The physicist as novelist: Alan Lightman at TEDxWellesleyCollege

Alan Lightman discusses the distinctions between how scientists try to name things -- to identify and to distill, so that there is only a single meaning of a thing, like an equation -- and the artist tries to avoid naming things. The scientist works by formulating questions that have definite answers, while in the arts, the answer is less important, and often an answer does not exist. Both scientists and artists are seeking truth, and in this their enterprises are similar. But the truths are different. In the sciences, it is truth in the world of mass and force -- the external world -- and in the arts, it is truth in the world of the mind and the heart -- the internal world.

Alan Lightman is an American writer, physicist, and social entrepreneur. He has served on the faculties of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was the first person at MIT to receive dual faculty appointments in science and in the humanities. Lightman is currently professor of the practice of the humanities at MIT. His novel Einstein's Dreams was an international bestseller, has been the basis for dozens of independent theatrical and musical adaptations around the world, and appears on numerous college reading lists. Lightman is also the founding director of the Harpswell Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is "to empower a new generation of women leaders in Cambodia."

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