Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Standing in the unknown



“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

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