appreciation for symmetry, illustrated by Lightman's description of why each cell of a honeycomb is a nearly perfect hexagon and by his discussion of an old family photograph.
While Lightman hopes "there will always be an edge between the known and the unknown," he offers intriguing glimpses of how the gulf we too often perceive between science and the rest of life might be bridged. A good start would see us opening our minds and allowing the expansive, generous intellect of someone like him to show us the way. --Harvey Freedenberg
Shelf Talker: Novelist and theoretical physicist Alan Lightman bridges art and physics in these seven smart and lively perspectives on our world.