Rave
Michael Shermer,
The New York Times Book Review
Science needs its poets, and Alan Lightman is the perfect amalgam of scientist (an astrophysicist) and humanist (a novelist who’s also a professor of the practice of humanities at M.I.T.), and his latest book, Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, is an elegant and moving paean to our spiritual quest for meaning in an age of science.
Positive
Steven Gimbel,
The Washington Post
Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine is what we can call a grand unified intellectual narrative.
Positive
Alan Hirshfeld,
The Wall Street Journal
Each twig, ant hill or rounded stone—as well as the starry backdrop of the book’s title—serves as muse for Mr. Lightman’s speculations about the physical and metaphysical realms. The elegant and evocative prose draws in the reader, and I felt as if I were strolling alongside the author while he thought aloud. Indeed, it was a challenge to keep pace, as I repeatedly wandered off into reveries triggered by the narrative. Here is a book in which even a colonoscopy becomes grist for the philosophical mill.
Positive
Tim Adams,
The Guardian
Lightman does not possess Calvino’s structural rigour, his brilliant hold on irony as the defining principle of the human condition, but his discursive method is full of insight into some of the mysteries of the physical world, as well as the physics of mystery. He uses his own biography – the little science lab he created in his bedroom closet in Memphis, Tennessee, aged 12 – to demonstrate an intact sense of wonder at what we know and what we don’t. At the heart of his mediation is this neat formulation of the boundaries of scientific understanding: 'The infinite is not merely a lot more of the finite.' Lightman has a sympathetic gift for recreating the leaps of faith in scientific advance.
Positive
Richard Cytowic,
The New York Journal of Books
The book covers much ground likely to be familiar, such as famous experiments done by men made famous by them. Truisms appear, too, such as the existence of 'major differences in the truths of science and religion and the manner in which those truths are discovered.' Perhaps the author’s mixing of established observations with fresh perspectives will charm one set of readers. Others may find some of the author’s excursions too philosophical. Lightman ponders his big, knotty subjects in clear prose. He is content to be alive, aches and pains and all..
Positive
Ray Olson,
Booklist
Physicist-novelist Lightman (Screening Room, 2015) strives to, if not reconcile, at least put religion and science on good speaking terms. These personal and historical essays on religion, science, and religion-and-science are assembled to draw the reader ever deeper in.
Rave
Publishers Weekly
Novelist and physicist Lightman (The Accidental Universe) mesmerizes in this collection of essays that explores the connections between scientific ideas and the wider world.
Positive
Kirkus
One of our most reliable interpreters of science offers a slender book of ruminations that venture wide and deep.