Writer and physicist Alan Lightman finds room for science and spirituality

He’s a scientist who works on deeply complicated theories of astrophysics and extreme temperatures. He’s a novelist whose writing has been called “intellectually provocative” by Salman Rushdie. He’s an essayist whose new book proposes a truce between science and religion.

Alan Lightman and his "Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine” were the focus at a standing-room-only Monitor-sponsored event at the Boston Book Festival this month. The full hour of dialog from that program is available as audio here.

The Monitor’s science editor, Noelle Swan, along with science writer, Eoin O’Carroll, spent an engaging hour with Dr. Lightman, mixing their own questions with those from our subscribers and the live

"I lay down in the boat and looked up. A very dark night sky seen from the ocean is a mystical experience. After a few minutes, my world had dissolved into that star-littered sky. The boat disappeared. My body disappeared. And I found myself falling into infinity.... I felt an overwhelming connection to the stars, as if I were part of them.... I felt connected not only to the stars but to all of nature, and to the entire cosmos. I felt a merging with something far larger than myself, a grand and eternal unity a hint of something absolute."– From “Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine”, published by Pantheon