Spiritual Atheist Laments

This is a set of related essays ruminating on humanities relation to modern science and is more rambling lyrical personal reflections than explanatory science. The essays are: The Accidental Universe; The Temporary Universe; The Spiritual Universe; The Symmetrical Universe; The Gargantuan Universe; The Lawful Universe; The Disembodied Universe.

The narration is excellent, slow paced, emotional, and poetic.

The author declares he is an atheist, but seems to believe that God, transcendent personal experience, and what created our universe are all beyond the realm of scientific analysis. I agree that such things may currently beyond complete scientific analysis, but they are not beyond scientific analysis in principle. If God, or transcendental personal experiences have any practical effects, these effects can, eventually, be tested. History is full of the phenomena that were once fervently believed beyond the realm of thoughtful enquiry (the motion of planets, weather, disease, heredity, plant growth, hallucinogenic substances, and many others). These have all, one by one, succumbed to various levels of scientific analysis. There are only a very few phenomena left that some believe are still beyond the realm of science. Many, including Lightman, have a deeply emotional desire (without fully understanding why) that some part of human experience will remain forever beyond the realm of science. Lightman seems excited that the rest of the universe follows scientific laws, yet revolts against the idea these same laws control his own essence. He is saddened by the temporality of life and seems to view the connectivity allowed by cell phone technology as disembodiment. At some level I fully understand such attitudes, but nevertheless I find them mildly quaint. Reading Lightman’s last chapter lamenting the disembodiment caused by texting I pondered if some old foggy at the dawn of humanity lamented how spoken language disembodied people from real pre-linguistic communication.

I did not dislike this book, but did not get a lot out of it. I love art and literature and music and myth and my life, but I don’t feel any need to separate these things into a spiritual realm beyond scientific analysis. There is some discussion of science in the book, but it is just a bit sloppy (like convolving quantum superposition with multi-position). When I finished this book I recalled how the end of A Brief History of Time resonated more with me than anything in The Accidental Universe; “if we discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable by everyone, not just by a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God."

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Hard Science meets Philosophical Questions

If you enjoy hard science as well as deeper philosophical questions that science cannot answer (yet), you will love this book...

The narration is a bit slow, so I listened on 1.35x which was perfect.

Will definitely listen again soon.

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This Book Owns

Wasn’t sure what to expect from this one, but was surprised to find something so lovely and concise. This will reset your feeling of awe and wonder, and you can bang it out in a single afternoon.

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Good Science, Weak Philosophy

Good on the states of science, but weak when straying off topic and into philosophy. The author shows his age in his trying to score points with religion.

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Anti-tech author

Too preachy. Could have been interesting but it ended up being a book about, "Kids these days". They use too much tech. Tech is sometimes good but bad overall, blah, blah, blah. How can any scientist hate tech this much? It made him seem 200 years old.

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Disappointing as a science or philosophy book

I bought this book expecting something more along the lines of Laurence Krauss' "A Universe From Nothing" with a little extra comparison to mythologies. That's not what this book is. Perhaps I should have recognized that fact from the short runtime.

This is a short collection of expositional essays about the author's views on the relation science has to the humanities and the silly beliefs we often hold in our heads. It makes almost no attempt to be a science book; Lightman makes mention of some of the amazing discoveries of physics, but does not try to explain them, which is what I was after. I think the intent was for this to be a philosophy book, but it falls short there too. I expect a philosopher to describe the logical reasoning that led him to his conclusion. This author, however, does not do so. And the final chapter/essay makes no attempt to be anything but a rant, lamenting the way life has changed with the adoption of new technologies. I may agree with a number of Lightman's thoughts, but I can get rants from friends and family for free. I expect more thoughtful reasoning from a philosophy book, and a more objective analysis from a respected scientist.

Forgive the condescension, but I think I'd describe this as a collection of polite rants, masquerading as philosophy, couched between spats of scientific wonderment. It's not the worst book ever, but it has very little actual content.

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Old news wrapped in poor philosophical ramblings

I don't care about the Dali Llama, Democritus, the warrior king Gilgamesh, or spirituality. I wish Alan Lightman would just get on with the science, already! What is this stuff doing in a science book? It's really out of place.

He makes a lot of claims about theoretical physics that aren't true. He says, "theoretical physics is... the outpost of science closest to philosophy and religion." This is what a philosopher or theologian might fantasize about. But it couldn't be further from the truth. He also says, "theoretical physicists... are not satisfied with observing the universe, they want to know why." Richard Feynman explained in his famous interview that physics doesn't tell you why. It tells you how. Another swing and a miss. He claims, bizarrely, that "theoretical physicists are Platonists." This is laughable because few educated people aren't Platonists. Platonism is antiquated. Indeed, Plato laid some blocks in the foundation of science. But calling modern scientists Platonists due to the existence of those blocks is like calling Peter Raubal a fascist due of his ancestry. So that's an F on the philosophy of science.

But he also gets the science wrong, too. He talks about "all the possible amounts of dark energy that our universe might have" without demonstrating that it's possible for dark energy to have a different value than it does. This is the great lie of fine tuning: that the constants of nature could have been different than they are. This is unproven conjecture. Speculative ideas like Eternal Inflation lay claim to solving an hypothetical problem of fine tuning. Not an actual one.

It goes on like this for chapter after chapter. Save yourself the headache and skip this one.

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Great book!

I am not a science student. But it was easy to read and understand. Really enjoyed it!

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Interesting and understandable

Very interesting and not too technical for a non scientist like me. The narration was clear and pleasant, I will and have listened to this audio book repeatedly.

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Another wonderful Alan Lightman book

So good … don’t hesitate because it is ten years old … the insights are not dated and actually help us feel our place in the universe more palpably. This is a series of beautiful essays on different ways to understand the universe of which we are a part.

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