Physicist Alan Lightman on Spirituality in the Age of Science

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Gazing at the stars, falling in love, or listening to music, we sometimes feel a transcendent connection with a cosmic unity and things larger than ourselves. But these experiences are not easily understood by science, which holds that all things can be explained in terms of atoms and molecules. Is there space in our scientific worldview for these spiritual experiences?

According to acclaimed physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, there may be. In his latest book "The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science," and his new public television mini-series, "SEARCHING: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science," Lightman draws on intellectual history and conversations with contemporary scientists, philosophers, and psychologists and asks a series of thought-provoking questions that illuminate our strange place between the world of particles and forces and the world of complex human experience. Can strict materialism explain our appreciation of beauty? Or our feelings of connection to nature and to other people? Is there a physical basis for consciousness, the most slippery of all scientific problems?

Lightman weaves these investigations together to propose what he calls “spiritual materialism”—the belief that we can embrace spiritual experiences without letting go of our scientific worldview. In his view, the breadth of the human condition is not only rooted in material atoms and molecules but can also be explained in terms of Darwinian evolution.

Follow Alan Lightman on this enlightening journey that reveals spirituality may not only be compatible with science, it also ought to remain at the core of what it means to be human. Lightman is joined in conversation with Tim McHenry, Deputy Executive Director of the Rubin Museum of Art.

"SEARCHING" was funded by The John Templeton Foundation. More information about the series can be found here:

This project is supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program in Public Understanding of Science and Technology, bridging the two cultures of science and the arts.

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