Because the Georgia Tech honors program
and I beg you and thank you for coming to

this evening's call of its lecture
with our friend Dr Alan Lightman this

lecture is the first formal collaboration
between the Georgia Tech honor program and

the college of Sciences and I hope this
will be the first collaboration of many

and of course the collaboration of
this sort means that people do have to

collaborate and I want to thank those
folks who have collaborated to make this

event possible tonight in the College of
Science is not especially want to bank Me

director of administration Dan Brown
who can't be with us as the evening but

also associate dean can't bear
peeled back in the back and

of course you can call Houston and I'll
introduce more early on a few civility and

a few minutes and from the author of
my special I want to thank our academic

advisor and a colonel Leonard and
the associate director Monica hopper.

But I specially want to thank Monica help
and help and organize several student

faculty reading groups to the scouts
Alan Lightman South Africa.

Einstein's Dreams.

One of my students who happens to be here
tonight I want to benefit I said student

wrote and said to me she said first
of all Dr Light was very small and

after that we don't need a second of
all where it is that says it all and

I think that was really a fairly common
response among a lot of the students

who read and discuss this book now.

Monica how can a call in to
work with me long enough and

that will come out more and
during annoying habits.

So I'm sure they'll be impressed
when I say that tonight.

I'm making the supreme sacrifice.

I'm turning off my Blackberry and
I will ask all of you to turn off your

Blackberries yourself whatever electronic
noise makers you may have with you.

Certainly if I can do it you can truly
have a foreigner his pal Houston.

I want to say a word about
another idea anything.

In this lecture series a saying that's
less call of its best college it's who

died in one thousand nine hundred
ninety when I came to Georgia Tech and

Mr Professor West all of us was dean
of the old College of Sciences studies

that was a predecessor to the college of
Sciences and to the Ivan Allen College

of Liberal Arts and then college at that
I think it's fair to say was an imposing

almost intimidating presence who could
make an assistant professor tremble at

times when it's wrong it's just
a professor that I know very well Campbell

in his presence but let's call it
was also a man with a very wide and

electoral reach it was a house call
it at the start of the student Bakaly

summer reading program which
has now I'm happy to say.

And he'd be very happy to know
I think that students and

faculty members are still getting
together to read and discuss a good book

as they have done in the last few days and
preparation for this event tonight.

There's also left all of it's who
sponsored fairly regular college

right colloquium or some faculty member
would come and talk about his or

her research and then we would all enjoy
a really good cocktail party on the dean's

project on the critical times where
Paul are really good cocktail party and

deans project and so now the left all
of us like to bring people together and

I think you'd be happy to see
it all together here tonight.

I think you'd also be happy to know
the College of Science is a still and

very good hands where they still knew Dean
while he was down pat may not feel so

good anymore but in the in the geologic
time when Georgia Tech he and

I have to have a search
committee that recruited

our helper group called who's
been to Georgia Tech and I got to

know you was one of those rare times when
you finished working on a committee and

you said to yourself Well that was
work that that was time well spent.

I think we did very well and
that's good because your friends.

All came to us from Cornell.

You spent essential in all his academic
career you were students Ph D.

in chemistry at MIT You
were Professor Reich and

that's now called ended
up post-doc a Berkeley.

I don't want to call Allen one nine
hundred seventy five as an assistant

professor of chemistry and there he rose
through the turbulence to become chair

of the department of chemistry the senior
associate dean of the College of Arts and

Sciences and along the way he
was also named the Peter W.

the by Professor of Chemistry at Cornell.

I think that addition to being a strong
scholar and able to minister after all who

is going as a good and gentle man I'm very
happy to have him here at Georgia Tech and

very happy to give him the honor of
entering the thing hard after three.

So I'll give to you all.

He was expecting a much great.

It's an honor to be able to
make this introduction tonight.

Let me begin this introduction by
discussing a more general coughing.

Well there's been a great deal of
focus over the years on the public's

understanding of science.

Those trained in science and engineering
might well be reminded that their own

understanding of the public
is also an important issue.

Right right behind the public response
to new advances in discoveries.

I'd like concerns all rights not
only from a cure and sometimes but

also from legitimate worries some of these
are reinforced by historical examples

science and technology and
need not only to provide new options for

the public but also to help guide
the public in their appropriate use.

We cannot do this without a clear
understanding of the broader issues facing

humanity for this reason the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences currently

is currently sponsoring a major study on
scientists understanding of the public.

It buys by the likes of Charles Best
of the National Academy of Engineering.

And Neal Lane or the director of
the National Science Foundation.

The American Academy would do well
to engage another of its own members

in this effort.

Our speaker today Dr Alan Lightman and

a long list of bestselling books and
coaching articles.

Dr Lightman has provided a connection
between the world of science and

the world we are all cases part
of the broader human endeavor.

The history of how he became a leader
in this effort is an interesting one.

I don't like men was born in
Memphis Tennessee in one thousand nine

hundred eighty eight the son of
Cian Gerritsen a dancing teacher and

Richard Reitman a movie
theater owning owner.

He graduated from Princeton in one nine
hundred seventy with a major in physics

and received his Ph D. in theoretical
physics from Cal Tech where years later

he was a post-doc at Cornell University
and he taught at Harvard University.

In scientific research focused on
relativistic gravitational theory

the structure of the creature and
disks radiated prophecies and

stellar dynamics his contributions
led to many honors including

fellowship in
the American Physical Society and

in the aforementioned American Academy
of Arts and Sciences.

In the past chair of
the high energy division

of the American Astronomical Society.

That's impressive as all of these
accomplishments are they are actually not

while he quite He has been
invited to speak to us tonight.

One thousand nine hundred eighty one.

Reitman began publishing essays about
science the human side of science

is articles appeared in science
the New Yorker Smithsonian Magazine and

many others looks at best say soon for all
of them in one thousand nine hundred nine.

He was appointed professor of science and
writing and

senior lecturer in physics at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

shortly later he had a program in writing
and humanistic studies at MIT and

he helped to create a new
communication requirement get.

Student It required one semester

in one person writing or speaking in
each of us students who are yours.

In one thousand nine hundred five he
became a Johnny Urquhart purpose or

of humanities at MIT and in two thousand
and one he co-founded the graduate program

in science writing the writing
that white man is best known for

his fiction good Benito is about
a physicist who finds that the order and

beauty of the equations he solves
are incomplete and inadequate for

a country wanting the constant
contradictions he sees in life.

Ghost is about David who works at
a mortuary and there see something that he

cannot understand it explores the divide
between the physical world and

the spiritual world between science and
religion and

Einstein's Dreams which many of us have
read or really read this semester.

Consider expanse of all dreams and

we're trying to find imagines a new world
where time plans backwards is circular and

is still what speeds up as
one moves away from a center.

Einstein the epitome of rational thought
is enlightment you also a dreamer a person

who experienced intense loneliness a
scientist who might have failed to achieve

what he did without his sometimes a
rational personal commitment and passion.

Lightman reminds us that human beings
have a quote in wonderous capacity for

being both rational and irrational he
cack and passionate deliberate and

spontaneous and that they see questions
with answers and questions without.

Each challenge those levels of us in
science and engineering to understand

these trucks the positions and he reminds
us in the end that we are all human.

Please join me in welcoming
Alan Lightman to Georgia Tech.

I.

Thank you for
that I have wonderful introduction.

Then you said I want to thank Monica for
being and Bob with inviting me here.

I want to thank the press or
Greg neighbors and I'm very honored

to be at one of the nation's leading and
said to sions of science and technology.

I actually have several special
connections to Georgia Tech

my my wife Jean grew up here.

This is this route or not can you
hear me in the back that my wife

grew up in Atlanta and
I am a Southerner myself but

I grew up in Memphis and

finally the director of
your honors program.

Fessor Gregory nobles was
a classmate of mine and college so

I have here a lot of ground this year over

Georgia Tech ever

since I was younger I use my passions have

been divided between science and art and

I have been very lucky in my
right to have made a career and

both as a as a physicist and a map of us
but those I always spend my rambling and

my stomach a kind of tension
between these two worlds and

I think that's been the source
of back creativity actually and.

And childhood I wrote dozens of poems and
and I.

I express my questions about death
about manliness about my admiration for

a colored sky my unrequited love
opera fourteen year old Dallas.

This is when I was fourteen I am

and there were there were overdue
books of poetry that litter.

My second or our bedroom and

reading listening even thinking I was
mesmerized by the sounds of words

words could be sudden like jolt or
words could be some of like Mandarin

where it could be silvery they
could be quickly to touch.

They could be rallied like the traffic and

by some kind of magic words
could create scenes and

emotions and
I remember that when my grandfather died.

I wrote a poem I met about
expressing my feelings and

about America better I read it to
my grandmother and she listened and

she cradled my face in her hands and
said to me that's beautiful.

And then she began crying I had her
again and I I wondered how a rock

marks in a white sheet of paper could
create that kind of power and Royce

between I did scientific experiments and

these I conducted and and I and
I plant better Avatar I made

out across a connected to my bedroom and
in this laboratory.

I kept test tubes in big rooms and did
a paragraph for us on the grounds of wire.

Sisters and capacitors and better cells
and batteries and things like that.

I just need to better things
I lab to do experiments and

around the age of thirteen
I bought a remote

control device that could turn on the
light and any room of the house from any

other room and this totally
odd my three younger brothers.

It was important to have an audience for
these things after

seeing the Frankenstein movie I brought
a spark generating them to action.

While required weeks and

weeks of ranking about two
miles of wire around an hour

and some of my scientific investigations

out a partner named John who
was a year older than me.

John was mad best friend.

Jan was very skinny

he had this hyena right laugh which he

started as I visited him a few weeks ago
on the occasion of a sixtieth birthday.

But John did not share my interest
in poetry or the higher orders.

JOHN about are about was
a racist of calories.

John was just interested in practicality
and but he was really a genius with us.

Hands and we would sit and
they were out of his bedroom minutes

house listening to a Bob Dylan record
this would be in the mid sixties and

John never saved the directions that came
with new parts and he never drew diagrams

of ready made a circuit but that whenever
he would bread something would run.

It was never a pretty but
it had worked and

usually it works better than
my inventions and gadgets.

Well it was with.

My rocket project but my artistic and
scientific interest first ride.

Ever since the launch of Sputnik and
that Tobar.

Nine hundred fifty seven.

I had been really messing rise with
me the idea of sending a rocket.

I laughed.

I imagined betting the thing
I magine the blast.

I imagined the the smoke coming out of
bed and the trajectory in this and space.

I would bad just fascinated me by the age

of thirteen I was experimenting
with my own rocket fuel rods

and for the ignition of the rocket.

I used the ration bag or a Brownie camera
and I really I would runs Have you

remember the Brownie cameras and the kinds
of crash rubs that that really made and

that was days be the the great

asset about the rash but I remember from
one of those early cameras was that you.

You could ignite the fresh rabbit with two
wires on the two ends of it to delete two

leads which you could then trail the hours
to your command bunker a safe distance or

right and the high heat of the flash Bab's
stuck into the fuel chamber would and

would ignite a few or so was a perfect way
to to ignite if you were of a rocket and

the body of the rocket I
may permit I remember to be

the container that held.

I guess that match head I would say.

Reza a cup of Cairo a case
where that concrete and

a metal strut sticking out of it and
and the the rocket had red tail rounds.

It was a beautiful thing.

And to behold just beautiful.

So I invited my younger brothers and
some friends in the neighborhood to

come drop that March of this
rocket which occurred and

then sent a running head on at
the register a golf course in Memphis.

John was not the slightest
bit romantic and

didn't see anything useful about rockets
so he decided to stay in bed that morning.

But still I had a good turnout from
the big race in the neighborhood and I had

calculated and time the rate of the rocket
and the thrust that it would get would

should rise about half a mile high and so
a lot of the breeze brought them outdoors.

Rob then it was time to match the rocket
so dramatic and command bunker.

I close the switch bash Robb
the fuel was ignited and

said in which the rocket took off and
was a beautiful match but

then after razzing and the a couple
hundred the rocket did the sickening

and crashed the tail
then said come off and

then I realized that instead of the
riveting on the tail friends as I should

have I had glued them on the rivets
had appeared to Adelaide to match

so I had sacrificed reality for
aesthetics and

later on I learned that I was unhappy for
a scientist in history who for

whom beauty had had the temerity
succumbed to reality for centuries and

as many of you know astronomer stop at
the rabbits I've planted some circles

circles because it's the most
perfect geometric shape is the.

In many ways the most beautiful prayer
most elegant she metrical shape and

it was very pleasing us that equally but

then the observations of tag a Brockway
in the sixteenth century in the work of

capper showed that the rabbits were
a lip service and map circles.

There was another very beautiful idea and

physics in the one nine hundred
thirty some Freddy's called parity

conservation which which says that and

the right handed and
Rep handed versions of all objects and

processes are identical as if
you were looking in a mirror.

But the mirror image of every
one you see also exists and

that is a beautiful ride be it seems
compelling it seems plausible.

It seems that that's the right
nature should be but

that idea was proven wrong by experiments
in the one nine hundred fifty S.

So nature is not always as
beautiful as we would like it to be

when my scientific projects when I write

I could always find for
prominent and mathematics and

I magine that all of the students
here are right mathematics

as I did when I was thirteen
fourteen fifteen years old and

I remember that when my teachers
would get me mad that I would

say the math problems to last before
a bed time I deserve a chocolate cake

awaiting me after a long due to for
a meal of history or a baton

and then I would devour my cake and
geometry.

I rubbed drawing the diagrams I love
the D. the an extra bit of the nation's.

Between Angus and Ron Zonen Algebra I love
the abstraction i Lab letting the axis and

rise stand for the number pennies
in a jar that Hydra Maton and

then stopping the equations run
a logical step after the other

I love that kind of certainty and
mathematics that purity.

And mathematics as opposed
to the sensual sciences

you were guaranteed an answer and

when you got that answer you knew that
she were whopping that you were right.

Unquestionably right that big area
of a circle WAS Py R. squared.

And there's no arguing about it.

Mathematics contrasted strongly
with the uncertainties and

the ambiguities and the contradictions.

I have people people confused
me my mother sometimes

said cruel things to me and my brothers
even though we knew that she loved us.

My aunt Jean continued to
drive recklessly and her M.G.

sports car even though everybody
in the family told her that she

would kill herself and that one day we
had a wonderful lemon named Blanche and

work for our family for
many many years and

she finally left her husband because
he had been and abusing her for

years and then for many years after she
spoke of her husband with affection

and I wondered how does one make sense
out of these apparently contradictory

words and actions were out now

years later after having lived in the
communities about scientist and artist.

I have some tentative ideas to do.

Question So I wanted to tell
you tonight a little bit about

what I've learned about the differences
in the right as scientists and

artists view the world there
are different conceptions of truth and

also something about the many similarities

a big distinction that I found
between physicists and novelists and

my the other of the arts is the album and

I thought I could extend this
more generally to scientists and

artists a big distinction that I've found
between senators and artist is in what

I'll call the naming of things and
roughly speaking

the scientists tries to name things and
the artist tries to have great

naming things to name the thing and
you gather good.

You sure applied it you distilled that and
you attempted to dental

by it with some kind of clarity and
precision you put a box around a thing and

said that's in the box is the thing and
that's not it's not for

example consider the word Iraq Shrine
which is a type of subatomic particle and

as far as we know all of the zillions of
electrons in the Universe are identical.

There is only a single
kind of electron and

to a modern physicists the road
electron means a particular equation.

It's called The drop a question and

not a creation summarizes everything
that we know about and electron and

the me that the way that I'm not
trying to deflect it in a magnetic or

electric she'll be the precise energies
of electrons in atoms every aspect of.

An electron is governed and

predicted to many dust in my
places by the drop of a ration

and in a sense that is that
there were electron means two of

physicists and in fact every visit
will object and the universe.

The scientists wants to be able to
express with this kind of precision

to a scientists.

It is a great comfort and
a feeling of power and

a sense of control of programs around you
to be able to name things and this right.

But the objects in the concepts
that the novelists deals with

cannot be named and this right.

The novelist might use the word love.

There are that word here for example but
those words don't really summarize much or

convey much to the reader for one thing
at Bally's in different kinds of Rob.

There is the rabbit you remember who
writes you every day your for summer.

Right from home at summer camp.

There's the lab that you remember who
slaps you when you come home from

the crime drama and then embraces
you there is the mob that you feel

you are a man or women that you've just
made love to there's a mob that you feel

pressured friend who calls you up when
you've just split up from your spouse or

your brother friend or friend and and

I run but it's not just the different

kinds of The prevent the novelist's
from truly naming the thing.

It's that the sensation of grog and

a particular sensation add up to
thousands of different kinds of The Rog.

Must be shown to the reader not named but
shown to the actions

of characters and
up a map is shown rather than names and

each reader really experience it and
her own individual right.

Each reader and draw on her and
adventurous and Miss adventurous with lab.

Lab means one thing to one person and a
different thing to another with different

drag experiences every I
like Tron as identical but

every lab is different and the novelist
does not want to try to remember and

make these differences the novel is does
not map to try to distill all the meaning

of life into a single precise
meaning as in the draft a question

because first of all no such
disarray shing as possible and

even to attempt such a distraction.

Would destroy you bet that magic
where delicate participatory act

that happens when a good
reader reads a good book and

participates in
the creative experience and

a sense and novel is not completed and
tear it is read by a reader and

every winter completes the novel and
a different right

now there's more to this business
of naming and not naming than just

the name sameness of electrons and
the variety use of

it's that even a single reader can change
from one moment of her right to the next.

So that her experiences and her and
I ship to the Royal are a class and

a changing and
a novel a story a character or

even a single word can change in the.

Meaning over time.

Let me give another illustration of the
difference between naming and not naming

and let me make the far actually best
analogy let me represent science by

exposure to writing and that may seem
a little strange to you but there

are some similarities between ex-pats
story writing and a scientific enterprise.

It's an organized activity and expiratory
writing you can decide what kind

of arguments you want to make
you can begin doing research.

You can organize a material you can make
an outline you can lead your reader and

I graduate path from beginning
to the end of the argument

and we all know and we should
learn this about seven or eight or

ninth grade and that and
expands literary writing that is good and

I'm to start each paragraph with a topic
sentence and write a topic sentence

does as it names the idea of the paragraph
that tells the reader how to organize

just thoughts how to begin thinking about
what he's going to run and that paragraph

but in pitch and writing and and
I make this mistake many times myself and

fiction writing a topic sentence is fatal.

It's fatal because in fiction
writing what you're trying

to do is you're trying to get your
reader to joining to come into the scene

to feel what the smell of
the hero to be there and

the small room with the two characters and
you want your reader

to be let go and be carried off to
the place that you're creating and

every reader read traveler differently
depending on his own life experiences

telling your reader right at the beginning
of the paragraph how to think about.

They experience totally cancel
the trip with a topic sentence.

You're not leaving room for
your reader's imagination and

your reader's imagination is
everything and fiction writing and

sometimes I think the difference can be
stated in terms of the of the body bit and

nonfiction writing and expands and

Terry writing you have to go first to your
readers brain and creative writing and

fiction writing you have to bypass the
brain and go to the stomach or the heart.

There's a pattern of connecting
this closely related to naming and

that is the tradition.

I play many problems and
terms of questions and answers.

Scientists usually wrote
I think they always were.

But I am back Minding interesting problems
and then breaking those problems and

two smaller problems that
have definite answers

that science approaches
Casanegra vising itself.

It's consummate discovering
new data new theories and

must react to to the new
things it discovers.

But in any given moment of time any
scientists is working on a problem

that he or
she feels has a definite answer.

And in fact most of the game of science
is to pose problems with enough clarity.

So that they have definite answers and
then the world is built to be

stopping and the next Salberg
are problems for example a typical or

scientific problem might be and how does
a living organism pass on instructions

to create a new Ragna some to its
descendants that's a question and

one sub question would be where
in the living there are going to.

Are those instructions stored.

That's a definite question with a definite
answer and the other subtraction would be

read is the molecule that carries
those instructions on it.

That's a definite question with a definite
answer that is the structure of that map

you're another definite question with
a definite answer in re scientist

and early stage about
time to ship usually for

us to have a graduate school and
certainly about a timely star.

He said he said that we should not
waste our time and problems and

questions that don't have definite
answers but artists often don't care or

what the answer as the president
can answer is often don't exist and

the odds ideas in a novel or
in a painting are complicated by

the intrinsic ambiguity
of human beings and

the uncertainties of the human heart
the uncertainties of human psychology.

They are raw these uncertainties and
contradictions and

ambiguity Serai the characters of
a good novel can be debated endlessly

right will react to Hillary Clinton or
Barack Obama at a that level right.

Adam held.

I'm sorry God held the the apap.

In front of me and
then forbade her to eat it for artists.

There are many interesting questions but
don't have answers right.

What is the nature of the Bob
that is the nature of God

would we be happier if we lived
to be a thousand years old.

These are terribly interesting
questions there are about going to

questions they stimulate
our creativity and yet

they don't have definite answers or
any answers at all.

As that one of my favorite little books
is Letters to a young poet by the German

pirate running a record out and
he writes in that bit about that we

should learn to love the questions
themselves like rock rooms and

not books written in a very round town and
I come to learn

that we need questions with answers and
we need questions without answers.

Both kinds of questions
are part of being human.

They haven't take thinking about the some
of the differences between the scientists

and the artists and I wanted to talk now
about some of the many similarities.

Now first about I think that both the
scientists and the artists seek beauty.

Beauty is a hard thing to find in any and
I would probably move up from L.A.

or with the beauty that we talk about and
the arts.

My wife the right can grow up and Atlanta

is a painter and she and

she talked about her painting and what
she's trying to achieve she chooses a rose

like simplicity of did the design unity or
balance.

You're probably less familiar with.

Well you may being scientists and
engineers you may be just a semester with

the kind of beauty that we have and
science but let me refer to

a book by Steven Weinberg
a Nobel Prize winning physicist

a popular book and
which he has a whole chapter.

I think the book is titled
Dreams of a final theory and

he has a have a chapter in.

At best.

I'm titled Beautiful theories and

one of the the ideas that
Weinberg another such as this

associate with beauty and
scientific theory is simplicity.

That's a word that Weinberg uses
the same road that my right.

Uses But when scientists talk about
simplicity and though this is what does

this is mean they're really talking
about simplicity of ideas and

Einstein's general theory of relativity
for example his theory of gravity

hinges completely on one simple idea
which is that gravity is a quick one

to excel ration and with that one idea.

Einstein or rocks his entire theory
with all of its complex mathematics

another quality that Weinberg
talks about that makes beauty and

a scientific theory is and
that ability you battle seeing paintings

or music or compositions where you
felt that not a single brushstroke or

single note could be altered without
changing the whole and the same is true

and science the same is true of
Maxwell's theory of retro magnetism or

Einstein's theory of gravity that if
you change one thing you would destroy

the entire theory is a certain
kind of necessity and

inevitability that is
part of the beauty and

I would argue that's the same and
both the sciences and the arts.

Let me turn to the concept of truth and

I'm sort of growing through
the Platonic ideal levels.

You have the folklore is that
novelists make up everything and

because assess make up nothing
rushes they scientists.

Make up nothing.

And both views are false.

I am as all of you here know very
well creative imagination and

inventiveness are barks of the great
scientists in the great engineers

just as those qualities are high
marks of the great artists and

I would argue that on the other
side of the community

that artists and
I can speak most certainly about novelists

have to conform to a large body of
recognize truth about human nature

theoretical Prezza service
especially rock and

I read of the mind it is
an abstract mathematical

models of reality or some provide and
to back swing on strings

where equations going to be
written down to describe the world

and in this abstract world
that has a serious create

there is a lot of
imagination that goes on.

I'm Stein used the word free invention of
the mind when he described his process and

he said that you can't really find the
truth of nature just by close observation

and experiment as you would think
the scientists do as are all the time but

instead you have to start from your
own imagination start with the mental

construction find a theory out of your own

mind record out its consequences and then
test those again X. against experiment.

I'm a type of scientific process that
I would I think that are out of man

scientist would would find surprising and
one of the the greatest

examples of this free invention of
the mind of Einstein address is.

And the theory of Special Relativity
history of time and there as all of you

know who have taken physics and
he begins with this astonishing

outrageous popstar that the speed of
light ray is the same whether you're

running towards the right right or right
from it it comes at you at the same speed.

Whether you are running
towards the right right or

right from that which makes no
intuitive sense whatsoever.

You know there's a car coming down
a street and you run towards the car

it comes at you at a faster speed
than if you run away from the car but

I know if this is our right right.

It comes at you at the same speed.

You need to right and Einstein
realized that our physical intuition

about the right nature of behaves could be
very wrong when it comes to high speeds.

He was using as imagination to make this
passion for other reasons that had to do

with symmetry arguments arguments
that came right out of his his mind

and the recent example of the use
of invention in physics is

string theory which is
the hottest topic in physics for

the last thirty years I just say there
are radical physics and string theory and

there's a supposed the smallest
elements of nature are not subatomic

particles like electrons but
tiny one dimensional loops

of vibrating energy called strings and
from these vibrations

all of physical reality comes out all
of subatomic particles and forces and

everything are a different house on
these that are violent strings and

there's one other aspect of strength or
a that's required by the theory

that instead of having three spatial
dimensions and length rap and

with that there are nine spatial.

There are six additional dimensions that
we don't see because their credit up and

up for a tiny loops.

To date.

There is no experiment to really know
it's capable of testing string theory and

in fact there's no experiment that we
can imagine and the pursuit of a future.

Yet some of the best theoretical
physicists in the world are working on

string theory and I would argue that they
are working and I right it's very similar

to rap artists do creating and
inventing out of their own minds.

But of course even when scientists
are developing new theories they can't

create they can't and then everything they
can't make up everything there is there's

a certain body of truth that you have to
confront and you can't have a new theory

of gravity to said this says that
happens from the up and sort of down.

And Richard.

FINEMAN who was on my thesis committee
at Cal Tech put it very well and

it was that of the character he was
a grandma when he said that and

science we need imagination but
imagination with a terrible straitjacket.

So I would ask you know LET is
the terrible straitjacket of the novelists

rather the the facts like the apple
crawling down the sort of up that

the novelist mess conform to in
the novel this isn't venting.

And I would argue there are facts that
the novels has to conform to they

are the behavior in
the psychology of homo sapiens.

And I know that we have some
psychologists in the audience here

who can correct me when I go astray.

But I would argue that good list
behavior represents a body type

of emotional truth that the novel us
is bound by and let me give you any.

Sample of what I mean by emotional truth.

Suppose that the novelist has created and
Bennett a character about karate or so

a man married with child and
we'll call him Gabriel

so that we can keep track of him and
gave me all says a fellow who

you know where I could just
attended a Christmas party.

Gabriel was a man who's not to secure
he when he first got to the Christmas

party he worried that he had insulted
them the housekeeper's daughter and

then I would a bit later he's about
to give an after dinner speech and

he's worried that he's going to and set up
some of the gas with ready have to say so.

He said he's somewhat in security but
anyway after the Christmas party.

He has right.

Lead and they've left their two
children with a neighbor and

their own town they decided to spend the
night in this village where the Christmas

party took place and they they're going to
a hotel room and they're walking is not

far from the house where the party is
in its beginning the snow outside and

it's been read it has been
quiet during the evening but

Gabriel lives over hers they're rocking
hand in hand and Rod says that and

that they've had a good life together and

me feel so
attracted to her are over again and

hopes that she can forget about
the house her child shares and

the kids for a night and
and think about them.

Bob that they have shared together so

they get to their hotel room and
they walk up some winding stairs and

the stairway is led just by candlelight
and they get to their way up and.

Durani back again and by this time.

Gabriel as is burning with desire or
is right.

RATHER And he wants her to respond
to him with an equal desire and

instead she begins and
he ask her why she crying and

she says that there was a sad song
sung by a man at the Christmas

party that reminded her of a young
bride that she used to know about

and gave her against a field of dread and
his stomach but

he keeps asking right out
about this this right.

And Gretta says he was seventeen and
he worked in the gas works and

he had large brown eyes and we used
to go rocking together in the country

and I guess credit where you went
you know we remember those bright.

She says We were right
together at the time and

then we had a said he
died at age seventeen

go braless What right did he die
of sudden you know and gratis says

I think you died can make him get up and
things are set up to the bed.

Sobbing.

Well I'm sure that some of you know
that this scene that obvious scribe

as the last scene of
James Joyce's famous story.

The dead and the question I
ask you this how to Joyce and

the same rabbit would be Gabrielle
this reaction to reading this right.

Rabbit has just told him it's a pet.

That he shows no reaction at all.

Well we wouldn't believe this reaction or
suppose.

Gabriel feels superior to us.

That's right.

Dead leper of the distant past we
wouldn't believe this reaction

either because we know that Gabriel is
too insecure of a character for that

the ending with Joyce
actually you write is this

Gabriel realizes that his right.

Yes And this right with the distant past.

Nora and she has ever read him and

he also realizes that he's never allowed
any women with the passion that she has

just shown and
after that realization I like and do was

sack against the window watching the snow
come down and listening to his right.

Breathe as she sleeps
listening as if he and

she were never man and write this ending.

We believe and
we know what it's true even and

fiction because it accords with
our knowledge of human nature with

our own life experiences and
it causes us anguish

begs the novelists and
the businesses are seeking truth for

the novelists it's truth and the world
of the mind and the human heart and for

the physicists it's true in the world
of mass and for arse and seeking truth.

Both the novelists and the Scion.

This must invent both kinds of invention.

I'm pregnant and both kinds of
invention must be tested against

experiment the test and
science are more objective and final.

No not matter how beautiful
the scientists theory is

right the circular orbits
are like the parity conservation

that invention can't be proved
defendant of let you wrong

a novelist characters or story cannot
be proven definitively wrong but

they can ring bells with the reader and
thus lose their power and in this right.

The novelist disconsolate
testing his fiction

against the accumulated like
the experience of the reader.

There is an experience

because scientists and
artists share of the most extraordinary

experience going dear to my heart and
that's the creative moment.

Creativity is a mysterious thing and

I personally write and two places I do
my creative writing in two places one

is a place I got one the summer
of it's a summer house on an ion

surrounded by the I was sure and from my
writing desk I can look out the windows

on two sides big windows and
see the ocean.

I can see a pine needle covered path of
the interest on the hill from my house to

the ocean and
the other place that I write is a little

storage room micro Raasch and

my home and copper of Massachusetts and
in that room.

There are not when that was at all.

And when I look up from my writing

desk I see only a plaster rattle
about six inches and from.

Rhino's both of these
writing places have so

many really well as a writer because
after about twenty minutes I

have completely lost myself in the
imaginary world that I'm trying to ruin.

I would lost absence of my body all
sense of my ego and sense of where I am.

WHAT TIME IT IS WHO I AM I could be
anywhere and I want to describe to you.

My first experience.

My first experience with a creative moment

in science which is that
has a lot of similarities.

I found that a lot of us.

Most scientists do not write about
the creative moment artists write about

the creative moment painters
musicians novelists but

scientists really write about
their creative moments.

That's why they don't as this
is a topic for another lecture.

So I wanted to tell you a little bit about

my prescriptive moment in just two or
three minutes.

It happened in my personal

research problem as a graduate student I
was working on a problem that had to do

with gravity it was it was a theoretical
problem so I was just using house and

paper and I had written down all
the equations that I thought it.

I needed to solve on about twenty or

thirty pieces of paper and
then I had a rat.

I was making me an arrow
mistake somewhere and

I didn't write to get a rise and
I kept trying to find my mistake and

run all over the equations over and over
again for about three or four months and

I couldn't find my mistake I was beginning
to think that I didn't have read it took

to be a scientist I began living in my
little graduate student office sleeping on

a cot there or eating dinner out
from cans of tuna fish that.

And it grabbed my desk and

then one morning after about threw up
Bob months working on this problem.

I I read at about five A.M.

it was still dark and I felt like my
head was lifting off my shoulders.

I was seeing into this problem in
a way that I had never done before

and the one sensation that I had
was feeling but I was right and

I think that's common to the creative
moment you have the sense of rightness

and the closest physical analogy that I
have experienced to the creative moment

is what happens sometimes when
you are sailing a sailboat

and a belt that has a round hole a round
bottom and around bottom sailboat

the men can lift you up out of a rock or
if you have a very strong man and

so the boat is skimming across
the broader like a stone and

all of the friction due to the rudder
drag goes to zero and what it

feels like it happens very suddenly
when you get lifted up on the plane.

It's called it feels like this great big
hand as his grab hold of your mask and

just yanks you forward.

It's innocence zone writing exciting
thrilling feeling and that's

the closest analogy I can come to read it
feels like and the creative moment and

I'm sure that many of you have had this
creative moment that I'm talking about.

So this is what I experienced this day.

There's a Don years ago on my first
research problem and physics.

I read through on that
my mind was running and

I tiptoed out of my bedroom and afraid to.

To bring the friction back in Iraq into
the kitchen and sat down with my many

pages of calculations which brought his
time or cooperation and crab at the edges

and somehow I had seen I'd have gotten

an insight to the problem which was not
by going from one a crate into the next.

But I was able to see
through the whole problem and

see the mistake I was making and
I had this feeling

of wanting to be alone with the problem
but having no sense of myself.

No sense of ego no sense of time just
being in the state of pure seeing and

feeling that I was right and after a while
I had solved my research problem and I got

up from the table and rocked out into the
hall right feeling incredibly power and

credibility and wonder and

I heard a noise and looked up at
the red and there was a clock there and

said it was for
a PM in the afternoon I wanted

to say just a few more words about the
process of creativity and the science and

and the and sciences and the arts and
I was talking about this a generator but

several years ago I did a study
of some of the great scientific

discoveries of the twentieth century and
all who I was biology chemistry physics

astronomy about two dozen discoveries and

such things as Max Planck's discovered
that there are not a lot of these

discovery of the right that communicate
with each other were often incorrect and

Franklin's discovery of D.N.A. and
I found that there was a common pattern of

creativity and most of these discoveries
not all but most of them and

the pattern was this first
the scientists had asked to have

a prepared mind and lots of scientists
I mean scientists and engineers.

That distinguishing here
between scientists and

engineers scientists have to have to have
a repair mind they have to have done

their homework that happened out
of the craft they happen have

the tools at their disposal they're
know example put on there of the great

great discoveries in the twenty percent
century and science made by amateurs.

So you have to have the prepared mind
to begin with then the next step and

the pattern is you have to get stuck and

I met a lot of students think they
are pale when they get stuck.

But actually getting stuck isn't can
be an important part of the creative

process that really stimulates
the creative imagination and

some mysterious right when you're
stopped and then finally there's a shift

in perspective and
you see how to open to solve the problem.

And I think these are all
ingredients of the creative process.

I wanted to end with run with or aspect of
common ground between the scientists and

the artist and I've lived in
these two communities now up or

twenty five years and
that is that that all the scientists and

I would be orders that I've known do what
they do because they will grab it and

because they cannot imagine
doing anything else.

This is a compulsion and this compulsion
is both a blessing and a burden.

It's a blessing because the creative
life is a beautiful life and

we're not lucky enough to be up
there to lead a creative life but

it's also a burden because
when the car bombs.

It can be unrelenting and
it can drown out the rest of life.

This.

It's a mixed blessing and
burden must have been the sweet smell that

what Whitman felt when he was
really odd when he realized for

the first time at a young age that he
was destined to be a poet never marry or

shall I ask a said Whitman
this mixed blessing and

burden being right me after
because as this ship Chandrasekhar

continued working and
science and to it was eighty's

rock and Stein when he was fairly
young rocking and Bern Switzerland

was founded run day to be rocking the
cradle it was young son ripped right and

doing mathematical calculations
with the other when a beginning

pilot wrote a record and I asked record
whether he should continue to write poetry

reprobate back then he should write
only that he could not not write.

Record of wrote.

Search for the reason that bids you to
write find out whether to spreading

out its roots from the deepest
place of your heart and

ask yourself whether you would die
if you couldn't write in a bag

that's your sorrow and the stimulus
to al of you're my best you write

the Nobel Prize winning biologist problem
it meant talk once described passion for

science.

She said I was just so interested in what
I was doing that I could hardly wait to

get up and I'm running one of my
colleagues said that I must be a child

because only children can write
to get up and I'm writing.

What I want to do can with just a couple
of sentences to the students here and

I think that probably a lot.

You are students at heart.

I certainly quite like I
am star student little.

But to the you students are a bit more now
on and barking I know and I like them.

I don't have morning and research.

I'm a little but you should find
something that you're passionate about.

You might find it and the classroom and
you might find it in the shower

talking Iraq or or talking to friends but

find something that you that you really
love something that you feel passionate

about something that you know you feel
compelled to do and when you find it.

Hold on to it now don't let
anybody talk you out of it because

I'm Lee with some passion
as a right to really work.

Let me go.
I think and

I'm going with passion
are you right a rival.

Thank you were.