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Dance for Two: Essays
For the last twenty years, Alan Lightman has been writing essays that display his genius for bringing literary and scientific concerns into harmony. Dance for Two gathers the best of Lightman's work.
Here are pieces that touch on both the ethereal and the corporeal; the dependence of a ballerina on the laws of physics, the choice of every scientist makes between tinkering and theorizing, the unscientific nature of discovery, the impulse behind an unprompted smile. Dance for Two is an intimate and fascinating look into the creative compulsions shared by the artist and the scientist.
Here are pieces that touch on both the ethereal and the corporeal; the dependence of a ballerina on the laws of physics, the choice of every scientist makes between tinkering and theorizing, the unscientific nature of discovery, the impulse behind an unprompted smile. Dance for Two is an intimate and fascinating look into the creative compulsions shared by the artist and the scientist.
192 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1996
14 people are currently reading
341 people want to read
About the author
Alan Lightman
49 books1,295 followersAlan Lightman is an American writer, physicist, and social entrepreneur. Born in 1948, he was educated at Princeton and at the California Institute of Technology, where he received a PhD in theoretical physics. He has received five honorary doctoral degrees. Lightman 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. He is currently professor of the practice of the humanities at MIT. His scientific research in astrophysics has concerned
black holes, relativity theory, radiative processes, and the dynamics of systems of stars. His essays and articles have appeared in the Atlantic, Granta, Harper’s, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Salon, and many other publications. His essays are often chosen by the New York Times as among the best essays of the year. He is the author of 6 novels, several collections of essays, a memoir, and a book-length narrative poem, as well as several books on science. His novel Einstein’s Dreams was an international bestseller and has been the basis for dozens of independent theatrical and musical adaptations around the world. His novel The Diagnosis was a finalist for the National Book Award. His most recent books are The Accidental Universe, which was chosen by Brain Pickings as one of the 10 best books of 2014, his memoir Screening Room, which was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the best books of the year for 2016,
and Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine (2018), an extended meditation on science and religion – which was the basis for an essay
on PBS Newshour. Lightman is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also the founder of the Harpswell Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to advance a new generation of women leaders in Southeast Asia.” He has received the gold medal for humanitarian service from the government of Cambodia.
black holes, relativity theory, radiative processes, and the dynamics of systems of stars. His essays and articles have appeared in the Atlantic, Granta, Harper’s, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, Salon, and many other publications. His essays are often chosen by the New York Times as among the best essays of the year. He is the author of 6 novels, several collections of essays, a memoir, and a book-length narrative poem, as well as several books on science. His novel Einstein’s Dreams was an international bestseller and has been the basis for dozens of independent theatrical and musical adaptations around the world. His novel The Diagnosis was a finalist for the National Book Award. His most recent books are The Accidental Universe, which was chosen by Brain Pickings as one of the 10 best books of 2014, his memoir Screening Room, which was chosen by the Washington Post as one of the best books of the year for 2016,
and Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine (2018), an extended meditation on science and religion – which was the basis for an essay
on PBS Newshour. Lightman is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is also the founder of the Harpswell Foundation, a nonprofit organization whose mission is “to advance a new generation of women leaders in Southeast Asia.” He has received the gold medal for humanitarian service from the government of Cambodia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
October 30, 2008
Dance for Two is a collection of essays connecting the "science world" with the "art world", which are in fact always connected. For example, one essay explains how a ballerina depends on physics in order to balance and dance. The whole book emphasizes what I have believed for years - you can't just be a math person or an artsy person. They are so intertwined that everyone has to be a little of both.
My favorite essay in the book is "Time Travel and Papa Joe's Pipe" and I would recommend it to anyone. This is the second book I've read by Alan Lightman, and now I'm looking for more. He writes about science in a beautiful and interesting way.
My favorite essay in the book is "Time Travel and Papa Joe's Pipe" and I would recommend it to anyone. This is the second book I've read by Alan Lightman, and now I'm looking for more. He writes about science in a beautiful and interesting way.
March 6, 2019
3.5/5: Physicist-raconteur that he is, Alan Lightman shines as an essayist with writing that is self-indulgent yet self-aware. Some pages you may want to skim, while others will keep you hooked. An underlying theme becomes clear, as he returns to the idea of (un)certainty time and again, exploring it in art and science (and his own life), although never fully unravelling it. He leads you through the years, riffing and rafting on the death of apprenticeships amongst painters, deftly narrating in parallel his own journey with academic mentors. Stories of failure, and a life lived in questions. In artfully extending the ballerina’s jump to the earth’s spin, or simply exploring the histories of science “with all its wrong turns, prejudices and human passions”, he offers up a narrative that keeps you hooked: science, as blunder, accident and luck, where magic and the absurd are fair game. Jumping from Bohr to the Boston School and Copernicus to Marie Curie, he weaves a story of his own journey as a scientist.
However, it is in exploring (fictive or not) the implications of General Relativity and time as a concept, that Alan excels, much as he did in Einstein’s Dreams. Only a few chapters here come close to the brilliance in that book, where every page thrust you in a new direction, every page showed you the world in a new light.
A man who wrestles with accepting his own limitations through the years, but never stops questioning. For in asking questions, he is acute. They might not be the most important ones at times, but they damn sure are interesting ones. Read it for what it is: the meandering thoughts of a scientist/writer with an incredible capacity to wonder. Sit back and listen to a writer who spins out time travel from the worldly smells in Papa Joe's Pipe, and you might just learn a thing or two.
However, it is in exploring (fictive or not) the implications of General Relativity and time as a concept, that Alan excels, much as he did in Einstein’s Dreams. Only a few chapters here come close to the brilliance in that book, where every page thrust you in a new direction, every page showed you the world in a new light.
A man who wrestles with accepting his own limitations through the years, but never stops questioning. For in asking questions, he is acute. They might not be the most important ones at times, but they damn sure are interesting ones. Read it for what it is: the meandering thoughts of a scientist/writer with an incredible capacity to wonder. Sit back and listen to a writer who spins out time travel from the worldly smells in Papa Joe's Pipe, and you might just learn a thing or two.
October 24, 2007
So-so read. Lightman is a physicist, and most of his essays build on that in one way or another, usually by exploring physics concepts through metaphors, or by finding a particularly good example of a concept and then detailing it a clearly-written manner. Sometimes he just noodles around with stuff that's not even physics based - he imagines all the places a particular pipe he owns has been, and all the people who have held it. Lightman has a rather unfortunate couple of lines in the introduction to the book, where he's talking about writing essays that really resonate even years or decades after they've been written, essays that really *do* something... and none of the essays really did that for me.
A few were interesting - parallels drawn between a ballerina and the spinning and force of the earth as it moves through space, thought experiments about a world in which iron is the most common element, etc. But I think I read so much science fiction, and enough of it that really goes to town with similar thought experiments, that someone spending three pages on a world of iron-people and seeming to be very self-congratulatory about their inventiveness was just... eh. It wasn't a painful read by any means, and there were bits here and there that were a little shiny, but nothing really stuck with me.
One word review: Eh.
A few were interesting - parallels drawn between a ballerina and the spinning and force of the earth as it moves through space, thought experiments about a world in which iron is the most common element, etc. But I think I read so much science fiction, and enough of it that really goes to town with similar thought experiments, that someone spending three pages on a world of iron-people and seeming to be very self-congratulatory about their inventiveness was just... eh. It wasn't a painful read by any means, and there were bits here and there that were a little shiny, but nothing really stuck with me.
One word review: Eh.
March 4, 2008
Beautiful writing about the world of science. Did you know most scientists and mathematicians peak in their thirties, as opposed to folks in the humanities, who usually get better as they live and experience more. Anyway, he makes physics sound like a blast--simple, fun, mystical. And yet I still don't understand!
July 4, 2008
Loved the marriage of science and story-telling!
June 21, 2020
The nonfiction is better than the fiction here, and the best essays in the collection draw on Lightman's strengths in describing scientific phenomena with simple language.
Some fun bits:
- A "stadium" was an Ancient Greek/Roman unit of length! I also really enjoyed reading about how Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the earth within 1% of the best contemporary calculations (see here for a video on the subject) (p. 19)
- Primary feathers using propulsive mechanisms to generate and support flight is fascinating, wow! I hadn't ever thought about individual feathers (as opposed to wings) as functional units in flight (p. 24)
- Loved reading about the Gossamer Condor (p. 28), and love the 1970s aesthetic of the clips here. I wanna ride a human powered aircraft!!
- "Imagine programming a computer to solve your problem" is a great cue for logic problems (p. 31)
3.5 stars
Some fun bits:
- A "stadium" was an Ancient Greek/Roman unit of length! I also really enjoyed reading about how Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the earth within 1% of the best contemporary calculations (see here for a video on the subject) (p. 19)
- Primary feathers using propulsive mechanisms to generate and support flight is fascinating, wow! I hadn't ever thought about individual feathers (as opposed to wings) as functional units in flight (p. 24)
- Loved reading about the Gossamer Condor (p. 28), and love the 1970s aesthetic of the clips here. I wanna ride a human powered aircraft!!
- "Imagine programming a computer to solve your problem" is a great cue for logic problems (p. 31)
3.5 stars
November 3, 2022
I have read a small shelf of books by Lightman starting with Einstein's Dreams and I have liked all of them. This is a collection of science-based essays. They go back 20 years and a few seem a bit dated.
All of his books mix science and literature. I will admit that my favorite pieces were the most literary. "Time Travel and Papa Joe's Pipe" is a Proustian moment he has with that pipe and it made me go back and take out the one pipe I have from my grandfather. I'm no smoker but I did get some tobacco and fill it and sit out in the woods hoping to conjure him up in the smoke. In "A Modern Day Yankee in a Connecticut Court" a time traveler to the past tries to convince people is not crazy and is from the future by telling them his limited scientific knowledge. Thomas Edison is not convinced. Another one is about Isaac Newton coming to his university office.
This was an okay listen but I would recommend the novels instead.
All of his books mix science and literature. I will admit that my favorite pieces were the most literary. "Time Travel and Papa Joe's Pipe" is a Proustian moment he has with that pipe and it made me go back and take out the one pipe I have from my grandfather. I'm no smoker but I did get some tobacco and fill it and sit out in the woods hoping to conjure him up in the smoke. In "A Modern Day Yankee in a Connecticut Court" a time traveler to the past tries to convince people is not crazy and is from the future by telling them his limited scientific knowledge. Thomas Edison is not convinced. Another one is about Isaac Newton coming to his university office.
This was an okay listen but I would recommend the novels instead.
January 20, 2023
I found some, though not all, of these essays to be worthwhile. Lightman is insightful and a historian of science as much as an expert in physics. He speaks about the laws of nature with reverence and with awe, but also with the knowledge of one who has mastered them. I particularly enjoyed, "is the earth round or flat", " elapsed expectations"," and a modern day in the Connecticut court".
December 7, 2023
like all anthologies, there are some of those i enjoyed and those i didn’t. although overall, this wasn’t very enlightening. i think the mixture of science, even though the author tried his best attempt to romanticise it and have it seem poetic, there are just some bits of it that just can’t possibly be seen as ‘magic.’
2/5 🌟
2/5 🌟
February 10, 2021
Like probably just about any book on essays, some of these are very good and others are so-so. It's interesting - the ones I didn't like were the shortest ones, that's a new experience :)
February 3, 2022
Изящный слог, увлекательные эссе об истории науки. Красиво, захватывающе, иногда с юмором. Очень понравилось
August 24, 2022
Lovely collection of essays with a soft-science focus.
October 22, 2025
Thought-provoking!!
March 20, 2021
Lightman always delivers what you expect: a weaving of beauty and art in scientific musings. My favorite essay in this collection is Elapsed Expectations.
August 31, 2016
"I am not in favor of squashing new developments in pure science, in any form. The act of understanding the workings of nature- and our place and it- expresses for me what is most noble and the good in us. As for the applications of science, I am certainly not opposed to technology as a whole; I benefit greatly from it. But we cannot have advances in technology without an accompanying consideration of human values and quality of life. How should this examination and questioning proceed ? The problem cannot be solved from top down. It is a cultural problem. Perhaps we must regulate ourselves. Perhaps we each must think about what is truly important in our lives and decide which technologies to except which to resist. That is a personal responsibility. In the long run, we need to change our thinking, to realize that we are not only a society of production and technology but also a society of human beings." [pg. 92]
"Nature does not reveal herself in the easy glimpses of the scientific truths. Experimental results are often confusing and sometimes plain wrong. Without an interpretive theory, without a design offered by the beholder, observations of the physical world are just so many loose, meaningless facts. Little wonder then that the history of science is replete with personal prejudices, misleading philosophical of themes, players miss cast. Prejudice is a dirty word in science, whose musty quarters were supposedly swept clean by Copernicus and Galileo. Yet I suspect all scientists have been guilty of prejudice various times in their research." [pg. 100]
"It is a banality to say science holds a reductionist view of the world, and even a twenty-one-year-old knew that life wasn't so simple. But science, especially physics, provides a powerful illusion of simplicity and certainty. Textbooks on physics rarely offer any discussion of the history of the subject, with its wrong turns and prejudices and human passions. Instead, there are Laws. And the Laws seduce with their beauty and precision. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The gravitational force between two masses varies inversely with the square of the distance between them. Even Heisenberg's quantum Uncertainty Principle, which proclaimed that the future cannot be determined from the past, gave a definite mathematical formula for containing uncertainties, like a soundproof room built around someone who is screaming. More than its purity and grace, physics was Certainty." [pg. 162]
"To my dizzy and confused mind, randomness had finally one out. The world was a jumble of mistaken adventures, crossed wires, mirrors at odd angles. Certainty was a deception. And for me, at that moment in my life, there was either certainty or randomness, nothing in between." [pg. 168]
"Nature does not reveal herself in the easy glimpses of the scientific truths. Experimental results are often confusing and sometimes plain wrong. Without an interpretive theory, without a design offered by the beholder, observations of the physical world are just so many loose, meaningless facts. Little wonder then that the history of science is replete with personal prejudices, misleading philosophical of themes, players miss cast. Prejudice is a dirty word in science, whose musty quarters were supposedly swept clean by Copernicus and Galileo. Yet I suspect all scientists have been guilty of prejudice various times in their research." [pg. 100]
"It is a banality to say science holds a reductionist view of the world, and even a twenty-one-year-old knew that life wasn't so simple. But science, especially physics, provides a powerful illusion of simplicity and certainty. Textbooks on physics rarely offer any discussion of the history of the subject, with its wrong turns and prejudices and human passions. Instead, there are Laws. And the Laws seduce with their beauty and precision. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The gravitational force between two masses varies inversely with the square of the distance between them. Even Heisenberg's quantum Uncertainty Principle, which proclaimed that the future cannot be determined from the past, gave a definite mathematical formula for containing uncertainties, like a soundproof room built around someone who is screaming. More than its purity and grace, physics was Certainty." [pg. 162]
"To my dizzy and confused mind, randomness had finally one out. The world was a jumble of mistaken adventures, crossed wires, mirrors at odd angles. Certainty was a deception. And for me, at that moment in my life, there was either certainty or randomness, nothing in between." [pg. 168]
February 25, 2018
I first encountered Lightman maybe two or three years ago, with Einstein's Dreams -- that is one of my favorite books of all time, and I thought, surely anything that Lightman writes will have the same kind of quality writing that Einstein's Dreams had.
I was right, sort of; in this collection of essays, Lightman takes liberty in going where he pleases, so for instance some of the essays may be a bit anticlimactic, or well-written at first then end on a slightly disappointing note. Some employ too much technicality, such that the creativity does not feel loud enough. There are some that I genuinely enjoyed though, such as:
- Smile - what started out as a lecture on optics turned out to have a pleasant one-line ending that went back to that which is most important, the unknowable and the unknown when it came to matters of the heart
- Time Travel and Papa Joe's Pipe - when Lightman writes about time, I am always drawn into the possibilities that he illustrates; he's so artful when trying to dissect this concept, I always love it
- Elapsed Expectations - this one I prefer by virtue of its self-reflection, its quiet honesty, the sincerity and authenticity with which he wonders what comes next
- A Day in December - this one reads like a chapter in Einstein's Dreams, and it was when I realized that Lightman writes most effectively in the third person; that's when I feel like I can connect to his words the most
- Progress (on the onslaught of technology), Time for the Stars (on the virtue of theoretical science) - pieces that meander about and don't really say anything new, but are just spaces where he thinks aloud, and where one can't help but agree every once in a while with a line or a phrase here and there
- Ironland - ending was a bit of a letdown, but I liked the concept, I wish he explored it more and thought about the writing more, it could've been a truly compelling piece
Will recommend selectively; I'm glad to have found it on a New York corner though, on one of the dollar-carts outside The Strand. All the books I brought back from there automatically have a special place in my heart.
I was right, sort of; in this collection of essays, Lightman takes liberty in going where he pleases, so for instance some of the essays may be a bit anticlimactic, or well-written at first then end on a slightly disappointing note. Some employ too much technicality, such that the creativity does not feel loud enough. There are some that I genuinely enjoyed though, such as:
- Smile - what started out as a lecture on optics turned out to have a pleasant one-line ending that went back to that which is most important, the unknowable and the unknown when it came to matters of the heart
- Time Travel and Papa Joe's Pipe - when Lightman writes about time, I am always drawn into the possibilities that he illustrates; he's so artful when trying to dissect this concept, I always love it
- Elapsed Expectations - this one I prefer by virtue of its self-reflection, its quiet honesty, the sincerity and authenticity with which he wonders what comes next
- A Day in December - this one reads like a chapter in Einstein's Dreams, and it was when I realized that Lightman writes most effectively in the third person; that's when I feel like I can connect to his words the most
- Progress (on the onslaught of technology), Time for the Stars (on the virtue of theoretical science) - pieces that meander about and don't really say anything new, but are just spaces where he thinks aloud, and where one can't help but agree every once in a while with a line or a phrase here and there
- Ironland - ending was a bit of a letdown, but I liked the concept, I wish he explored it more and thought about the writing more, it could've been a truly compelling piece
Will recommend selectively; I'm glad to have found it on a New York corner though, on one of the dollar-carts outside The Strand. All the books I brought back from there automatically have a special place in my heart.
March 2, 2012
Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Lightman turns his clear, clean prose to the philosophical and aesthetic aspects of science and a life spent pursuing science--especially physics. Each essay is a fascinating self-contained exploration of the author's experiences or thoughts on humankind's age-old and never ending attempts to understand and explain the world around us; and what these events and experiences can tell us about ourselves individually, as a culture, as a species, and the world/universe as a whole. You never find Lightman really leaving the ground and becoming lost in the vast, stodgy reaches of theory; nor becoming bogged down in the stultifying quagmire that is mechanics. He easily finds a happy medium between the two, a space of reason and beauty, order and chance, life and death. Truly, I think Lightman is at his best in small, self-contained pieces that nevertheless can be combined into a more coherent whole. That was the composition of Einstein's Dreams, which is far and away his best novel; hell, far and away one of the best novels I've ever read. And his essays ring clear and true and achingly beautiful in a way which challenges the reader to rethink the world around them in a similar (though somewhat more coherent) fashion to his seminal novel.
August 29, 2018
Behold…a high-powered intellect that can actually construct palatable sentences!
Lightman's book is a collection of short essays that offer a fair amount of real science, but not to the point where an ex-English major would suffocate.
There is also a lot of neat historical info, such as scientific rivalries and the widespread impact of certain scientific breakthroughs.
Lightman is an academic physicist who refuses to join the email generation. Seems like a conflicted soul. Also a swell writer, as well as a refined and discerning mind.
Lightman's book is a collection of short essays that offer a fair amount of real science, but not to the point where an ex-English major would suffocate.
There is also a lot of neat historical info, such as scientific rivalries and the widespread impact of certain scientific breakthroughs.
Lightman is an academic physicist who refuses to join the email generation. Seems like a conflicted soul. Also a swell writer, as well as a refined and discerning mind.
January 30, 2015
Physics has long been a source of fascination for me, and Lightman manages to explain it accessibly without condescension. Most of this book, though, is a meditation of the marriage of science and art: good artists need some basic science, and good scientists use art (and Lightman, though a physicist, is clearly an artist). I can tell how much Lightman loves his life's work. At the same time, he clearly finds beauty and awe in the tiniest details of normal life. Reading this book felt like a journey through his thoughts--and it was a pleasing, interesting tour, indeed.
November 9, 2014
Lightman spoiled me wit Ei stein's Dreams which was perfect in every way. These essays had a lot of insights about science and poetry that made it worthwhile, but I found many of the essays disjointed and unfocused. I loved his variation on A Connecticut Yankee in which the time traveler did not know how to explain modern inventions when trying to prove he really was from the future. I know I could not explain how anything works.
October 23, 2023
Imagine being a gifted student for all your life, landed tenured professor position at MIT, just to come to the conclusion that most(on average?) physicist published their greatest findings before 36 and have a bitter feeling about that. Happiness is the true luxury
Wish i finished reading the book in high school, might have a different understanding of science/academia/research
Wish i finished reading the book in high school, might have a different understanding of science/academia/research
December 5, 2012
First off, go back and read "Einstein's Dreams" if you haven't already. That gives you a primer for Alan Lightman's book of essays, which is full of brilliantly crafted pieces that bring down to a laywoman's level the grand ideas of the universe and how they function -- like gravity and time.
September 13, 2013
Poetry as much as science, I read this to my gramma the last few months we had together. ok... I skipped some parts :-) but she loved what we did read, and each chapter invited us to talk about the mechanics of the sea, the stars and of people, and all of our own memories this book reminded us of.
February 7, 2014
I enjoyed this more than I thought I might. This is an author that I may well seek out in the future. He definitely attains the laudable goal of making science accessible and enjoyable without "dumbing it down" more than necessary.
August 24, 2016
Wonderful short stories written by a physicist that studied at Princeton and Caltech. It is a collection of his personal favorite short stories he's written throughout his life. Nice to read when you have small pieces of free time.
December 31, 2024
This collection of essays was just alright. It struck me as quaint, especially the essay where the author explains why he refuses to use email. I wonder if he ever gave in on that one. The allegory chapters were my least favorite. Overall a few interesting essays but nothing that really grabbed me.
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July 16, 2007Another ok Lightman book that's not as good as Einstein's Dreams.
July 25, 2010
Thought-provoking!!
May 13, 2013
Some really good essays (Pas de Deux) interspersed with some really strange or unnecessary ones (Ironland). If you want science anecdotes, read Feynman
February 17, 2014
Good book. Very different from other complications of essays that I have previously read, but very informative and well written.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews