The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “Alan Lightman”

Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023
Of Wonder, the Courage of Uncertainty, and How to Hear Your Soul: The Best of The Marginalian 2023

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What Is Time: 200 Years of Ravishing Reflections, from Borges to Nina Simone
What Is Time: 200 Years of Ravishing Reflections, from Borges to Nina Simone

“The moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity.”

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Highlights in Hindsight: Favorite Books of the Past Year
Highlights in Hindsight: Favorite Books of the Past Year

Trees, hummingbirds, snails, Stoicism, storytelling, Orwell’s roses, the crucible of consciousness, the end of the universe, and more trees.

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Of Trees, Solitude, Love, Loss, and the Stubborn Symphony of Aliveness: The Best of Brain Pickings / The Marginalian 2021
Of Trees, Solitude, Love, Loss, and the Stubborn Symphony of Aliveness: The Best of Brain Pickings / The Marginalian 2021

From the Stoics to the snails, by way of music, matter, and the mind.

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Probable Impossibilities: Physicist Alan Lightman on Beginnings, Endings, and What Makes Life Worth Living
Probable Impossibilities: Physicist Alan Lightman on Beginnings, Endings, and What Makes Life Worth Living

How our cosmic improbability confers dignity and meaning upon our shared existence.

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The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited
The Transcendent Brain: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality for the Science-Spirited

A largehearted invitation to “stand on the precipice between the known and the unknown, without fear, without anxiety, but instead with awe and wonder at this strange and beautiful cosmos we find ourselves in.”

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A Language for the Exhilaration of Being Alive: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Music and the Universe
A Language for the Exhilaration of Being Alive: The Poetic Physicist Alan Lightman on Music and the Universe

“Nowhere is the joy of existence so apparent as in music… Intelligent life-forms have created a multitude of sounds that express their exhilaration at being alive.”

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What Happens When We Die
What Happens When We Die

“How can a creature who will certainly die have an understanding of things that will exist forever?”

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Einstein’s Dreams: Physicist Alan Lightman’s Poetic Exploration of Time and the Antidote to Our Existential Anxiety
Einstein’s Dreams: Physicist Alan Lightman’s Poetic Exploration of Time and the Antidote to Our Existential Anxiety

“A life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.”

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Physicist Alan Lightman on the Illusion of Absolute Rest
Physicist Alan Lightman on the Illusion of Absolute Rest

The beautiful and disorienting science of why we are mostly restlessness and empty space.

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