Alan Lightman and I are very close in age. We are both Ph.D.'s in Physics. I, like Lightman, have no Nobel to laud. Lightman spent his career in academia. I spent mine in aerospace … landing men on the moon and back again, designing and fixing the great celestial observatories, and shooting robots to Mars and beyond. We might have met at some point.
We both spent an excessive amount of our lives in and around Caltech. Mine between and among Caltech and the combined scientific communities and disciplines brought together under Jet Propulsion Labs projects just down the I-210 from where Lightman may have resided.
I share 80% of Lightman's reflections and experiences. I do enjoy revisiting the domains of incomprehensibly large and small. It's a beauty best left inconceivable. Lightman's observation and a book meme that humans are positioned between nominally comprehensible powers of ±30 between atom and sun is an interesting metaphor. But let's be frank, man straddles the quantum, vastly smaller than the relative scale of the atomic and the universe, not simply our measly solar class.
Alas, the gap is at least twice again the powers of vast large and small. Light from the universe hasn't yet reached us from 14-some B years ago. The universe will get larger in millions of years at the speed of c. Then again, I've not seen a better elucidation in layman's terms of vast than Lightman delivers. Kudo's to Lightman
Lightman harkens back to Pascal frequently through the narrative. I imagined that Lightman might go the distance and embrace the scientific/philosophical Pascal universe. But, no. Lightman uses Pascal as a foil by the end. Lightman seems trite, announcing an error in Pascal's philosophy of science. His opinion. Many modern cosmologists won't mention Pascal for the reason. Lightman's universe is materialistic. That's shorthand for god-less. There is no room in Lightman's universe for another domain that many of us sense in our being.
My favorite aspect was Lightman's firm belief that the Plancks are solid and unchanging. Just what I've been saying for years! So, I agree with Lightman. However, Lightman explains that unchanging Plancks in some concept supports the end state of multi-verse and string theory.
Oppositely, I regard the Plancks unchanging existence as the very reason that multi-universe theories fail. However, all the propositions are untestable. No matter, multi-verse/string propositions 'yes/no' is moot in our existence. The propositions I've explored implicitly require the Plancks to metamorphose within the underlying mathematics to birth another universe. That's incomprehensible. Science rule #257: 'If it can't be imagined, even a tiny bit, on deep consideration, it can't exist. Oppositely, all that can be imagined could exist.' #257 has served me well.
Though nearby in location, Lightman and I circulated in different circles. Lightman believes that only a slight minority of cosmology brethren discern a God among the irrationals and transcendentals. I'd guess far more have quiet regard for the otherness saturating the gap between science and perception of other and, unfortunately, I believe they do so for job security reasons. No matter again, God appears unmoved by popularity polls. I once supposed that mathematicians might be the most materialistic among the sciences due to precision, but I decided I was wrong after a deep discussion among them. Mathematicians must imagine and consider the transfinite in high order mathematics … Ω, ω, אּ. More than 'shorthand', there is a mystery here in the philosophy of mathematics despite materialist counterarguments.
Lightman's godless universe feels incomplete. It's simply not satisfying. I liked it less and less as Lightman elucidates. Materialism answers none of the minds unique in all of known nature, human intuitions. "Is there more to it?" Lightman's search for proof of God will be fruitless. The transcendental nothingness of Buddhism is no shelter. 100-and-some-thousand Hindu gods are no help. No man can find God. God finds men, and men believe. It is an irresistible call. It's not a mystery at all.
From 'Probable Impossibilities,' "Spirituality does not require belief in miracles." Except that it does.
Clare G.
Sotto voce
Santa Barbara Joe