For me, consciousness is the most interesting unsolved problem of science, and, in fact, we may never know what it is about a particular arrangement of neurons that gives rise to consciousness. Our consciousness.
ALAN LIGHTMANI think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration.
More Alan Lightman Quotes
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Except for a God who sits down after the universe begins, all other gods conflict with the assumptions of science.
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The time-deaf are unable to speak what they know. For speech needs a sequence of words, spoken in time.
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Another strand of my writing is the importance of the idea.
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I oppose any belief that contradicts experimental evidence as determined by the methods of science.
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I go to live in Maine for the summer. Without computer, and without the telephone service we are mercifully without the faxes and e-mails.
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The mother and father osprey stay together. It’s a monogamous relationship. And every summer they raise a new brood of children.
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Each person knows that somewhere is recorded the moment she was born, the moment she took her first step, the moment of her first passion, the moment she said goodbye to her parents.
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I consider myself an essayist and a fiction writer. In the essays, I certainly have been influenced by some of the leading science essayists. Like Loren Eiseley, Stephen Jay Gould, Lewis Thomas.
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That’s an exciting thing. In a class of fifteen there are usually two very good writers, equal to good student writers anywhere in the country. Those two make the class wonderful.
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There is a cultural diversity that’s very valuable, and it’s valuable to have different ways of looking at the world.
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Like the air we breathe or like the passage of time, is central to our existence as intelligent beings.
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Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.
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All beliefs not in such contradiction may be considered as faith. Whether faith in a particular belief is beneficial or not is another matter.
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They came back to the nest in the middle of April. They take separate vacations in the winter – the mother and father.
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Oh, love is very much a physical thing…. I realize that it’s very complicated, and I’m sure it can’t be traced to individual neurons and hormones, but I think it’s very much a physiological sensation that takes place in the brain.
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Some make light of decisions, arguing that all possible decisions will occur. In such a world, how could one be responsible for his actions?
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I would bet most people don’t have thirty minutes in a day where they can just sit down and think. Or maybe they don’t have to be sitting, they can be walking.
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I have a family and you know very well the time that that takes. That’s good time. I have a couple hobbies. I’m a runner and play tennis. In the summer my family and I uproot ourselves and go live in Maine for the summer.
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For while the movements of people are unpredictable, the movement of time is predictable. While people can be doubted, time cannot be doubted. While people brood, time skips ahead without looking back.
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They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.
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One cannot walk down an avenue, converse with a friend, enter a building, browse beneath the sandstone arches of an old arcade without meeting an instrument of time.
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That’s the fine balance of a fiction writer…to be able to give your characters enough freedom to surprise you and yet still maintain some kind of artistic control.
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People are content to live in contradictory worlds, so long as they know the reason for each.
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And at the place where time stands still, one sees lovers kissing in the shadows of buildings, in a frozen embrace that will never let go.
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I think what gets you through a small writing project, is just one burst of inspiration.
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I think that the scienti?c way of looking at the world, and the humanistic way of looking at the world are complementary.
ALAN LIGHTMAN