Alan P. Lightman

In this meditation on religion and science, Lightman explores the tension between our yearning for permanence and certainty, and the modern scientific discoveries that demonstrate the impermanent and uncertain nature of the world. As a physicist, he has always held a scientific view of the world. But one summer evening, while looking at the stars from a small boat at sea he was overcome by the sensation that he was merging with a grand and eternal unity, a hint of something absolute and immaterial. This is his exploration of these seemingly contradictory impulses, and the journey along the different paths of religion and science that become part of his quest. -- adapted from publisher info.

Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine

Bored with his existence in the shimmering Void with his bickering Uncle Deva and Aunt Penelope, Mr g wakes up from a nap one day and decides to create the universe only to be challenged by intellectual rival Belhor, who demands that Mr g's intelligent creations be subjected to irrational laws. By the National Book Award finalist author of Einstein's Dreams.

A Novel about the Creation

Mr G

Three months after being unexpectedly fired from his banking job, David takes a temporary position at a local mortuary, where he experiences an inexplicable encounter with the unknown that transforms his relationships with everyone around him, forces him to confront the shifting nature of reality, and explores the boundary between the physical world and the spiritual one. 35,000 first printing.

Ghost

A collection of literary essays on such topics as the physics of ballet dancing, time travel, and the impulse behind a smile

Selected Essays

Dance for Two

Yıldızların zamanı

Businessman Bill Chalmers descends into a nightmare as he pursues a diagnosis for the strange illness--involving a bizarre memory loss and a strange numbness that gradually affects his entire body--that has affected him. By the author of Einstein's Dreams. Reprint. 50,000 first printing.

The Diagnosis

Roman

Und immer wieder die Zeit

Presents a collection of essays exploring the human dimensions of science, furnishing portraits of seminal scientists Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, and Vera Rubin, as well as reflections on science and art, imagination and metaphor in s

Science and the Human Spirit

A Sense of the Mysterious

Alan Lightman

Sueños de Einstein

The conservation of energy, the second law of thermodynamics, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanicstogether, these concepts form the foundation upon which modern physics was built. But the influence of these four landmark ideas has extended far beyond hard science. There is no aspect of twentieth-century cultureincluding the arts, social sciences, philosophy, and politicsthat has not been profoundly influenced by them. In Great Ideas in Physics, Alan Lightman clearly explains the physics behind each of the four great ideas and deftly untangles for lay readers such knotty concepts as entropy, the relativity of time, and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Throughout the book he uses excerpts from the writings of scientific luminaries such as Newton, Kelvin, Einstein, and de Broglie to help place each in its proper historical perspective. And with the help of expertly annotated passages from the works of dozens of writers, philosophers, artists, and social theorists, Lightman explores the two-way influences of these landmark scientific concepts on our entire human culture and the world of ideas.

Great Ideas in Physics

The science consultant and columnist lucidly establishes the connections between the farther reaches of scientific theory and research and everyday life

Alan P. Lightman

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