Alan Lightman

The Transcendent Brain (eBook, ePUB)

Spirituality in the Age of Science

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

From the acclaimed author of Einstein's Dreams comes a rich, fascinating answer to the question, Can the scientifically inclined still hold space for spirituality? "Lightman…belongs to a noble tradition of science writers, including Oliver Sacks and Lewis Thomas, who can poke endlessly into a subject and…stir up fresh embers of wonder." -The Wall Street Journal Gazing at the stars, falling in love, or listening to music, we sometimes feel a transcendent connection with a cosmic unity and things larger than ourselves. But these experiences are not easily understood by science, which holds that all things can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. Is there space in our scientific worldview for these spiritual experiences? According to acclaimed physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, there may be. Drawing on intellectual history and conversations with contemporary scientists, philosophers, and psychologists, Lightman asks a series of thought-provoking questions that illuminate our strange place between the world of particles and forces and the world of complex human experience. Can strict materialism explain our appreciation of beauty? Or our feelings of connection to nature and to other people? Is there a physical basis for consciousness, the most slippery of all scientific problems? Lightman weaves these investigations together to propose what he calls "spiritual materialism"- the belief that we can embrace spiritual experiences without letting go of our scientific worldview. In his view, the breadth of the human condition is not only rooted in material atoms and molecules but can also be explained in terms of Darwinian evolution. What is revealed in this lyrical, enlightening book is that spirituality may not only be compatible with science, it also ought to remain at the core of what it means to be human.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Seitenzahl: 208
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. März 2023
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780593317426
• Artikelnr.: 64210552

Autorenporträt

ALAN LIGHTMAN earned his PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology and is the author of seven novels, including the international best seller Einstein's Dreams and The Diagnosis, a finalist for the National Book Award. His nonfiction includes The Accidental Universe, Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, and Probable Impossibilities. He has taught at Harvard and at MIT, where he was the first person to receive a dual faculty appointment in science and the humanities. He is currently a professor of the practice of the humanities at MIT. He is the host of the public television series Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science.

Inhaltsangabe

Introduction . . . . 3
1. The Ka and the Ba: A Brief History of the Soul, the Nonmaterial, and the
Mind- Body Duality 13
2. Primordia Rerum: A Brief History of Materialism 44
3. Neurons and I: The Emergence of Consciousness from the Material Brain 83
4. To See a World in a Grain of Sand: From Consciousness to Spirituality
121
5. My Atoms and Yours: Science and Spirituality in the World of Today 166
Acknowledgments . . . . 173
Notes . . . . 175