Expanding Perception in Alan Lightman’s Einsteins Dreams :: Lightman Einsteins Dreams Essays

Expanding Perception in Alan Lightmans Einsteins Dreams To attempt to describe Einsteins Dreams would be like trying to explain magic. For example, consider that a magician holds a ping-pong stumblebum playfully, transferring it from one batch to the other. The magician invites the audience to examine a red silk kerchief that had been neatly enclose into his jackets front pocket. He then lays the kerchief flat in his left drop dead and places the ping-pong ball in that kerchief-covered palm. The magician gathers the four corners of the kerchief together, flings it into the air and lets it string up to the floor. He picks up the kerchief and presents it again to the audience for examination The ping-pong ball is nowhere to be found. Can you say that, from reading this description, you were full of bewilderment and wonder when you discovered the ping-pong balls disappearance? I would wager that you were not.If you deem ever read Einsteins Dreams, you can appreciate my dilemma. If you have not in date had the opportunity to experience this wonderful novel by Alan Lightman, I vouch that after you read it you will expand your perception of the nature of time and of human activity. The novel is enchanting. It is a fictional account of what one of the superlative scientific minds dreams as he begins to uncover his theory of relativity.Whenever I refer the novel to the uninitiated, they often say that they are not interested in the sciences. This novel is more like art and poetry, I reply. Einsteins Dreams is Lightmans first urinate of fiction, although he previously wrote at least six books and for several magazines. Lightman shortly teaches physics and writing at M.I.T. From these two seemingly conflicting backgrounds enumerate reviews like A wonderfully odd, clever, mystical book of meditations on time, poetically spare and delightfully fresh and Endlessly fascinating. A beguiling head into the not-at-all theoretical, utterly time-tangled, tragic and sublime nature of human life.Only 16 of the 179 pages relate to Albert Einstein. The rest of the novel describes some of his dreams from April 15 to June 28, 1905. What if time were a circle? What if cause and effect were erratic? What if the passage of time brought increase order? What if we had no memories? What if time flowed backward? What if we lived for only a mean solar day? What if time were measured by quality and not quantity?