Dance for Two: Selected Essays

For the last twenty years, Alan Lightman has been writing essays that display his genius for bringing literary and scientific concerns into harmony. Dance for Two gathers the best of Lightman’s work. Here are pieces that touch on both the ethereal and the corporeal; the dependence of a ballerina on the laws of physics, the choice of every scientist makes between tinkering and theorizing, the unscientific nature of discovery, the impulse behind an unprompted smile. Dance for Two is an intimate and fascinating look into the creative compulsions shared by the artist and the scientist. ALAN LIGHTMAN was born in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1948 and was educated at Princeton and at the California Institute of Technology. He has written for Granta, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and The New York Review of Books. His books include Origins, Ancient Light, Great Ideas in Physics, Time for the Stars, and two novels, Einstein’s Dreams and Good Benito. He is Burchard Professor of Science and Writing, and senior lecturer in physics, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Foreword ix Pas de Deux 3 A Flash of Light 6 Smile 12 Is the Earth Round or Flat? 17 If Birds Can Fly, Why, Oh Why, Can’t I? 22 Students and Teachers 29 Time Travel and Papa Joe’s Pipe 39 In His Image 45 Mirage 54 To Cleave an Atom 58 Elapsed Expectations 68 A Visit by Mr. Newton 73 Origins 79 A Day in December 84 Progress 87 I=V/R 94 Nothing but the Truth 100 Time for the Stars 107 A Modern-Day Yankee in a Connecticut Court 117 The Origin of the Universe 133 How the Camel Got His Hump 142 Ironland 145 Other Rooms 151 Seasons 159