Novelist, astrophysicist Alan Lightman ponders boundaries of sciences in fiction
By Linda Glaser
Best-selling novelist and astrophysicist Alan Lightman, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell in the 1970s, returned to campus Feb. 20-21 at the unusual combined invitation of the Creative Writing Program, the John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, and the Departments of Astronomy and Physics.
Lightman, adjunct professor of humanities, creative writing and physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), gave two readings, one from his new book, "Mr. g: a novel about the creation," which explores scientific, philosophical, theological and ethical issues. In an interview, Lightman said the idea for "Mr. g" grew from a Boston group of MIT scientists and playwrights he convened to discuss the intersection of science and the arts. Struck by how often the subject of religion came up, he became fascinated, he said, by "what are the boundaries of science, and how does science know what it knows and how does religion know what it knows."
Despite the book's scientific accuracy, Lightman said he gave it an intentionally light-hearted tone. In one scene, the title character debates how many dimensions to create: "Two seemed unnecessarily confining; suffocating, in fact, while four or more struck me as extravagant and ran the risk of misplacing small objects."
At another event, Lightman read from his as-yet-unpublished memoir "Screening Room." The selection he read touched on the civil rights movement -- he was in Memphis when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated -- and included an anecdote about Elvis Presley, a friend of his grandfather's.
In his introduction, Paul Sawyer, professor of English and director of the Knight Institute, drew a parallel between Lightman and Cornell's venerable tradition of straddling science and the humanities. Sawyer cited astronomer Carl Sagan's best-selling novel "Cosmos" and Vladimir Nabokov's lepidopterist studies and as well as such current professors as Nobel laureate chemist Roald Hoffmann and his poetry and writer Thomas Seeley, chair of neurobiology and behavior.
"In an age supposedly of over-specialization and self-absorption, a career like Alan Lightman's reminds us that -- like astrophysics, like poetry, like fiction -- all human endeavors issue from the capacity for creativity, for dreaming, for making sense of the world and from pleasure as well as hunger for truth, said Sawyer. "Now more than ever, scientists, humanists and citizens need to understand each other if we are to survive as a species."
Lightman acknowledges that he was deeply influenced by those he met at Cornell in the 1970s. He recalls Sagan as one of his inspirations, although he noted that Sagan's educational mission differed from his. "My mission has been to explore the meeting ground of science and the arts and the humanities and to explore human questions with a sensibility of a scientist," he said.
The late A.R. Ammons' poetry readings also affected Lightman, who said he discussed his poetry with the professor, who also read some of it. "So definitely my literary career, although fledgling, was starting then," Lightman said.
The intertwining of science and fiction permeates Lightman's work, from his acclaimed "Einstein's Dreams" to "Good Benito." He has published six novels and seven books of essays and "fables," as well as technical science books and five books aimed at the layman.
As for advice for students trying to decide between an arts or science major, Lightman said: "If they're interested in both, they should not chop off one part of themselves. They should try to create a life for themselves where they will be able to pursue both."
Linda Glaser is a staff writer for the College of Arts and Sciences.
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