Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists

by Alan Lightman, Roberta Brawer

Origins reveals the human being within the scientist in a study of the philosophical, personal, and social factors that enter into the scientific process. Twenty-seven active cosmologists--including Stephen Hawking, Roger Penrose, Steven Weinberg, Vera Rubin, Allan Sandage, Margaret Geller, and Alan Guth--talk candidly about their childhoods and early influences, their motivations, prejudices, and worldviews. The book's lucid introduction traces the explosion of new ideas that has recently shaken cosmological thinking. Origins explores not just the origin of the universe but also the origins of scientific thought.

Genres: Science, Physics, Nonfiction, Biography, Astronomy

576 pages, Paperback

First published September 14, 1990

About the author

Alan 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.

Reviews

[notgettingenough · Rating 5 out of 5]

Afterthought. I forgot to mention this. The book starts with Hoyle and it is soon evident why. Although the man himself is a grouch, very chip-on-shoulder about the way in which his theories are viewed; although it turns out that he writes some pretty crazy stuff towards the end of his life; although the steady state theory to which he devoted much of his life - and convinced others to as well – transpired to be wrong; despite all of this, he was the most influential man of the period. When each of the scientists in this book are asked what inspired them as school kids, which was the point at which many of them knew that their futures lay in the stars, time after time again, the answer is Hoyle, his books, his radio talks. That is, for the kids who grew up around and after WWII. It was so as much for the Americans as for the English.

I wonder how important it may be to science to have a major alternate theory knocking around. One gets the sense of its significance, not only as a punching bag, but also as the source of alternative ways to interpret data etc. The book, looking at the discipline through the eyes of the protagonists, also shows the way in which alternate theories die. The ways in which it clung on for some. And then, Sciama’s moving description of his rejection of it, in the light of new data which put the kibosh on it for good…if not for Hoyle and his closest cohorts, then for most.

Having said that, another interesting result of the book, is that having been asked, as they all were, how they would design the universe if they could, some certainly opined for the steady state idea, even though their view in practise was that it had been disproved.

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I pretty much put this in the unputdownable department. Over the last week or so, it has been everywhere with me, from breakfast to bed.

The details of what is and is not a problem in cosmology may have changed over the last 20 years since this book was published, but how people think hasn’t. This is quite a philosophical book, concerned with the way in which cosmologists think and see the – their – world. Which is not to say it lacks in science, of course. Reporting here as somebody who is a total ignoramus in any field of science, I was truly impressed with the understanding I have gained from this book.

I imagine this to be for two reasons. Firstly because the author, Alan Lightman, is a fine writer and communicator, he puts things in intelligible ways, one hopes without compromising the science. Both the glossary and the introduction – which gives a brief history of cosmology – are excellent. Secondly because of the layout. Every scientist in the book, starting with Hoyle and ending with Linde are given the same questions in the same order. It has a repetition about it which is both conducive to learning and very exciting. Honestly, I was just dying to find out what each person was going to say.

If I may mention a few things I gained in particular from it:

(1) That cosmology is a subject which is so new even now that we can safely say that probably nothing very useful is known yet. It could still be that every single thing we think about it is false. For all we know, everything that is being measured at the moment may be some tiny, tiny bit of something huge. And that will increase the chance, of course, that what we believe about cosmology now is utterly wrong.

(2) I will never generalise about scientists again. For every opinion expressed in this book, there is also an opposite: for the facts, for the interpretation, for the theory, for the observations, for the philosophy, the methodology, for politics, for belief. Everything.

(3)New heroes. James Gunn who explains how dodgy the data is, and how the reliance of the feeding frenzied theorists on it is equally suspect. Edwin Turner who discusses ‘how far one could go wrong with a few simple, pretty ideas and some data.’ He gives the example of the rings of Saturn and continues ‘Something like that makes me think there’s a reasonable chance we’re all wrong.’ Jeremiah Ostriker who thinks looking outside science altogether for the ideas to bring understanding may be right. If we did that, then ‘we may be able to address problems that we’ve just ignored. I’m continually struck in the history of science by things that are perfectly obvious, but that couldn’t be seen. You know the famous example of the Crab Nebula’. Well, I didn’t, so in case you don’t either, Europeans couldn’t see it, whilst many other cultures could. ‘My guess is that if you have an idea of fixed stars and you see something that isn’t, you just assume, ‘Well, that’s some atmospheric phenomenon.’ You ignore it….And you can’t study things because in some way you reject the reality.’ He thinks that is happening all the time and, put like that, one can only agree that it most likely is. What a frightening thought! Right now cosmology is a field dominated by very narrow cultural experience and maybe even it it were not, the things that are drummed into those in the field from the beginning, in particular the cult of the aesthetically pleasing/simple might override cultural richness of thought.

I only wish there could be a sequel, something like it that ‘did’ the last twenty years, which in the short creative life of a cosmologist is at least two generations. I feel like I’m missing the next part of the story.

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every so often, there is a revolution in our understanding of the universe. Obvious milestones are Copernicus suggesting that the Earth might go round the Sun instead of vice versa, Newton's law of gravity explaining the movements of the planets in quantitative terms, and the discovery that the cosmos is expanding and started with the Big Bang. It would be fascinating to know what contemporary scientists had in the way of immediate reactions to these earlier breakthroughs, but, if this knowledge is available at all, it doesn't seem to be collected in easily accessible form. We are currently in the middle of a new revolution, which started in 1980 when Alan Guth proposed the idea of "inflation": the universe, according to what has now become the mainstream theory, began as a vacuum fluctuation and then expanded exponentially to a macroscropic size during a tiny fraction of second. This time, however, Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer had the excellent idea of interviewing a couple of dozen of the world's leading cosmologists in 1988, when things were still fluid and undecided. Origins collects together the results of the exercise.

I am impressed at how accurately most of the interviewees are calling it, given that there was no hard evidence for inflation when the interviews were carried out. They really like the idea, but they hedge their answers with many caveats: they can see it doesn't quite work yet, and will need to be further developed. Most of them justify their preferences in terms of esthetic judgements. The idea is beautiful, and ties together several important things that previously were unconnected loose ends. In particular, it explains why there are no magnetic monopoles (this had really been bothering the theoreticians), why the universe is so homogenous, and why space is almost flat. This last point, however, brings out an interesting difference between the theoreticians and the observers; several of the observers stubbornly say that they don't yet see clear evidence for flat space, and they'll wait until they do, even if that's what inflationary theory is predicting. Though the comments from John Huchra, at the time the world's greatest expert on observing galaxies, are startlingly exact. He is already half expecting to see evidence of dark energy, ten years before it was identified, and he confidently gives an age for the universe of 13 billion years, when most of the others are leaving a large margin for possible error.

It's amazing to get a glimpse of how the pluralistic scientific society works. All these people know each other and talk frequently: their conversations are full of X said this, of course Y answered with that, Z had this clever angle that suddenly made me think about it in a new way. I have never had such a concrete feeling of watching science develop right under my eyes. And even if your interest in cosmology is minimal, the book is worth reading for the anecdotes. Roger Penrose, while still a student, gave one of his professors a paper written in his newly invented tensor notation;



the professor's look clearly indicated that he was concerned about Penrose's sanity. David Schramm never studied at all at high school, and spent all his time on the sports field (he was a state wrestling champion) or chasing girls. My favorite is Andrei Linde sitting with his phone in the bathroom talking about chaotic inflation in whispers because his family has gone to bed, and then waking up his wife with the news that he's just figured out how the universe began.

What a great book! And what a shame that someone doesn't do one of these every time a new scientific breakthrough happens!

[Alex Shrugged · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book of interviews of leading cosmologists of the 1980s. The interviews are partly history, biography, and science. The book begins with a rather stilted treatment of cosmological knowledge of the 1980s. It reads like a textbook, frankly. The rest of the book reads more easily. Much of it is interesting. I read it all.

I took off a star because some of the information is dated. Also, the author is a colleague of the interviewees. I'm not sure how objective these interviews are. Nevertheless, it was worth reading.

I doubt I will read this book again, but I might refer to it to remind myself of the background of specific people.