Searching for Stars on an Island in M..., Alan Lightman
Searching for Stars on an Island in M..., Alan Lightman
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Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine

Author: Alan Lightman

Narrator: Bronson Pinchot

Unabridged: 5 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 03/27/2018

Synopsis

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 worldAs 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.

About Alan Lightman

Alan Lightman, an active research scientist in astronomy and physics, has taught at both Harvard and MIT. His novels include Einstein’s Dreams, which was a New York Times and international bestseller; Good Benito; The Diagnosis, which was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award; and Reunion. His essays have appeared in the New York Review of Books, New York Times, Nature, Atlantic Monthly, and the New Yorker.

About Bronson Pinchot

Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Paul on May 25, 2018

I started these reflective essays and was enchanted. Then, I laid the book down and redisovered it a few days ago and was captivated again. The perspectives of science and religion provide deep fascination for me, limited as my grasp of the scientific and religious/philosophical happens to be, offer......more

Goodreads review by Angus on May 06, 2018

Ruminations about the afterlife, the existence of god, the meaning of life, the fate of our species, and a plethora of theories, writings, and opinions about all of the aforementioned. I find Lightman exceptionally brilliant and I’m actually a big fan of his fiction. And while this topic was really......more

Goodreads review by Tony on November 15, 2019

This is an approachable, mindful exploration of the confrontation between science and religion by a physicist/humanist sympathetic to the BIG questions with which we all grapple. How does (must) science process and respond to reality? What assumptions uphold the entire enterprise, preceding necessar......more

Goodreads review by Michal on October 17, 2021

This book throws me right back into an earlier version of myself that loved to read about these kinds of ideas (free will, origins of the universe, history of scientific developments, theories of knowledge, meaning…). The book felt like a memory even though I’d never read it before. It was exciting......more

Goodreads review by RMazin on March 05, 2018

This is a slim volume by a theoretical physicist and educator who explores the connections between science and spirituality. Observing the night sky from his summer retreat off the Maine coast, Lightman considers the connections between religion, particle theory and the natural world. What he seeks......more

Quotes

“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… Pinchot’s confident, soft delivery and intonation deliberately engage listeners and hold their attention throughout.” AudioFile

“A delightful collection of essays…His elegant and evocative prose draws in the reader, and I felt as if I were strolling alongside the author.” Wall Street Journal

“Lightman is to be admired for his willingness to take off his scientist’s hat and plunge into preoccupations most of his peers would strenuously avoid, some for fear of ridicule. 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

“Science needs its poets, and Alan Lightman is the perfect amalgam of scientist and humanist…Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine is an elegant and moving paean to…the search for something deeper in the materialist worldview of the scientist. New York Times Book Review

“Demonstrates Lightman’s ability to make the most abstract notions accessible to all. No background is needed in physics, philosophy, religion, or any other field to fully understand every step of the wide-ranging intellectual trek.” Washington Post

“Contemplative, elegant, and open-minded…an engaging companion to understanding our longing for connection with the infinite.” Post and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina)

“Lightman gives us vast, complicated subjects in lucid, engaging prose.” Politics & Prose

“Lightman mesmerizes in this collection of essays that explores the connections between scientific ideas and the wider world.…More philosophy of science than hard science, this is a volume meant for savoring.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

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.” Kirkus Reviews

“These personal and historical essays on religion, science, and religion-and-science are assembled to draw the reader ever deeper in…An illuminating, deeply human book.” Booklist

Awards

  • Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week
  • Amazon.com Bestseller
  • New England Book Award
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