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Dance for Two, 24 meditations culled from 15 years of chronicling the curious interplay between the logic of science and the cryptic designs of the human heart, finds the physicist and novelist again moving gracefully between two words to render them one. The protean imagination at work in Lightman's first novel, Einstein's Dreams, a spirited and spiritual contemplation of time, appears throughout his essays, enabling the author to tether the abstract to the actual. He assembles sundry facts of the physical world and places them in a context that makes apparent once veiled meanings--an endeavor that blurs the supposed line between science and art.
"Art demands interpretation and recasting of the naked experiences of life," writes Lightman. "To some extent the same is true of science. Nature does not reveal herself in easy glimpses of scientific truths . . . . Without an interpretive theory, without a design offered by the beholder, observations of the physical world are just so many loose, meaningless facts."
"Since the time of Galileo, the scientific method has taught us that there are a certain group of problems or questions which can be approached, framed, undertaken, and answered without any human prejudice, philosophical or personal," explained Lightman in a recent interview at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches both physics and writing. "This is the great triumph of science: to realize that there are certain problems where we can and in fact should forego personal involvement. There are many interesting questions that do submit to this type of approach and analysis. But I think that scientists need to understand that science is a limited territory."
A willingness to abandon, or, perhaps, transcend reason to appreciate that which we cannot quantify characterizes Lightman's writing. He moves away from the extreme pragmatism expressed at one point by the narrator of Einstein's Dreams-"Sexual arousal is no more than a flow of chemicals to certain nerve endings. Sadness no more than a bit of acid transfixed in the cerebellum"-to inhabit a place that lies beyond comprehension, a place defined by the uncertainty that is emotion.
"Literature allows us to discuss emotion, to treat it and deal with it," says Lightman, "but I do not think that emotion is quantifiable in any way. We cannot deal with emotion in terms of questions and answers." The writer approaches life's enigmas armed with words, experiences, and imagination, and invariably encounters the ineffable. Still, he attempts expression.
"There is that which you cannot put into words," admits Lightman, "a relationship with another person, for example. What you can do with words, which are all we have, however, is make suggestions to the reader of those words. You throw yourself at the mercy of the personal experiences of your reader and hope that these suggestions-that are pitifully embodied by mere words-will trigger personal experiences that the reader can relate to, saying, 'I've done something like that; I remember how that feels.' So you're letting the reader do a lot of the writing for you, which I think all good writing should do.
"It's very difficult to write about anything you haven't experienced emotionally," he continues. "To me, writing is about emotional truth. I think there is emotional truth that has the same solidity as scientific truth. Readers know when something doesn't ring true emotionally, and the only way a writer knows what rings true is to have experienced it." The essays that comprise Dance for Two challenge our perspective of a fragmented world. Through Lightman's eyes we glimpse the physics of a ballet performance, the intricacies of sighs and sight; we consider time travel from a worn leather chair. We find meaning in the mundane. We connect to the world we are a part of and, according to Lightman, too often apart from.
"There has been a disturbing trend in science and art and other intellectual areas toward an ever-increasing detachment-a separation of objects and ideas of study from direct human experience. The objects that we talk about in physics, for example, take place in a domain that is unreachable by human beings. Abstract expressionism is similar."
"Humans perceive that which is most immediate; that's how we personally connect with the world. That's no longer valid. We now have this intellectual intermediary between us and the real world, one which has removed us further and further emotionally from the world that we're trying to stay in touch with."
Lightman's observations and, more importantly, his writings echo an insight proffered by the narrator in Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Artist of the Beautiful":
"The deeds of earth, however etherealized by piety or genius, are without value, except as exercises and manifestations of the spirit."
Ron Fletcher is a freelance writer in Boston..
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