“The most beautiful experience we can have is
the mysterious,” Einstein wrote, “the fundamental emotion which
stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”
Alan
Lightman, a physicist, writes:
I believe that [Einstein] meant a sense of awe, a
sense that there are things larger than us, that we do not have all the answers
at this moment. A sense that we can stand right at the edge between known and
unknown and gaze into that cavern and be exhilarated rather than frightened… I
have experienced that beautiful mystery both as a physicist and as a novelist.
As a physicist, in the infinite mystery of physical nature. As a novelist, in
the infinite mystery of human nature and the power of words to portray some of
that mystery.
Alan Lightman. A physicist and a novelist, and MIT’s first
professor with dual appointments in science and the humanities, author of A Sense of the Mysterious: Science
and the Human Spirit
