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The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science
From the best-selling author of Einstein’s Dreams comes a rich, fascinating answer to the question, Can the scientifically inclined still hold space for spirituality?
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. Drawing on intellectual history and conversations with contemporary scientists, philosophers, and psychologists, Lightman 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.
What is revealed in this lyrical, enlightening book is that spirituality may not only be compatible with science, it also ought to remain at the core of what it means to be human.
* This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF that contains illustrations from the printed book.
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. Drawing on intellectual history and conversations with contemporary scientists, philosophers, and psychologists, Lightman 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.
What is revealed in this lyrical, enlightening book is that spirituality may not only be compatible with science, it also ought to remain at the core of what it means to be human.
* This audiobook includes a downloadable PDF that contains illustrations from the printed book.
Audible Audio
First published March 14, 2023
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About the author
Alan Lightman
49 books1,296 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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January 30, 2023
A fascinating paradox is that most transcendent experiences are completely ego-free. In the moment, we lose track of time and space, we lose track of our bodies, we lose track of our selves. We dissolve. And yet, as I suggest, spirituality emerges from consciousness and the material brain. And the paramount signature of consciousness is a sense of self, an “I-ness” distinct from the rest of the cosmos. Thus, curiously, a thing centered on self creates a thing absent of self.
With a PhD in theoretical physics and as “the first person at MIT to receive dual faculty appointments in science and in the humanities”, Alan Lightman is well poised to think and write about the intersection of science and spirituality (and his writing has often addressed this intersection, as proven by his backlist). The Transcendent Brain reads like a final synthesis of this lifetime of thinking and writing — for a shortish book, it has countless references to the scientists, psychologists, and philosophers who have influenced Lightman’s thinking — but as interesting as I found the material, I don’t know if it really answered his own questions around whether the scientific method necessarily precludes a belief in God (or anything “spiritual” beyond the material world of what can be tested). Still a very interesting read that gave me much to think about. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)
The driving forces for the emergence of spirituality are both biological and psychological: a primal affinity for nature, a fundamental need for cooperation, and a means of coping with the knowledge of our impending death. Some of these forces can be found in nonhuman animals, of course, but the full experience of spirituality may require the higher intelligence of Homo sapiens.
Over the course of The Transcendent Brain, Lightman shares several transcendent experiences he has had throughout his life; so even though he identifies as an atheist, he understands what others mean by a religious or spiritual experience. He satisfactorily proves a material basis for consciousness (I enjoyed the bits about emergentism — just as you couldn’t predict the characteristics of water by examining its constituent elements of hydrogen and oxygen, there’s no need for Divine Intervention to explain how our minds are the natural result of the billions of synaptic connections in our brains) and he also shows the ways in which a sense of spirituality (and its fellowship-building) would have been an evolutionary advantage for early humans. One of the most intriguing passages I noted, about “the creative transcendent”, was:
Practitioners and philosophers disagree on whether mathematical truth exists out there in the world, independent of the human mind — in which case mathematicians discover what is already there, like coming upon a new ocean — or whether mathematical ideas, theorems, and functions are invented out of the mind of the mathematician.
It’s interesting to think that it’s no easier to prove the existence of math outside the human mind than to prove the existence of God; so what does that mean for his thesis?
Science can never disprove the existence of God, since God might exist outside the physical universe. Nor can religion prove the existence of God, since any phenomenon or experience attributed to God might, in principle, find explanation in some nontheist cause. What I suggest here is that we can accept a scientific view of the world while at the same time embracing certain experiences that cannot be fully captured or understood by the material underpinnings of the world.
And that’s a bit of Lightman having his cake and eating it too, which has apparently long put the author in the crosshairs of other, more strident, thinkers. Lightman writes about sharing his transcendent experiences during a debate with Richard Dawkins who mocked the author, dismissing people of faith as “nonthinkers” and labelling religion as “nonsense” (classic Dawkins). On a different occasion (as referenced in the Notes at the end), Lightman shared the stage with distinguished Islamic scholar Osman Bakar who, “strongly disagreed with me that we cannot prove the existence of God, stating that ‘revelation’, in both the sacred books and in personal experience, shows that we know God exists.” Acknowledging thusly that he can publicly represent either the pro-spiritual or anti-spiritual point-of-view, The Transcendent Brain reflects this squishy middleground (despite the author stating throughout that he is an affirmed atheist), and I don’t know if this non-resolution was entirely satisfying to me. And yet: I thoroughly enjoyed everything that Lightman shared and the internal musings they led to. Totally worthwhile read.
For an idea of Lightman’s thinking (and some backlash it has elicited), here’s a link to an article in Salon from 2011:
Does God exist?
And an angry response in Salon a week later from Daniel Dennett:
When atheists fib to protect God
April 14, 2023
There are experiences of things seen that have never left me. Green trees filled with thousands of white egrets during spring migration. A Green Heron in tandem flight with a jet just taking off from an airport. The majesty of Niagara Falls. The view of the ocean from the cliffs of Mt. Desert Island. The stars scattered across the heavens that made me feel small. The eerie coolness and dusk of a solar eclipse. The Northern Lights over Lake Superior. The colors of autumn trees, the exuberant colors of flowers visited by butterflies and bees.
It is not only nature that leaves indelible marks. Last year we saw the Van Gogh in America exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Art. Half way through the exhibit, my emotions took over and I cried. Cried for the beauty I was seeing, cried for the artist who captured these images. And, often at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra concerts I feel a chill run up my spine, my heart exploding, tears streaming down my cheeks.
Transcendent moments are mysterious. Alan Lightman begins The Transcendent Brain with the story of watching an osprey nest until the fledglings flew off. He writes, “I found that I was shaking, and in tears. To this day, I don’t understand what happened in that half second. But it was a profound connection to nature. And a feeling of being part of something much large than myself.”
Alan Lightman describes himself as a Spiritual Materialist. A materialist understands that matter is all that exists. A spiritual person is concerned with the spirit or soul, things that can’t be reduced to atoms. Lightman contends that our spiritual nature arises from our biological nature.
He takes us through the historical understanding of the soul, starting with Moses Mendelssohn, a brilliant polymath who presented a science-based, logical proof of the existence of the soul. He then turns to the Ancient Egyptians who believed in a duality of souls, one housing the personal, and another a part of the universal. He looks at the Greeks and Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, and then Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and finally to Andrei Linde who sees the universe as in eternal creation.
Lightman next turns to the history of Materialism, from Ancient Greece and Rome, delving into Lucretius who wrote about atoms which could not be created or destroyed, and who thought that the soul was also material. On the other side of the world in China, Wand Ch’ung disputed the existence of an afterlife, contending that the “souls of the dead are dissolved”. He notes the conflict between vitalism and mechanism; is there a mysterious life force, or are we mere material machines? He looks to physics as proving the world is only material.
He argues that consciousness, the “I-ness” we experience, arises from the material brain, presenting studies and experiments. Other creatures on Earth have large brains and show thinking and even awareness of death, indicating there are levels of consciousness. Consciousness arises from the material brain. This is a long chapter, and one I am still processing.
Lightman argues that spirituality arises from the material brain. He respects those who align transcendent moments with a belief in God. But he holds a nonreligious spirituality that he believes has evolved for evolutionary benefit. Our affinity to nature and its beauty arose from our deep dependence on understanding the physical world. Our interconnectedness and need for community arose to ensure our survival. The human love of beauty arose from attraction to healthy mates, but he walks us through how beauty is mathematical.
Artists lose themselves during the act of creation; the creative transcendent is well described by Lightman. Perhaps it arose out of a need for discovery, exploring the outer world, and looking inward to discover new connections to the world.
Society is split: some people think that science offers solutions and truth, while other feel that scientists are an elite group threatening their beliefs. Understanding the world through science does not negate human experiences of awe.
The concluding paragraphs left me moved. Lightman sees beauty in knowing that his atoms will return to the ongoing creation of the world, connecting him to both the past and the future. It is, frankly, what I had believed since I was a young woman. Many times while reading this book, when he spoke of death, a chill went up my spine. At seventy years of age, realizing the brevity of life has brought anxiety. I think how I will be forgotten, my life losing its meaning. But reading those lines, the grace and hope of them, were affirming. I need to reaffirm living with the mystery.
Thanks to A. A. Knopf for a free book.
It is not only nature that leaves indelible marks. Last year we saw the Van Gogh in America exhibit at the Detroit Institute of Art. Half way through the exhibit, my emotions took over and I cried. Cried for the beauty I was seeing, cried for the artist who captured these images. And, often at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra concerts I feel a chill run up my spine, my heart exploding, tears streaming down my cheeks.
Transcendent moments are mysterious. Alan Lightman begins The Transcendent Brain with the story of watching an osprey nest until the fledglings flew off. He writes, “I found that I was shaking, and in tears. To this day, I don’t understand what happened in that half second. But it was a profound connection to nature. And a feeling of being part of something much large than myself.”
Alan Lightman describes himself as a Spiritual Materialist. A materialist understands that matter is all that exists. A spiritual person is concerned with the spirit or soul, things that can’t be reduced to atoms. Lightman contends that our spiritual nature arises from our biological nature.
He takes us through the historical understanding of the soul, starting with Moses Mendelssohn, a brilliant polymath who presented a science-based, logical proof of the existence of the soul. He then turns to the Ancient Egyptians who believed in a duality of souls, one housing the personal, and another a part of the universal. He looks at the Greeks and Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, and then Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and finally to Andrei Linde who sees the universe as in eternal creation.
Lightman next turns to the history of Materialism, from Ancient Greece and Rome, delving into Lucretius who wrote about atoms which could not be created or destroyed, and who thought that the soul was also material. On the other side of the world in China, Wand Ch’ung disputed the existence of an afterlife, contending that the “souls of the dead are dissolved”. He notes the conflict between vitalism and mechanism; is there a mysterious life force, or are we mere material machines? He looks to physics as proving the world is only material.
He argues that consciousness, the “I-ness” we experience, arises from the material brain, presenting studies and experiments. Other creatures on Earth have large brains and show thinking and even awareness of death, indicating there are levels of consciousness. Consciousness arises from the material brain. This is a long chapter, and one I am still processing.
Lightman argues that spirituality arises from the material brain. He respects those who align transcendent moments with a belief in God. But he holds a nonreligious spirituality that he believes has evolved for evolutionary benefit. Our affinity to nature and its beauty arose from our deep dependence on understanding the physical world. Our interconnectedness and need for community arose to ensure our survival. The human love of beauty arose from attraction to healthy mates, but he walks us through how beauty is mathematical.
Artists lose themselves during the act of creation; the creative transcendent is well described by Lightman. Perhaps it arose out of a need for discovery, exploring the outer world, and looking inward to discover new connections to the world.
Society is split: some people think that science offers solutions and truth, while other feel that scientists are an elite group threatening their beliefs. Understanding the world through science does not negate human experiences of awe.
The concluding paragraphs left me moved. Lightman sees beauty in knowing that his atoms will return to the ongoing creation of the world, connecting him to both the past and the future. It is, frankly, what I had believed since I was a young woman. Many times while reading this book, when he spoke of death, a chill went up my spine. At seventy years of age, realizing the brevity of life has brought anxiety. I think how I will be forgotten, my life losing its meaning. But reading those lines, the grace and hope of them, were affirming. I need to reaffirm living with the mystery.
Thanks to A. A. Knopf for a free book.
February 10, 2023
What. A. breathtakingly. Awesome. Book. I would call this a book on very rational spirituality.
While I do realize that my review now might be as much about me as it is about this book. I feel like I have to add some of my own story to the review so it makes sense why exactly I loved this book as much as I did.
This book validates spiritual experiences.
It validates being spiritual without being religious.
It talks about being spiritual all while not believing in any deity.
The book feels like a conversation with someone I have always been looking for - someone who sees the world as a scientist, with a strong grip on logic, who is well aware of how the world is built, yet who has spent a great deal of their time thinking about things that go way beyond molecules and atoms.
I have tried to have this sort of conversation with so many people in my life - I never found a single one who I could connect with on this level. And then? Here? This book? Wow. A whole book that speaks in my language. A whole awesome book that feels like this one conversation I have longed to have with someone, anyone, for forever.
As a cherry on top - and the author being a scientist – REFERENCES at the end of the book. Love!
My absolute favorite part was the one where the author talks about his wish to talk with Mendelssohn about his many ideas. How he speculates how that conversation might go.
There have been only really few authors who have made me feel this way with their writing. And now I feel like I have a brand new all-time favorite author. Alan Lightman. I want to know everything there is to know about him now. I want to read everything and anything he has ever written. I want to read anything and everything he will ever write.
I have always been fascinated by people who speak of books they have read - when those are the very same books I have read also. Unfortunately, so far the only (and very few, and very far-fetched) cases like this have been within academia, from those who have also studied philosophy at university (and have a university degree in it). Yet in most cases, those have been very sad and lacking conversations, as even those who have their degrees in philosophy, usually merely skim through most books. But not this person. Not the author of this book. He knows so damn well what it is he is talking about.
This is a book I will be telling about to everyone who has any background in philosophy or any deeper interest in philosophy and also to anyone who has deeper questions regarding spirituality in general, and who prefers to see the world through the lens of reason.
While I do realize that my review now might be as much about me as it is about this book. I feel like I have to add some of my own story to the review so it makes sense why exactly I loved this book as much as I did.
This book validates spiritual experiences.
It validates being spiritual without being religious.
It talks about being spiritual all while not believing in any deity.
The book feels like a conversation with someone I have always been looking for - someone who sees the world as a scientist, with a strong grip on logic, who is well aware of how the world is built, yet who has spent a great deal of their time thinking about things that go way beyond molecules and atoms.
I have tried to have this sort of conversation with so many people in my life - I never found a single one who I could connect with on this level. And then? Here? This book? Wow. A whole book that speaks in my language. A whole awesome book that feels like this one conversation I have longed to have with someone, anyone, for forever.
As a cherry on top - and the author being a scientist – REFERENCES at the end of the book. Love!
My absolute favorite part was the one where the author talks about his wish to talk with Mendelssohn about his many ideas. How he speculates how that conversation might go.
There have been only really few authors who have made me feel this way with their writing. And now I feel like I have a brand new all-time favorite author. Alan Lightman. I want to know everything there is to know about him now. I want to read everything and anything he has ever written. I want to read anything and everything he will ever write.
I have always been fascinated by people who speak of books they have read - when those are the very same books I have read also. Unfortunately, so far the only (and very few, and very far-fetched) cases like this have been within academia, from those who have also studied philosophy at university (and have a university degree in it). Yet in most cases, those have been very sad and lacking conversations, as even those who have their degrees in philosophy, usually merely skim through most books. But not this person. Not the author of this book. He knows so damn well what it is he is talking about.
This is a book I will be telling about to everyone who has any background in philosophy or any deeper interest in philosophy and also to anyone who has deeper questions regarding spirituality in general, and who prefers to see the world through the lens of reason.
November 16, 2023
A lovely essay on how a physicist and materialist views “spiritual” experiences in the light of a scientific worldview. I can also highly recommend Lightman’s short but brilliant work, Einstein’s Dreams. 4 stars.
April 4, 2023
I unfortunately found this quite disappointing. It was closer to a list of literature reviews of previous thinkers but I found it very oddly (dis)organized where it was hard to follow and a bit incoherent. It felt like the substance of a 40 page introduction to a book that was then dragged out more than substantive enough to stand on its own.
April 7, 2023
As another reviewer said, this is just a literature review, primarily on historical perspectives of mind/body duality vs materialism.
I’m not sure how I got a boring summary of prior work while other readers got a mind-blowing enlightenment from this book.
I’m not sure how I got a boring summary of prior work while other readers got a mind-blowing enlightenment from this book.
April 18, 2023
Lightman can be very frustrating.
In this book he tippy toes up to a bunch of very important and imaginative thought experiments but runs away into vacuous and unsatisfying quasi-standard tropes. Alas the materialist trumps the spiritualist time and again. The are glimpses into the universe(s) where time is an illusion, rocks have a certain consciousness, and cause and effect is actually random bumps but the physicist
ultimately checks the artists forays into uncomfortable (at least for a materialist) territory.
Ah, for the open-endedness of Einstein's Dreams...
In this book he tippy toes up to a bunch of very important and imaginative thought experiments but runs away into vacuous and unsatisfying quasi-standard tropes. Alas the materialist trumps the spiritualist time and again. The are glimpses into the universe(s) where time is an illusion, rocks have a certain consciousness, and cause and effect is actually random bumps but the physicist
ultimately checks the artists forays into uncomfortable (at least for a materialist) territory.
Ah, for the open-endedness of Einstein's Dreams...
June 29, 2023
Pretty disappointing. Maybe someone with less background in the area would have found it more interesting. The writing was standard modern nonfiction, summarizing study after study and not bothering to synthesize them and carry the reader along. The author only discussed his main point in one of the chapters (4), and the rest felt like filler. I think that one chapter plus parts of the introduction and conclusion could have been edited down to a compelling long essay.
May 28, 2025
Iironically, for a book about reaching for transcendence and spirituality, this book couldn't be more cold and calculated in its commitments and approach.
But that comes with the territory of trying to argue for a "material spirituality." Because you know, materialism sold properly doesn't have a shelf appeal. Here's a summary- transcendence doesn't actually exist in a materialist worldview, but allowing ourselves to believe it does can allow us to be happy in a materialist worldview. That's the height of this supposed intellectual foray into a tension the author constructs while simultaneously rejecting.
At best the book argues that, in a materialist worldview, humans are hardwired to need to believe in illusions. The author wants to see this as compatible with beliefs that see this world through a reductionist POV. All we need to do is ignore the fact that materialism overrides the illusion whenever we want to be happy, and then act like the transcendent doesn't actually exist when we want to appear rational. Done and done.
What's troublesome is that there is a whole segment of the population that actually has come to believe this is logically coherent. Who's entire enterprise is ridiculing those whom believe the transcendent is actually true because, you know, it seems to be a universal part of the human experience of this world, so crazy to think this could actually indicate experience of something external to our brains. But then see emotional pleading and sentimentality like this to be intellectually credible.
I mean, sure, it's true. No human that I've ever met actually lives as though the world and our lives can be reduced to its material properties. What makes books like this frustrating is that it wants to pretend as though living otherwise isn't contradictory to a materialist worldview. Even as it repeatedly gets cold feet by reminding us of what is actually true every time it starts to get close to the transcendent truths it wants to argue for. Can't let us turn out like those religious crazies, right?
But that comes with the territory of trying to argue for a "material spirituality." Because you know, materialism sold properly doesn't have a shelf appeal. Here's a summary- transcendence doesn't actually exist in a materialist worldview, but allowing ourselves to believe it does can allow us to be happy in a materialist worldview. That's the height of this supposed intellectual foray into a tension the author constructs while simultaneously rejecting.
At best the book argues that, in a materialist worldview, humans are hardwired to need to believe in illusions. The author wants to see this as compatible with beliefs that see this world through a reductionist POV. All we need to do is ignore the fact that materialism overrides the illusion whenever we want to be happy, and then act like the transcendent doesn't actually exist when we want to appear rational. Done and done.
What's troublesome is that there is a whole segment of the population that actually has come to believe this is logically coherent. Who's entire enterprise is ridiculing those whom believe the transcendent is actually true because, you know, it seems to be a universal part of the human experience of this world, so crazy to think this could actually indicate experience of something external to our brains. But then see emotional pleading and sentimentality like this to be intellectually credible.
I mean, sure, it's true. No human that I've ever met actually lives as though the world and our lives can be reduced to its material properties. What makes books like this frustrating is that it wants to pretend as though living otherwise isn't contradictory to a materialist worldview. Even as it repeatedly gets cold feet by reminding us of what is actually true every time it starts to get close to the transcendent truths it wants to argue for. Can't let us turn out like those religious crazies, right?
May 2, 2023
Powerful Reflection on the Creative Transcendent.
When I was a Senior in College I wrote a Paper describing what I called the Affective Insight: the Moment we see and hear in the Works of our Greatest Artists, Writers, and Composers. They were using a part of their Consciousness that transcended the Physical and Mechanical processes of their Brain and Sensorium to meet the Reality of the World around them on a Deeper Level.
I think that Lightman is addressing that same property when he talks about Transcendence in the Material Brain that allows us to experience Spirituality. He uses the works of Mendelsohn, Lucretius, and Christof Koch to trace the Cases for Non-Material and Material Beliefs for Spirituality and the Rise of Spirituality from Human Consciousness.
The Third Chapter makes a powerful case for the existence of the Transcendent Creative instinct in the activity of Neurons and The Fourth Chapter is a beautiful reflection on our need for understanding of our Oneness with Nature and our Fellow Creatures on the Planet. These two chapters alone merit the Four Star Rating of The Transcendent Brain. ****
When I was a Senior in College I wrote a Paper describing what I called the Affective Insight: the Moment we see and hear in the Works of our Greatest Artists, Writers, and Composers. They were using a part of their Consciousness that transcended the Physical and Mechanical processes of their Brain and Sensorium to meet the Reality of the World around them on a Deeper Level.
I think that Lightman is addressing that same property when he talks about Transcendence in the Material Brain that allows us to experience Spirituality. He uses the works of Mendelsohn, Lucretius, and Christof Koch to trace the Cases for Non-Material and Material Beliefs for Spirituality and the Rise of Spirituality from Human Consciousness.
The Third Chapter makes a powerful case for the existence of the Transcendent Creative instinct in the activity of Neurons and The Fourth Chapter is a beautiful reflection on our need for understanding of our Oneness with Nature and our Fellow Creatures on the Planet. These two chapters alone merit the Four Star Rating of The Transcendent Brain. ****
January 22, 2025
as perhaps foreseen - trying to analyze the transcendent and spiritual through a materially scientific lens provides the kind of feel good thought provoker that’s a lot more feeling than actually thinking. in fact, the less you think about the structure of this piece the better it comes off.
but as far as collections of words and thoughts go, this is a good one
but as far as collections of words and thoughts go, this is a good one
April 24, 2023
In a field rife with harsh, atheistic assertions, this short book is an accessible discussion of materialism and an intriguing exploration into human consciousness. I appreciate Lightman’s gentle conclusion that we should revel in the mystery.
August 20, 2023
I liked it but was disappointed in the conclusions.
May 31, 2024
Consciousness is a really fascinating phenomenon that we are still discovering new things about all the time. This book presents a very interesting mechanist perspective of consciousness and its purpose, it also takes a whack at the same for spirituality, which is of course a big task for such a small book.
Alan Lightman is affable as always, but I can’t help but feel like there’s something a bit less profound about this book compared to some of his previous work. It’s a good book, but I wouldn’t recommend that new readers of this author start here.
Alan Lightman is affable as always, but I can’t help but feel like there’s something a bit less profound about this book compared to some of his previous work. It’s a good book, but I wouldn’t recommend that new readers of this author start here.
February 27, 2023
This book on spirituality without religion does exactly what it sets out to do. It's full of insight and beauty. At the same time, it didn't feel particularly well organized to me. There was no through-line that I could detect. As far as I could tell, it was a jumble of the author's reflections and some fairly standard philosophy. The book really has nothing to do with science.
If you're struggling to reconcile spirituality and atheism, this book is for you. If you're not, it might not hold your interest.
Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.
If you're struggling to reconcile spirituality and atheism, this book is for you. If you're not, it might not hold your interest.
Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.
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April 23, 2023I approached this one with some trepidation. Lightman's Searching For Stars On An Island In Maine was a wise and beautiful book about reconciling a scientific understanding of the universe with a sense of the spiritual. But it was also a book of essays, and as soon as one moves from that personal and questioning form to anything programmatic, the risk of grave error increases vastly. Was this going to be another Descartes or Wordsworth, and end up dragging all the impedimenta of organised religion back in through the side door? Lightman reassured me with his opening incident, a moment of connection between human and bird - but then shook me again with the first of his emblematic figures, Moses Mendelssohn, polymath and grandfather of the composer. Whose attempt at a scientific argument for the existence of the soul Lightman admits doesn't work, but still treats with more respect than it deserves given it is, not to put too fine a point on it, shit. Which is only to be expected, given it comes from a book purporting to be an update of Plato, and to the best of my recollection all of Plato's arguments for anything are shit.
And so it continues. To his credit, Lightman is not here attempting either to shore up the creeds which have caused so much destruction over recent millennia, and nor is he peddling woo. His thesis is unobjectionable and at times wonderfully put: in short, what we think of as the spiritual sense of life is a by-product of awe and a sense of beauty, things which themselves have evolutionary benefits. Explaining it this way needn't be the same as explaining it away, given it does still enrich our lives - but nor does it argue against consciousness as an emergent property of purely biological structures (indeed, at one point he quotes a colleague's suggestion that asking where consciousness resides is like asking where in a speeding car is its motion). I'm not sure I wholly agree with him on this, but it seems a better basis than most on which to proceed.
The thing is, Lightman seems like a really nice guy. Which in many ways is a good thing: when he observes that we largely lose the sense of the self in transcendent moments, he was never going to follow Peter Watts and conclude that maybe the sense of self is humanity's big problem, and while that may fall short logically, it certainly leaves me feeling less bleak. But at its worst, niceness can degrade into mushy both-sides-ism:
"Scientists could do a better job of reaching out and trying to understand the anti-science camp. And the anti-science camp could do a better job at trying to understand the methods of science and the manner in which scientists acquire knowledge."
Yeah, except only one of these camps consists of dangerous idiots and grifters who have doomed us all, so actually, fuck 'em.
Related to this is that, as is so often the way in philosophy, he seems to be too kind to his predecessors, on which I've already touched - and also, when he does criticise them, to pick bad angles of approach. Quoting Descartes' insistence that "One cannot in any way conceive of a half or a third of a soul" only reminds me quite how limited Descartes' imagination was, notwithstanding the grand thought experiment with which he is normally, undeservingly credited. Or: "But to further claim that the world is a mental fabrication - as proposed by Bishop Berkeley and other philosophers - does not seem at all tenable to me. If that view were true, then we would never be surprised by what we find in the outer world." Now, leaving aside whose mind Berkeley conceived the world to be within, surely it follows from this that either we would never be surprised by our own dreams, or that dreams also have external reality? Not that the philosophical material here is entirely a blind alley: yes, it is intriguing that Wang Chung and Lucretius speak of souls in very similar language, despite the distance between them. And there is something beautiful in the notion that mathematics can hold the same central, abstracted purity for Lightman as ideas of the good or the divine did for his predecessors. But his grasp of the material is maddeningly inconsistent, even down to silly little mistakes like John 'Stewart' Mill* (though of course I was reading a Netgalley ARC, so hopefully the final copies will fix that).
Not that all the inaccuracies were simple typos, though. Mentioning the amyloid hypothesis regarding Alzheimer's as simple fact, despite recent fraud revelations, is hardly Lightman's fault, just an unfortunate collision of publishing schedules with how science (and capitalism) work. But saying that conservation of energy is "one of the sacred cows of science" feels like entirely the wrong phrase. Elsewhere it's generalisations or simplifications which go so far as to become outright wrong, as when Lightman says "The ancient Egyptians believed that each human being was composed of three parts:" body, ba, and ka. Now, possibly at the time of the Fifth Dynasty pharaoh whose inscription is being discussed in this section that was true, because it's important to remember that what we blithely call 'ancient Egypt' encompasses a greater span than that from Julius Caesar to Greta Thunberg, and while it had much continuity, there were also changes. But certainly there were large stretches of that time where the composition was much more variegated - I generally think of it as nine parts, though I can only remember another two offhand (the name is one, and another becomes a star).
One of the more annoying recurring forms this broad brush takes is manufacturing an 'us' from which I recoil with 'Speak for yourself, mate', as in "What happens in the brain that enables us to ignore a leaking faucet but pay attention to a knock on the door?" Or "We are awed by Superman, Albert Einstein and Marie Curie, Pablo Picasso, Carl Lewis and Michael Phelps, Jane Austen, Beethoven, Abraham Lincoln, Angela Merkel, Jack Ma." Just over half of them for me, and beyond my own preferences, surely Merkel in particular is a category error? Quiet, unshowy competence feels like a weird thing to inspire awe, rather than respect, for all that it is now a vanishingly rare quality in politics. Which brings me to the most harrowing example, where Lightman talks about how a greater sense of connectedness to nature has been shown to make people happier, because it means we feel like a part of something bigger than ourselves. Which is all presented as part of a traditional sense of the cycle of the seasons and so forth, and yes, I'm sure that must have been very reassuring back before the cycle's wheels came off, but there's no acknowledgement of how the connection has a very different impact now, because feeling a part of something vast and ancient isn't so reassuring when that beautiful, complex system is dying all around you and most of your wretched species doesn't seem to give a toss.
Still, for all its blips and blitheness, it is clearly a book that means well, one which intends to get Lightman out of the niche space of literary essays and on to the non-fiction tables at the front of bookshops. And if it were to become a runaway bestseller, it could conceivably do a lot of good. I just don't think that in itself it is terribly good.
Although I am unaccountably tickled by the idea of a neuron which deals specifically with recognising pictures of Bill Clinton.
*Quoted regarding emergence, where Mill pointed out that knowing the properties of hydrogen and oxygen doesn't offer a good guide to the properties of water. Which is true, but as a fan of The Persuaders! I couldn't help longing for the Judge's far funnier if dangerously inaccurate "Mix two relatively harmless compounds like nitro and glycerine, and you've got yourself a very potent combination."
And so it continues. To his credit, Lightman is not here attempting either to shore up the creeds which have caused so much destruction over recent millennia, and nor is he peddling woo. His thesis is unobjectionable and at times wonderfully put: in short, what we think of as the spiritual sense of life is a by-product of awe and a sense of beauty, things which themselves have evolutionary benefits. Explaining it this way needn't be the same as explaining it away, given it does still enrich our lives - but nor does it argue against consciousness as an emergent property of purely biological structures (indeed, at one point he quotes a colleague's suggestion that asking where consciousness resides is like asking where in a speeding car is its motion). I'm not sure I wholly agree with him on this, but it seems a better basis than most on which to proceed.
The thing is, Lightman seems like a really nice guy. Which in many ways is a good thing: when he observes that we largely lose the sense of the self in transcendent moments, he was never going to follow Peter Watts and conclude that maybe the sense of self is humanity's big problem, and while that may fall short logically, it certainly leaves me feeling less bleak. But at its worst, niceness can degrade into mushy both-sides-ism:
"Scientists could do a better job of reaching out and trying to understand the anti-science camp. And the anti-science camp could do a better job at trying to understand the methods of science and the manner in which scientists acquire knowledge."
Yeah, except only one of these camps consists of dangerous idiots and grifters who have doomed us all, so actually, fuck 'em.
Related to this is that, as is so often the way in philosophy, he seems to be too kind to his predecessors, on which I've already touched - and also, when he does criticise them, to pick bad angles of approach. Quoting Descartes' insistence that "One cannot in any way conceive of a half or a third of a soul" only reminds me quite how limited Descartes' imagination was, notwithstanding the grand thought experiment with which he is normally, undeservingly credited. Or: "But to further claim that the world is a mental fabrication - as proposed by Bishop Berkeley and other philosophers - does not seem at all tenable to me. If that view were true, then we would never be surprised by what we find in the outer world." Now, leaving aside whose mind Berkeley conceived the world to be within, surely it follows from this that either we would never be surprised by our own dreams, or that dreams also have external reality? Not that the philosophical material here is entirely a blind alley: yes, it is intriguing that Wang Chung and Lucretius speak of souls in very similar language, despite the distance between them. And there is something beautiful in the notion that mathematics can hold the same central, abstracted purity for Lightman as ideas of the good or the divine did for his predecessors. But his grasp of the material is maddeningly inconsistent, even down to silly little mistakes like John 'Stewart' Mill* (though of course I was reading a Netgalley ARC, so hopefully the final copies will fix that).
Not that all the inaccuracies were simple typos, though. Mentioning the amyloid hypothesis regarding Alzheimer's as simple fact, despite recent fraud revelations, is hardly Lightman's fault, just an unfortunate collision of publishing schedules with how science (and capitalism) work. But saying that conservation of energy is "one of the sacred cows of science" feels like entirely the wrong phrase. Elsewhere it's generalisations or simplifications which go so far as to become outright wrong, as when Lightman says "The ancient Egyptians believed that each human being was composed of three parts:" body, ba, and ka. Now, possibly at the time of the Fifth Dynasty pharaoh whose inscription is being discussed in this section that was true, because it's important to remember that what we blithely call 'ancient Egypt' encompasses a greater span than that from Julius Caesar to Greta Thunberg, and while it had much continuity, there were also changes. But certainly there were large stretches of that time where the composition was much more variegated - I generally think of it as nine parts, though I can only remember another two offhand (the name is one, and another becomes a star).
One of the more annoying recurring forms this broad brush takes is manufacturing an 'us' from which I recoil with 'Speak for yourself, mate', as in "What happens in the brain that enables us to ignore a leaking faucet but pay attention to a knock on the door?" Or "We are awed by Superman, Albert Einstein and Marie Curie, Pablo Picasso, Carl Lewis and Michael Phelps, Jane Austen, Beethoven, Abraham Lincoln, Angela Merkel, Jack Ma." Just over half of them for me, and beyond my own preferences, surely Merkel in particular is a category error? Quiet, unshowy competence feels like a weird thing to inspire awe, rather than respect, for all that it is now a vanishingly rare quality in politics. Which brings me to the most harrowing example, where Lightman talks about how a greater sense of connectedness to nature has been shown to make people happier, because it means we feel like a part of something bigger than ourselves. Which is all presented as part of a traditional sense of the cycle of the seasons and so forth, and yes, I'm sure that must have been very reassuring back before the cycle's wheels came off, but there's no acknowledgement of how the connection has a very different impact now, because feeling a part of something vast and ancient isn't so reassuring when that beautiful, complex system is dying all around you and most of your wretched species doesn't seem to give a toss.
Still, for all its blips and blitheness, it is clearly a book that means well, one which intends to get Lightman out of the niche space of literary essays and on to the non-fiction tables at the front of bookshops. And if it were to become a runaway bestseller, it could conceivably do a lot of good. I just don't think that in itself it is terribly good.
Although I am unaccountably tickled by the idea of a neuron which deals specifically with recognising pictures of Bill Clinton.
*Quoted regarding emergence, where Mill pointed out that knowing the properties of hydrogen and oxygen doesn't offer a good guide to the properties of water. Which is true, but as a fan of The Persuaders! I couldn't help longing for the Judge's far funnier if dangerously inaccurate "Mix two relatively harmless compounds like nitro and glycerine, and you've got yourself a very potent combination."
June 18, 2023
Ah, the mountain was in labor... and brought forth a mouse.
The author could have written a simple blog post of less than a 1000 words titled Spirituality as a Spandrel. Concise and with a nice little alliteration. In it he will briefly tell us that everything can be reduced to brain functions, and that spiritual and transcendental experiences confer no evolutionary advantages, but are merely spandrels (per Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin).
Instead, what the reader gets is a bloviated, meandering book.
The author could have written a simple blog post of less than a 1000 words titled Spirituality as a Spandrel. Concise and with a nice little alliteration. In it he will briefly tell us that everything can be reduced to brain functions, and that spiritual and transcendental experiences confer no evolutionary advantages, but are merely spandrels (per Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin).
Instead, what the reader gets is a bloviated, meandering book.
December 12, 2023
A materialist scientist creates space and credibility for spirituality and the eternal soul. I personally recall many wonderful conversations with my dad on this topic, and would love to be logically or scientifically convinced that I'm connected to everything and partly eternals, and even to see a hint of this in the physical sciences such as neurobiology.
The one element I appreciated in this book was the introduction to Franz' Connectedness to Nature scale, on pages 130-38, and how this is correlated with happiness and social connectedness. The surrounding cultural ethnography and anthropology felt shallow and bookish to me, and I didn't need it connected to any natural evolutionary pathway.
The history of spiritualism in chapter 1 (and materialism in ch 2) was neither novel, suscinct nor rigorous.. I can see why less educated, more own-experience based humans would have falled for the comforting falacy of happiness after death, and he doesn't mention the recurring utility of this belief for social control. So it is irrelevant to me whether 72% of contemporary Americans believe in Heaven or nearly half believe in ghosts (p25), since "appealing to popularity" is a catalogued logical fallacy. Then he overuses this single 72% statistic several times. I’m especially flummoxed why he devotes 30 pages to this history, only to basically conclude with a concise rebuttal and polite, comprehensive dismissal. His inclusion of Chinese and Arab scholarship is modern and laudable.
I believe figures should be labeled, but recognized that this is extra formatting work, depending on the software used for composition. Even some specific survey results lack explicity citations. The complete lack of labels (p193) fits with the sparse endnotes and the loose converstational style; this is a collection of informal essays rather than true scholarship, which reduces it's lasting value.
Lightman mentions a beautiful feeling of connectedness with all of humanity (p74) when contemplating that his physical atoms came from and will reappear in countless forms of life, since atoms are never created nor destroyed, just recombined. He loves this idea so much it becomes his thesis summary on p171. I find no comfort in my physical material being recycled, yet also through buddhism i realize that I need no such comfort, for suffering ends with the end of consciousness, which can be imagined and practiced in the only-now-is-real present moment, and Lightman somehow seems to have missed this entire area of philosophy (despite a briefest mention on p158).
“we are a long, long way from being able to simulate a brain on a computer.” (p97) for a 2023 boom, this sentiment did not age well. Published open LLMs already have nearly 100b parameters.
The three level consciousness presented on page 111 seem to be Lightman’s innovation, and they seem arbitrary to me. Humans have more cognitive functionality, but why would that be related to some higher level (better, maybe more valuable?) consciousness? Even if somehow true, there could be no proof.
"My thesis is that sprirituality is a spandrel" (p125). Finally, the thesis, which epitomizes my dissatisfaction.. not only did I need to look up the definition, but even doing so didn't leave me with clarity. The world was popular in the 1900-1930, reinforcing that 80% of this book being in the pre-modern period is excessive. His thesis to me is that both god and spirituality can be explained (as natural human developments) within evolution, science and materialism. I didn't need convincing, and continue to think so, but I doubt any other reader's opinion was moved.
"belief in a non-material, ethereal world is deeply appealing and resonates with many of our psychological needs and desires" (p80) and he then praises the objectivity of science in lifting him to materialism. Okaaay.. but the book is halfway done, and we haven't touched modern science yet. The back cover bio pic must be over 20 years old, as sadly, my only significant takeaway so far is that a brilliant MIT and Harward scientific literati is only capable of ... this... at 75yo, perhaps too much by himself (p173) with only a tiny paragraph of acknowledgements.
The one element I appreciated in this book was the introduction to Franz' Connectedness to Nature scale, on pages 130-38, and how this is correlated with happiness and social connectedness. The surrounding cultural ethnography and anthropology felt shallow and bookish to me, and I didn't need it connected to any natural evolutionary pathway.
The history of spiritualism in chapter 1 (and materialism in ch 2) was neither novel, suscinct nor rigorous.. I can see why less educated, more own-experience based humans would have falled for the comforting falacy of happiness after death, and he doesn't mention the recurring utility of this belief for social control. So it is irrelevant to me whether 72% of contemporary Americans believe in Heaven or nearly half believe in ghosts (p25), since "appealing to popularity" is a catalogued logical fallacy. Then he overuses this single 72% statistic several times. I’m especially flummoxed why he devotes 30 pages to this history, only to basically conclude with a concise rebuttal and polite, comprehensive dismissal. His inclusion of Chinese and Arab scholarship is modern and laudable.
I believe figures should be labeled, but recognized that this is extra formatting work, depending on the software used for composition. Even some specific survey results lack explicity citations. The complete lack of labels (p193) fits with the sparse endnotes and the loose converstational style; this is a collection of informal essays rather than true scholarship, which reduces it's lasting value.
Lightman mentions a beautiful feeling of connectedness with all of humanity (p74) when contemplating that his physical atoms came from and will reappear in countless forms of life, since atoms are never created nor destroyed, just recombined. He loves this idea so much it becomes his thesis summary on p171. I find no comfort in my physical material being recycled, yet also through buddhism i realize that I need no such comfort, for suffering ends with the end of consciousness, which can be imagined and practiced in the only-now-is-real present moment, and Lightman somehow seems to have missed this entire area of philosophy (despite a briefest mention on p158).
“we are a long, long way from being able to simulate a brain on a computer.” (p97) for a 2023 boom, this sentiment did not age well. Published open LLMs already have nearly 100b parameters.
The three level consciousness presented on page 111 seem to be Lightman’s innovation, and they seem arbitrary to me. Humans have more cognitive functionality, but why would that be related to some higher level (better, maybe more valuable?) consciousness? Even if somehow true, there could be no proof.
"My thesis is that sprirituality is a spandrel" (p125). Finally, the thesis, which epitomizes my dissatisfaction.. not only did I need to look up the definition, but even doing so didn't leave me with clarity. The world was popular in the 1900-1930, reinforcing that 80% of this book being in the pre-modern period is excessive. His thesis to me is that both god and spirituality can be explained (as natural human developments) within evolution, science and materialism. I didn't need convincing, and continue to think so, but I doubt any other reader's opinion was moved.
"belief in a non-material, ethereal world is deeply appealing and resonates with many of our psychological needs and desires" (p80) and he then praises the objectivity of science in lifting him to materialism. Okaaay.. but the book is halfway done, and we haven't touched modern science yet. The back cover bio pic must be over 20 years old, as sadly, my only significant takeaway so far is that a brilliant MIT and Harward scientific literati is only capable of ... this... at 75yo, perhaps too much by himself (p173) with only a tiny paragraph of acknowledgements.
October 10, 2024
In his book, The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science, Alan Lightman attempts to explore the physical basis of spiritual and transcendent experiences that we all humans experience from time to time. He calls himself a “spiritual materialist,” a description I can very well relate to. The basic claim is that for the spiritual and transcendent experiences, we do not need an external agent such as a soul, or an ethereal non-material, nor do we need to assume that consciousness (which is a subset of spirituality) is “out there, pervading the universe,” but instead they all are emergent phenomenon arising in out material body due to Darwinian selection. In short, he disagrees with Descartes’ mind-body duality.
What is spirituality? Spirituality includes (1) the desire for connection and belonging, to nature and to other people; (2) the feeling of being part of something larger than us, loss of sense of the self; (3) the appreciation of beauty; (4) the experience of awe; and (5) the creative transcendent experience which includes consciousness (insight, intuition, ingenuity, awareness, and understanding). All of these, he claims, are by-products of other traits that had evolutionary benefits.
Alan Lightman’s theses is that humans have existed in natural surroundings for over two million years, biologically adapting to nature as part of nature, thereby explaining the urge to connect to nature. For thousands of years, we have been social animals, living in groups, and benefiting from being near other members of our group for protection from predators, for physical contact, love, etc., which provides a psychological advantage, which in turn explains the connection to people and wanting to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Nature, with which our ancestors interacted closely with, is “naturally beautiful” (in quotes because it is subjective to us humans’ interpretation of beautiful, yet objective enough because we are part of nature, and all our ancestors experienced the same “beauty”) and we have come to accept it and blended into ourselves, for example, the colors of the rainbow, constellations in the night sky, etc. The formation of natural objects such as seashells, spiral aloe, pinecones, Fibonacci sequence, etc. have incorporated the golden ratio, and therefore we humans tend to make our paintings, buildings, art, etc. in golden ratios! We are awed by the darshan—the transcendent experience of something beyond the normal—of majestic gargantuan size of huge mountains, nature, oceans, etc. and of the miniscule, such as animal/plant cells, molecules, atoms, and beyond. The vastness of the infinite and the mystical inexpressibility of the feeling it generates are part of nature we constantly behold, but not pay attention to, in modern civilized living. When we become one with nature (which was the default feeling of humans until selfishness and the sense of individuality overtook us, probably with the advent of farming about 12000 years ago), naturally (pun intended) the ego dissolves and we lose the I-ness.
The fifth item of creative transcendence, he says, may not have the same evolutionary roots as the other four, but it could be a by-product of the urge for exploration and discovery—finding new hunting grounds, new sources of water, new sources of food, and so. When a successful understanding or breakthrough happens, we are hit by a sudden euphoria of happiness and transcendence!
In short, the spirituality and transcendence are emergent phenomenon that has arisen in humans due to evolutionary reasons, in the material body, without the need for an external soul, or God, or any panpsychist’s illusion of a consciousness that pervades the universe, or a mystic’s miracles. The deep sensitivity to nature’s sounds, sights, and smell, formed hundreds of thousands of years in our past, must still be in our DNA today. It seems that the affinity to nature, to people, to being awed at new discoveries, is buried in our psyche. As the environment and our social structures changed, we adapted to the newness, resulting in the DNA being “cooked and recooked” over the history of life on earth. The book is well written but does not go very deep into details. Nice read!
What is spirituality? Spirituality includes (1) the desire for connection and belonging, to nature and to other people; (2) the feeling of being part of something larger than us, loss of sense of the self; (3) the appreciation of beauty; (4) the experience of awe; and (5) the creative transcendent experience which includes consciousness (insight, intuition, ingenuity, awareness, and understanding). All of these, he claims, are by-products of other traits that had evolutionary benefits.
Alan Lightman’s theses is that humans have existed in natural surroundings for over two million years, biologically adapting to nature as part of nature, thereby explaining the urge to connect to nature. For thousands of years, we have been social animals, living in groups, and benefiting from being near other members of our group for protection from predators, for physical contact, love, etc., which provides a psychological advantage, which in turn explains the connection to people and wanting to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Nature, with which our ancestors interacted closely with, is “naturally beautiful” (in quotes because it is subjective to us humans’ interpretation of beautiful, yet objective enough because we are part of nature, and all our ancestors experienced the same “beauty”) and we have come to accept it and blended into ourselves, for example, the colors of the rainbow, constellations in the night sky, etc. The formation of natural objects such as seashells, spiral aloe, pinecones, Fibonacci sequence, etc. have incorporated the golden ratio, and therefore we humans tend to make our paintings, buildings, art, etc. in golden ratios! We are awed by the darshan—the transcendent experience of something beyond the normal—of majestic gargantuan size of huge mountains, nature, oceans, etc. and of the miniscule, such as animal/plant cells, molecules, atoms, and beyond. The vastness of the infinite and the mystical inexpressibility of the feeling it generates are part of nature we constantly behold, but not pay attention to, in modern civilized living. When we become one with nature (which was the default feeling of humans until selfishness and the sense of individuality overtook us, probably with the advent of farming about 12000 years ago), naturally (pun intended) the ego dissolves and we lose the I-ness.
The fifth item of creative transcendence, he says, may not have the same evolutionary roots as the other four, but it could be a by-product of the urge for exploration and discovery—finding new hunting grounds, new sources of water, new sources of food, and so. When a successful understanding or breakthrough happens, we are hit by a sudden euphoria of happiness and transcendence!
In short, the spirituality and transcendence are emergent phenomenon that has arisen in humans due to evolutionary reasons, in the material body, without the need for an external soul, or God, or any panpsychist’s illusion of a consciousness that pervades the universe, or a mystic’s miracles. The deep sensitivity to nature’s sounds, sights, and smell, formed hundreds of thousands of years in our past, must still be in our DNA today. It seems that the affinity to nature, to people, to being awed at new discoveries, is buried in our psyche. As the environment and our social structures changed, we adapted to the newness, resulting in the DNA being “cooked and recooked” over the history of life on earth. The book is well written but does not go very deep into details. Nice read!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 29, 2023
"Taking a chance, I turned off the engine. It got even quieter. Then I lay down in the boat and looked up. After a few minutes, my world dissolved into the star-littered sky. The boat disappeared. My body disappeared. Awareness of my self and my ego disappeared. And I found myself falling into infinity. I felt an overwhelming connection to the stars, as if I were part of them. And the vast expanse of time—extending from the far distant past long before I was born and then into the far distant future long after I would die—seemed compressed to a dot. I felt connected not only to the stars but to all of nature, and to the entire cosmos. I felt part of something much larger than myself. After a time, I sat up and started the engine again. I had no idea how long I’d been lying there looking up. I asked Professor Koch whether he thought such an experience could arise from mere atoms and molecules. “First, it is a true experience,” he said. “I call those mystical experiences. You can get them in near death experiences, you can get them with a drug called 5-MeO-DMT, you can get them when you meditate. We know that our brain can produce love and hate. This is another feeling that the brain can have. And experience shows that our brain can produce all these feelings of love and hate, of ecstasy, of feeling connected.”
Interesting overview of how we as humans have perceived the soul and how science has looked into it. I didn't find it as inspiring as I thought I would, but appreciate how this is in refutation of the scientists like Richard Dawkins who denigrate those who believe in religions, the whole god delusion thing. I sometimes agree with Dawkins that it is a delusion, but I understand the why and the human desire for something that helps us understand the mysteries of why and how we are present today and aware of it, and I appreciate Lightman's take on this whole thing, being able to have transcendent experiences that are possible because we are human with thoughts and integration of our experience and emotions.
The last aspect of my notion of spirituality, which I have called the creative transcendent, may not have the same evolutionary roots as the others, but it could well be a by-product of the urge for exploration and discovery—finding new hunting grounds, new sources of water, new sources of food. A painting, a musical composition, a poem, a novel idea, a sudden insight about how to decorate a room—aren’t they all explorations of a kind? And what exactly are we exploring? I suggest that in the creative transcendent experience, we are exploring both the outer world beyond ourselves and the inner world of our minds. We are exploring our hidden capacities. When we create, we discover new things about ourselves. We find secret doors. And, perhaps most importantly, we uncover new connections between ourselves and the rest of the cosmos.
I think of the natural world as a community to which I belong. When I think of my life, I imagine myself to be part of a larger cyclical process of living. I feel as though I belong to the Earth as equally as it belongs to me. I feel that all inhabitants of Earth, human, and nonhuman, share a common “life force.”
Psychologists have found a significant correlation between nature connectedness and life satisfaction and happiness. Associations were the strongest between happiness and the inclusion of nature in the understanding of oneself. The psychologists write that “individuals higher in nature connectedness tend to be more conscientious, extraverted, agreeable, and open…Nature connectedness has also been correlated with emotional and psychological well-being.” Such conclusions remind us that urges, instincts, desires, and affinities formed in our development a million years in the past are still present in our psyches today.
Interesting overview of how we as humans have perceived the soul and how science has looked into it. I didn't find it as inspiring as I thought I would, but appreciate how this is in refutation of the scientists like Richard Dawkins who denigrate those who believe in religions, the whole god delusion thing. I sometimes agree with Dawkins that it is a delusion, but I understand the why and the human desire for something that helps us understand the mysteries of why and how we are present today and aware of it, and I appreciate Lightman's take on this whole thing, being able to have transcendent experiences that are possible because we are human with thoughts and integration of our experience and emotions.
The last aspect of my notion of spirituality, which I have called the creative transcendent, may not have the same evolutionary roots as the others, but it could well be a by-product of the urge for exploration and discovery—finding new hunting grounds, new sources of water, new sources of food. A painting, a musical composition, a poem, a novel idea, a sudden insight about how to decorate a room—aren’t they all explorations of a kind? And what exactly are we exploring? I suggest that in the creative transcendent experience, we are exploring both the outer world beyond ourselves and the inner world of our minds. We are exploring our hidden capacities. When we create, we discover new things about ourselves. We find secret doors. And, perhaps most importantly, we uncover new connections between ourselves and the rest of the cosmos.
I think of the natural world as a community to which I belong. When I think of my life, I imagine myself to be part of a larger cyclical process of living. I feel as though I belong to the Earth as equally as it belongs to me. I feel that all inhabitants of Earth, human, and nonhuman, share a common “life force.”
Psychologists have found a significant correlation between nature connectedness and life satisfaction and happiness. Associations were the strongest between happiness and the inclusion of nature in the understanding of oneself. The psychologists write that “individuals higher in nature connectedness tend to be more conscientious, extraverted, agreeable, and open…Nature connectedness has also been correlated with emotional and psychological well-being.” Such conclusions remind us that urges, instincts, desires, and affinities formed in our development a million years in the past are still present in our psyches today.
April 26, 2023
The Transcendent Brain: Spirituality in the Age of Science, by Alan Lightman, addresses that area where, to put it in the terms of many public debates, religion meets science. That is a bit of a simplification, both of the arguments and of what Lightman does here, but for many readers that is how they are coming to this topic. Lightman will have plenty of readers who disagree with some or even most of his viewpoints, but he presents his research and ideas in ways that won't offend readers even if they disagree. In other words, he respects where others are coming from and genuinely tries to understand.
In coming to the topic, he looks primarily at those areas where humans have, through our time here, attributed events and feelings we couldn't explain to some higher power, all the way down to how we can understand what has commonly been called a soul. We are treated to a wonderful historical survey of thoughts on the matter as well as where Lightman stands on them. In presenting perspectives other than his own, he chooses examples that are well-formed and considered and not those that simply come down to "have faith." So he doesn't take the easy, and less interesting, way out, he engages with the ideas.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes to think about how these transcendent moments and these "universal" concepts (soul, for example, by various names) fit into how one views the world and life. I would recommend, no matter how you feel about the topic, that you bracket your ideas and let Lightman present his argument, consider it carefully before bringing your preexisting ideas back into discourse with them. Otherwise, you may as well only read books you know you already agree with.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
In coming to the topic, he looks primarily at those areas where humans have, through our time here, attributed events and feelings we couldn't explain to some higher power, all the way down to how we can understand what has commonly been called a soul. We are treated to a wonderful historical survey of thoughts on the matter as well as where Lightman stands on them. In presenting perspectives other than his own, he chooses examples that are well-formed and considered and not those that simply come down to "have faith." So he doesn't take the easy, and less interesting, way out, he engages with the ideas.
I would recommend this to anyone who likes to think about how these transcendent moments and these "universal" concepts (soul, for example, by various names) fit into how one views the world and life. I would recommend, no matter how you feel about the topic, that you bracket your ideas and let Lightman present his argument, consider it carefully before bringing your preexisting ideas back into discourse with them. Otherwise, you may as well only read books you know you already agree with.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.
January 1, 2025
Declaring himself a “spiritual materialist,” Alan Lightman seeks to describe and accept experiences he calls “transcendent,” while insisting that they arise entirely from material processes. As a physicist, he embraces a worldview that requires him to deny the existence of any reality which cannot be weighed, measured, or otherwise studied by the methods of science—no God, no soul, no dimension of being other than matter. Neuroscience will soon demonstrate, he argues, that what we call mind is a side effect of electrical and chemical activity in the brain. Consciousness is simply one of the body's tools to help it navigate the world and survive long enough to pass on its genes. Experiences such as love, wonder, and joy may feel good, but they point to no reality beyond the cluster of neurons in our skulls. If every human decision and action arises from wholly material causes, free will is an illusion, and therefore nothing we do can be judged as good or bad, right or wrong. The liar must lie, the thief must steal, the murderer must kill. The physicist who undergoes puzzling experiences must write a book. As in other of Lightman's books I’ve read, the prose here is lucid and accessible; the narrator is an appealing companion. But I come away wondering why he clings so doggedly to materialist determinism, given his interest in transcendent, aesthetic, and ego-less experiences, which cannot be accounted for in that worldview. He seems to be asserting his membership in the scientific community, lest he be taken for an artist or, worse yet, a mystic.
April 28, 2023
I love reading books by physicists that attempt to find the meeting place between quantum physics, science, philosophy, and spirituality. I recently read a book that had a quote from an Ancient Greek play that went
“So Zeus, it seems, has no existence, and it is the Whirlwind that reigns in his stead!” That Whirlwind is Nature, and that is how I see things. When I studied the anthropology of religion I came to realize that if God truly exists, then nothing could possibly exist outside of God, and that brought me to the realization that I was really talking about Nature itself, not some supernatural overlord. For spiritual awareness the requirements are, awe, beauty, sublime order, and/or that experience of stepping outside oneself and becoming for a moment part and parcel of the great whole. Science can do that probably better than any religion. In this book a concept came forth that added to my awareness. The concept of emergent phenomena. A complex system can be greater that the sum of its parts. The behavior of that complex system is not apparent and often not predictable by understanding the individual parts. Thus is the world, and much we wonder at in it. Water, life, the universe itself.
“So Zeus, it seems, has no existence, and it is the Whirlwind that reigns in his stead!” That Whirlwind is Nature, and that is how I see things. When I studied the anthropology of religion I came to realize that if God truly exists, then nothing could possibly exist outside of God, and that brought me to the realization that I was really talking about Nature itself, not some supernatural overlord. For spiritual awareness the requirements are, awe, beauty, sublime order, and/or that experience of stepping outside oneself and becoming for a moment part and parcel of the great whole. Science can do that probably better than any religion. In this book a concept came forth that added to my awareness. The concept of emergent phenomena. A complex system can be greater that the sum of its parts. The behavior of that complex system is not apparent and often not predictable by understanding the individual parts. Thus is the world, and much we wonder at in it. Water, life, the universe itself.
August 16, 2023
Reading a book by Lightman often feels to me like I am having a conversation with an older, smarter, more sophisticated version of myself. Although I didn't get much out of this book (I'm unclear who the target audience is actually), I agree with just about everything in it. It just doesn't happen to be too revelatory for those of us who are scientific materialists and yet also enjoy a (non-religious) spiritual dimension to our lives.
The tl;dr of the book is that we can both be materialists (as in non-religious) and accept that not everything can be explained. The spiritual element of our lives is probably a naturally emergent property of our consciousness which is probably a naturally emergent property of brains which is probably a naturally emergent property of evolution.
To me the entire book was an elaboration of old Einstein dorm-room poster quote:
“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense. It would be a description without meaning—as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”
— Albert Einstein
Quoted in Max Born, Physik im Wandel meiner Zeit, (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1966)
The tl;dr of the book is that we can both be materialists (as in non-religious) and accept that not everything can be explained. The spiritual element of our lives is probably a naturally emergent property of our consciousness which is probably a naturally emergent property of brains which is probably a naturally emergent property of evolution.
To me the entire book was an elaboration of old Einstein dorm-room poster quote:
“It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense. It would be a description without meaning—as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.”
— Albert Einstein
Quoted in Max Born, Physik im Wandel meiner Zeit, (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1966)
June 4, 2025
This book took me so long to work through, mostly because I found the first three chapters very dull. Admittedly, I dont think I was as interested in the science of spirituality as I thought I was, and the first half of this book was incredibly tedious and full of references and research that I simply found boring. Everything worth reading in this book takes place in chapters 4 and 5, where Lightman's actual thesis seems to unfold. I breezed through these two chapters in an afternoon, after picking up and putting down the book for over a month, unable to parse through it. What The Transcendent Brain lacks in the beginning it makes up for by the end, when Lightman's argument/beliefs/thoughts, rather than mere research, take place. The book is well-written, and chapter 5 is quite moving. Over all? I still do not really care about what science has to say about spirituality. I think much of this book, to a spiritual person, goes without being said. To a more science-minded individual, however, I think a lot could be gleaned, since Lightman is speaking their language. In the end, this book showed me that the two fields are not so at odds as I believed they were. 2.5 stars.
April 2, 2023
One of my favorite authors discusses the materialist view that facts and consciousness are based on the physical and how it can cohabit with the spiritual materialist . Lightman covers debate from Mendelssohn arguing rationally for the soul's existence to Lucretious, to one of the first materialists in the Asian world, Wang Ch'ung. You will be researching these names if you do not remember your philosophy course or in my case too young to appreciate it at 19 years of age.
That is the joy of reading Lightman.. he ends his short book describing how at his death the atoms in his body will remainin the universe but start their journey scattering in the wind, the marshes, and become part of others. Some will hold the memory of his mother dancing the Bosa Nova, some will have once been part of his hand.
In thousands of years that follow his death they will mix with soil, become parts of trees and thus we stay connected in a literal sense to future generations... or as I view it to those good people we loved and are no longer with us. They are everywhere and are everyone.
That is the joy of reading Lightman.. he ends his short book describing how at his death the atoms in his body will remainin the universe but start their journey scattering in the wind, the marshes, and become part of others. Some will hold the memory of his mother dancing the Bosa Nova, some will have once been part of his hand.
In thousands of years that follow his death they will mix with soil, become parts of trees and thus we stay connected in a literal sense to future generations... or as I view it to those good people we loved and are no longer with us. They are everywhere and are everyone.
June 26, 2023
Because our advanced material brains allow us to become aware of our own mortality, we, as a species, spend a ridiculous amount of time and energy trying to avoid the inevitable -- death. As long as the neurons are firing, we are alive, but once they stop, our imaginary souls die with us. So while we may be smarter than ants (but not dolphins), ants have more of a daily purpose than we do. Because ants actually do something productive, while we busy ourselves with our sad little egos. I think this book turned itself around towards the end but the first few chapters were like the Nihilist's Handbook and the little optimism I was holding onto in life was lost and never returned.
I wish dolphins had hands so they could manipulate the world around them and be as neurotic and anxious as we are. Instead they use their advanced brains to engage in play -- which is what I will now use my brain for if I ever get my ounce of optimism back from this dreadful (but interesting) book.
I wish dolphins had hands so they could manipulate the world around them and be as neurotic and anxious as we are. Instead they use their advanced brains to engage in play -- which is what I will now use my brain for if I ever get my ounce of optimism back from this dreadful (but interesting) book.
October 15, 2023
"Science can never disprove the existence of God, since God might exist outside the physical universe. Nor can religion prove the existence of God, since any phenomenon or experience attributed to God might, in principle, find explanation in some nontheist cause. What I suggest here is that we can accept a scientific view of the world while at the same time embracing certain experiences that cannot fully be captured or understood by the material underpinnings of the world. This perspective may not be the preferred path for all of us. But it offers many of us a way of being in the world that affirms both science and spirituality. What we need is a balance between wanting to know how the world works-the driving force of science-and the willingness to surrender ourselves to some things that we may not fully know."-Alan Lightman, The Transcendent Brain
The above statement is a good starting point to think about as you tackle Professor Lightman's book.
The above statement is a good starting point to think about as you tackle Professor Lightman's book.
January 3, 2025
Lightman does an excellent job at boiling down all of the philosophical and spiritual questions we all ask but can’t answer into one primary thought. Is there another level of consciousness and is it separate from the “material” brain?
He draws from many different perspectives including new theories in the field of neuroscience and also takes from a variety of renowned thinkers of Ancient Greece all the way to the 21st century. My only issue is I was mistaken into thinking the book was going to be more of a guide into navigating the our world of overstimulation and constant bombardment of digital devices. I believed this book was going to guide the reader into exploring consciousness and spirituality in contemporary society. Was I surprised? Yes, but I wasn’t disappointed. The book just simply took me into a different journey of enlightenment. I am looking forward to exploring more of Lightman’s work.
He draws from many different perspectives including new theories in the field of neuroscience and also takes from a variety of renowned thinkers of Ancient Greece all the way to the 21st century. My only issue is I was mistaken into thinking the book was going to be more of a guide into navigating the our world of overstimulation and constant bombardment of digital devices. I believed this book was going to guide the reader into exploring consciousness and spirituality in contemporary society. Was I surprised? Yes, but I wasn’t disappointed. The book just simply took me into a different journey of enlightenment. I am looking forward to exploring more of Lightman’s work.
May 20, 2023
Spirituality, spirituality, wherefore art thou? Lightman explores the possibility of a spirituality of awe, one not rooted in the belief in the divine, but rather in our wonder at how the universe is. Lightman is not dogmatic. He's not one to argue his experience over your beliefs. But I didn't find the book very compelling, or insightful, or whatever. I was hoping for more, for something deeper. I have not found it in what we normally describe as "religious" faith. I didn't find it here, either. He speaks, often, of the horizontal web of relationship that exists between all things, and he feels deeply that he is a part of it, and that this gives him meaning. I don't doubt that the web is there, and it impresses me. But the awe I feel for it isn't spiritual. Perhaps I am simply religiously (spiritually) unmusical.
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