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bennought's review against another edition
5.0
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Lightman turns his clear, clean prose to the philosophical and aesthetic aspects of science and a life spent pursuing science--especially physics. Each essay is a fascinating self-contained exploration of the author's experiences or thoughts on humankind's age-old and never ending attempts to understand and explain the world around us; and what these events and experiences can tell us about ourselves individually, as a culture, as a species, and the world/universe as a whole. You never find Lightman really leaving the ground and becoming lost in the vast, stodgy reaches of theory; nor becoming bogged down in the stultifying quagmire that is mechanics. He easily finds a happy medium between the two, a space of reason and beauty, order and chance, life and death. Truly, I think Lightman is at his best in small, self-contained pieces that nevertheless can be combined into a more coherent whole. That was the composition of [b:Einstein's Dreams|14376|Einstein's Dreams|Alan Lightman|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320511078s/14376.jpg|1820798], which is far and away his best novel; hell, far and away one of the best novels I've ever read. And his essays ring clear and true and achingly beautiful in a way which challenges the reader to rethink the world around them in a similar (though somewhat more coherent) fashion to his seminal novel.
reenelim's review against another edition
2.0
like all anthologies, there are some of those i enjoyed and those i didn’t. although overall, this wasn’t very enlightening. i think the mixture of science, even though the author tried his best attempt to romanticise it and have it seem poetic, there are just some bits of it that just can’t possibly be seen as ‘magic.’
2/5
2/5
shiva's review against another edition
3.0
3.5/5: Physicist-raconteur that he is, Alan Lightman shines as an essayist with writing that is self-indulgent yet self-aware. Some pages you may want to skim, while others will keep you hooked. An underlying theme becomes clear, as he returns to the idea of (un)certainty time and again, exploring it in art and science (and his own life), although never fully unravelling it. He leads you through the years, riffing and rafting on the death of apprenticeships amongst painters, deftly narrating in parallel his own journey with academic mentors. Stories of failure, and a life lived in questions. In artfully extending the ballerina’s jump to the earth’s spin, or simply exploring the histories of science “with all its wrong turns, prejudices and human passions”, he offers up a narrative that keeps you hooked: science, as blunder, accident and luck, where magic and the absurd are fair game. Jumping from Bohr to the Boston School and Copernicus to Marie Curie, he weaves a story of his own journey as a scientist.
However, it is in exploring (fictive or not) the implications of General Relativity and time as a concept, that Alan excels, much as he did in [b: Einstein’s Dreams|14376|Einstein's Dreams|Alan Lightman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386925066s/14376.jpg|1820798]. Only a few chapters here come close to the brilliance in that book, where every page thrust you in a new direction, every page showed you the world in a new light.
A man who wrestles with accepting his own limitations through the years, but never stops questioning. For in asking questions, he is acute. They might not be the most important ones at times, but they damn sure are interesting ones. Read it for what it is: the meandering thoughts of a scientist/writer with an incredible capacity to wonder. Sit back and listen to a writer who spins out time travel from the worldly smells in Papa Joe's Pipe, and you might just learn a thing or two.
However, it is in exploring (fictive or not) the implications of General Relativity and time as a concept, that Alan excels, much as he did in [b: Einstein’s Dreams|14376|Einstein's Dreams|Alan Lightman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386925066s/14376.jpg|1820798]. Only a few chapters here come close to the brilliance in that book, where every page thrust you in a new direction, every page showed you the world in a new light.
A man who wrestles with accepting his own limitations through the years, but never stops questioning. For in asking questions, he is acute. They might not be the most important ones at times, but they damn sure are interesting ones. Read it for what it is: the meandering thoughts of a scientist/writer with an incredible capacity to wonder. Sit back and listen to a writer who spins out time travel from the worldly smells in Papa Joe's Pipe, and you might just learn a thing or two.
flor20's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
5.0
I will probably go back and reread individual essays every so often. Wonderful book.
tee_tuhm's review against another edition
5.0
First off, go back and read "Einstein's Dreams" if you haven't already. That gives you a primer for Alan Lightman's book of essays, which is full of brilliantly crafted pieces that bring down to a laywoman's level the grand ideas of the universe and how they function -- like gravity and time.
shiva's review
3.0
3.5/5: Physicist-raconteur that he is, Alan Lightman shines as an essayist with writing that is self-indulgent yet self-aware. Some pages you may want to skim, while others will keep you hooked. An underlying theme becomes clear, as he returns to the idea of (un)certainty time and again, exploring it in art and science (and his own life), although never fully unravelling it. He leads you through the years, riffing and rafting on the death of apprenticeships amongst painters, deftly narrating in parallel his own journey with academic mentors. Stories of failure, and a life lived in questions. In artfully extending the ballerina’s jump to the earth’s spin, or simply exploring the histories of science “with all its wrong turns, prejudices and human passions”, he offers up a narrative that keeps you hooked: science, as blunder, accident and luck, where magic and the absurd are fair game. Jumping from Bohr to the Boston School and Copernicus to Marie Curie, he weaves a story of his own journey as a scientist.
However, it is in exploring (fictive or not) the implications of General Relativity and time as a concept, that Alan excels, much as he did in [b: Einstein’s Dreams|14376|Einstein's Dreams|Alan Lightman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386925066s/14376.jpg|1820798]. Only a few chapters here come close to the brilliance in that book, where every page thrust you in a new direction, every page showed you the world in a new light.
A man who wrestles with accepting his own limitations through the years, but never stops questioning. For in asking questions, he is acute. They might not be the most important ones at times, but they damn sure are interesting ones. Read it for what it is: the meandering thoughts of a scientist/writer with an incredible capacity to wonder. Sit back and listen to a writer who spins out time travel from the worldly smells in Papa Joe's Pipe, and you might just learn a thing or two.
However, it is in exploring (fictive or not) the implications of General Relativity and time as a concept, that Alan excels, much as he did in [b: Einstein’s Dreams|14376|Einstein's Dreams|Alan Lightman|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1386925066s/14376.jpg|1820798]. Only a few chapters here come close to the brilliance in that book, where every page thrust you in a new direction, every page showed you the world in a new light.
A man who wrestles with accepting his own limitations through the years, but never stops questioning. For in asking questions, he is acute. They might not be the most important ones at times, but they damn sure are interesting ones. Read it for what it is: the meandering thoughts of a scientist/writer with an incredible capacity to wonder. Sit back and listen to a writer who spins out time travel from the worldly smells in Papa Joe's Pipe, and you might just learn a thing or two.
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