p294_byatt/mawer/lightman old 11/3/05
scientists on art
recognize the indifference or incompre-
hension that creeps into the eyes of the lis-
tener. You learn the art of self-deprecation,
the art of crypsis, the art of blending,
mouse-like into the background. But
beneath your bland and neutral exterior,
you create confections of fantasy”5.
Perhaps through the medium of this pas-
sage the reader might live,for a few moments,
some of those 16 years of obsession. Perhaps
he might see the short, dumpy man walking
in the monastery garden and thinking over
his garden peas and what they might mean.
This is not to miss the point of the science: it is
the point. Because, just as an artistic creation
lives in the mind of its creator, so too does a
scientific idea. We labour under the illusion
that discoveries and ideas lie somewhere out
there in nature — but in truth the science is
in the discoverer’s head. The inherited
anlage was in Mendel’s mind, the uncertain
particle was in Heisenberg’s, the Universe is
in Stephen Hawking’s. That is what makes
them so remarkable. There is little difference
between this and artistic vision. Yes, you’ve
got to do the experiments but that is not the
essence of it. The essence is the idea and the
enquiry. “What if ?” is the question posed in
both literature and science. What if the
Thane of Cawdor were to have an ambitious
wife and a fatal flaw in his disposition?
What if a young Raskolnikov were to
attempt the ultimate intellectual violence,
the justification of murder? What if a
grown man were to fall in love with a
pubescent girl? Or... what if a gravitational
field were to create a curvature of the space-
time continuum? What if electrons were to
be both wave and particle? What if God
really were to play dice?
Darwin has brought us out of heaven and
down to earth and surely it is no surprise that
uncertainty — “that final core of uncertainty
at the heart of things”4 — permeates modern
literature and modern science alike. The
unreliable particle and the unreliable narra-
tor are two sides of the same weirdly spinning
coin. And just as scientists employ thought
experiments to focus their ideas, so a work of
literature is a thought experiment about this
uncertain human condition. ■ bedtime — like bites of chocolate cake await-
1. Nabokov, V. Speak, Memory (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London,
1967).
2. Updike, J. Couples (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1968).
3. McEwan, I. Enduring Love (Jonathan Cape, London, 2001).
4. Frayn, M. Copenhagen (Methuen, London, 1998).
5. Mawer, S. Mendel’s Dwarf (Doubleday, London, 1997).
NATURE | VOL 434 | 17 MARCH 2005 | www.nature.com/nature
10:53 am Page 299
J. LIGHTMAN
A tale of
two loves
The arts and sciences
provide complementary
ways of looking at
the world, argues
Alan Lightman.
I n childhood, I wrote dozens of poems. I
expressed in verse my questions about
death, my loneliness, my admiration for a
plum-coloured sky and my unrequited love
for 14-year-old girls. Reading, listening, even
thinking, I was mesmerized by the sounds
and the movement of words. Words could
be sharp or smooth, cool, silvery, prickly to
touch, blaring like a trumpet call, fluid,
pitter-pattered in rhythm. And, by magic,
words could create emotions and scenes.
When my grandfather died, I buried my
grief in writing a poem, which I showed to Alan Lightman is a physicist and adjunct
my grandmother a month later. She cradled professor of humanities at the Massachu-
my face with her veined hands and said, “It’s setts Institute of Technology in Boston.
beautiful,” and then began weeping all over He is the author of four novels, including
again. How could marks on a white sheet of Einstein’s Dreams (1993), which has been
paper contain such power and force? adapted for numerous theatrical and
Between poems, I did scientific experi- musical productions. He has published two
ments. These I conducted in the cramped collections of essays and six non-fiction
little laboratory I had built out of a storage books about physics and astronomy. His
closet in my house. In my homemade latest book, The Discoveries, about the great
alchemist’s den, I horded resistors and scientific discoveries of the twentieth cen-
capacitors, coils of wire of various thick- tury, will be published by Pantheon Books
nesses and grades, batteries, switches, pho- in November 2005 .
toelectric cells, magnets, dangerous chemi-
cals, test tubes and Petri dishes, Bunsen I loved solving a set of connected equations,
burners. I loved to find out how things one logical step after another. I loved the
worked. shining purity of mathematics, the logic, the
When my experiments went awry, I could precision. I loved the certainty. With mathe-
always find certain fulfillment in mathe- matics, you were guaranteed an answer, as
matics. When my maths teachers assigned clean and crisp as a new $20 bill. And when
homework, I relished the job. I would save you had found that answer, you were right,
my maths problems for last, right before unquestionably right. The area of a circle is
πr2. Period.
ing me after a long and dutiful meal of history Mathematics and science contrasted
and Latin. Then I would devour my cake. In strongly with the ambiguities and contradic-
algebra, I loved the abstractions, letting ‘x’s tions of people. The world of people had no
and ‘y ’s stand for the number of nickels in a certainty or logic. People confused me. My
jar or the height of a building in the distance. Aunt Jean continued to drive recklessly and
299
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artists on science

M. KULYK/SPL
at great speed,even though everyone told her sometimes must originate in the mind. The
she would kill herself. My Uncle Edwin asked great atomic physicist Niels Bohr compared
me to do a mathematical calculation that the invisible nucleus of an atom to an oscillat-
would help him run the family business with ing drop of liquid. Modern string theorists
more efficiency, but when I showed him the describe the hypothesized smallest con-
result he brushed it aside with disdain. stituents of matter and energy, which will
Blanche, the dear woman who worked for probably never be seen by the most powerful
our family, deserted her husband after he instruments, as ‘vibrating strings’ that
abused her and then talked about him with ‘stretch’ and ‘break’ and ‘merge’. Such images,
affection for years. How does one make sense metaphors and vocabulary arise both from
out of such actions and words? IMAGE direct sensual experience and from the lan-
A long time later, after I became a novelist, guage of artists and humanists who portray
I realized that the ambiguities and complexi- UNAVAILABLE that experience. Scientists, in turn, must use
ties of the human psyche are what give fiction, the same language to describe their extreme
and perhaps all art, its power. A good novel FOR COPYRIGHT worlds, far beyond sensual experience,
gets under our skin, provokes us and haunts
us long after the first reading, precisely REASONS because no alternative exists except for math-
ematical equations.
because we never fully understand the charac- It seems to me that the most important
ters. We sweep through the narrative over gift the sciences and the arts have to offer
and over again, searching for meaning. each other is a recognition and synthesis of
Compelling characters must retain a certain their different approaches to thinking, their
mystery and unfathomable depth, even for different ways of being in the world. When
the author. Once we have seen to the bottom these differences come together, often
of their hearts, the novel is dead for us. uneasily, we witness the full complexity and
There are questions with answers and the mystery, and ultimately the grandeur, of
questions without. Scientists work on ques- being human. What makes Michael Frayn’s
tions with answers. Although science is con- Copenhagen so powerful, in part, is the
stantly revising itself in response to new ideas unspoken contrast between the neat world of
and data, at any moment each scientist is atomic physics, where one can solve mathe-
working on what is called a ‘well-posed Describing the indescribable: string theorists matical equations for wavefunctions and the
problem’ — that is, a problem of such a kind use the language of artists to portray the neutron mean free paths, versus the world of
and stated with such clarity that it is certain to fundamental nature of the Universe. (Computer politics, war and ethical dilemmas. And in
have a definite answer. That answer may take artwork representing superstrings.) the film A Beautiful Mind, the precision of
ten years to find, or a hundred, but an answer John Nash’s mathematical mind forms a dis-
exists. By contrast, for artists the question is and Francis Crick have all changed our view turbing counterpoint to the confusion in his
often more interesting than the answer, and of the world and our place in it. hallucinatory illusions. When I was writing
often an answer doesn’t exist. How does one Then, there is the portrayal of the scien- Einstein’s Dreams, I resisted the urge to make
answer a question such as “What is love?” or tist. By now, it is well known that the picture each dream world, with its own theory of
“Would we be happier if we lived to be 1,000 of the scientist as the eccentric personality time, logically consistent. My Einstein, the
years old?” One of my favourite passages without human feeling, pursuing truth by most celebrated envoy of rational thought,
from Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet is this:“We the numbers, wearing sterile gloves at all was also a dreamer, a person of deep loneli-
should try to love the questions times, is false. But the particular ness,struck with the frailties and urgencies of
themselves, like locked rooms “We human beings have way that a person trained in log- the human heart — indeed a scientist who
and like books that are written a wondrous capacity for ical thinking must negotiate his might have failed to achieve what he did
in a very foreign tongue.” being rational and or her way through the illogical without his sometimes irrational personal
Science has much to offer irrational,detached and world of human passions — commitments and passions.
the arts. When Salman Rushdie passionate,deliberate that is a subject worthy of art. Somehow, we human beings have a won-
spoke to an audience at the and spontaneous, The arts and humanities, in drous capacity for being both rational and
Massachusetts Institute of craving of certainty turn,offer the sciences an essen- irrational, detached and passionate, deliber-
Technology in late 1993, he and uncertainty.” tial store of other ideas, images, ate and spontaneous,craving of certainty and
said: “Many of us writers of my metaphors and language. These uncertainty, seeking questions with answers
generation have felt that in many ways the connections are often subtle. For his highly and questions without.We are a splattering of
cutting edge of the new is to be found in the non-intuitive postulates of relativity, Einstein contradictions. In my own case, I have always
sciences.”Science has always been a source of partly credited the philosopher David felt these juxtapositions as a creative tension
new ideas,and artists thrive on ideas.Nicolaus Hume’s notion that the truths of nature can- necessary for my work, a continual rumbling
Copernicus, Darwin, Einstein, James Watson not always be arrived at by experiment but in my gut,an unsettled joy. ■

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