Alan Lightman on Science, Spirituality, and Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2018

⏱️ 72 minutes

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Summary

Author and Physicist Alan Lightman talks about his book Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. This is a wide-ranging conversation on religion, science, transcendence, consciousness, impermanence, and whether matter is all that matters.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:08.0	I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
0:12.6	Our website is econtalk.org where you can subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find
0:17.6	links and other information related to today's conversation.
0:20.5	We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever done going
0:24.8	back to 2006.
0:27.0	Our email address is mailadycontalk.org.
0:29.0	We'd love to hear from you.
0:31.0	Today is October 11th, 2018, and my guest is author and physicist, Alan Lightman.
0:38.4	I first encountered this writing years ago with his extraordinary novel, Einstein's Dreams,
0:44.3	which I recommend highly.
0:46.0	His latest book is Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, which is our topic for
0:50.8	today, Alan.
0:52.0	Welcome to Econ Talk.
0:53.0	Thank you for having me, Russ.
0:55.2	This is a short book that bristles with ideas and some beautiful poetic writing.
1:00.1	It's a book about being a thinking human being.
1:02.8	It's about the relationship between religion and science.
1:06.0	I enjoyed it very much.
1:07.5	I want to start with our desire as human beings for absolutes that you write about and
1:12.2	how science has systematically dismantled many of those absolutes, if not all of them,
1:17.2	and made them harder to believe in.
	...

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