Customer Reviews

Einstein's Dreams

5 star:		(171)
4 star:		(48)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams is essentially a book on physics that is explained through literary technique: the novel. Each chapter is a new date in time that explains vast possibilities of what time is and could be. Time is past, present and future. What if people lived only in the past and never had to deal with the future or those who lived in the future and never had to worry about the past? Or those who just lived in the present and never heard of a past or future? Lightman explores what each one means on an individual basis and how it could affect humanity if only one existed and not the others. The reader will discover the awe of what Einstein knew when he himself came to these revelations -- perhaps a little less grand in scale. Past, present and future are all interconnected; they can't be mitigated in terms of 'more important' vs. 'less important.' That simply does not exist in Einstein's Dreams, literally. The author looks at each individual case in every chapter and shows the beauty of living a life only in the past or present or future. But he also shows the unpleasantness of it. Thus, he makes the reader appreciate the actuality of physics and how it functions in everyday life. The scenes of where all this theory manifests itself is a little European village near the Alps, the River Aare and the Marktgasse (street) nearby where Einstein has his office. The European and descriptive flavor that is added to the simple and uncluttered language makes the story more quaint, insular and easy to grasp. At the close, the book becomes a wonderful, soaring learning and reading experience.

I've read through about a dozen reviews so far and I'm rather surprised that no one seems to have gone beyond the obvious discussion of this book. We all see that these are interesting vignettes about how time might behave in different realities. But beyond that, these are vignettes about how we live. Take, for example, the vignette about the world where you can gain time by moving faster and faster. Because time is money, businesses fly about the town on wheels, powered by huge engines. Inside the office building, desks zip around each floor. The faster the workers move, the greater their productivity. There is one problem though, that of perception of the velocity of others. And sometimes a worker will become so upset by his perception that others are moving faster than he is, he will stop moving at all. He will retire to his home, pull down the shades and live within his family. Live a simple, content life without all the rushing about. This is a pretty clear metaphor for the increasing speed at which we live, and those who reject the need to live in that manner.

Some vignettes are simple to interpret -- the world where time moves more and more slowly until, as you get to the center of the town, it almost stops. People go there to preserve a childhood, a love, their lives. A kiss can be nearly infinite. Children grow more slowly than redwoods, and never lose their innocence. Some are more difficult. But each one carries some deeper meaning about human life, and how we choose to live it. And the narrative of Einstein as a patent clerk echoes those ideas, as you watch the choices he's made.

This book isn't simply about bringing together science and literature, it's about science and philosophy, science and human nature. It's about how each of us lives so differently, we might all be living in a different temporal reality. Quite simply, it's a wonderful book, that will make you think, and stay with you for a long time. Highly recommended.

I purchased and read this book after listening to NPR's Book of the Month Club in March 1998. I was driving from LA to San Diego and as soon as the radio show ended I pulled off the highway and went to 4 book stores before I found a copy. This book has impacted my life and reinforced the way I view the daily happenings around me. Lightman has constructed a wonderful book of fiction that reads like prose. Each chapter is truly a wonderful approximation of what Einstein's dreams clould have been as he toiled through his theories of time and space. It is important to note that I do not belive that Lightman wanted this book to read like a story. The beginning middle and end of a standard novel has no place in the concept of time as Einstein would have theorized. I also feel that Einstein's dreams (as told by Lightman) enable the non-scientific person come that much closer to understanding Einstein's theories. It also enables the reader to look at their individual enviornments with a more open understanding of their physical AND meta-physical worlds in which they live. I believe that the complexity of Einstein's theories is represented in the narrative prose in every chapter. I have purchased 17 copies of this book and no one who received it from me has been disappointed. (I still have more to buy) Open your eyes and your mind; everything doesn't have to appear as it seems!

Alan Lightman's _Einstein's Dreams_ is so well written that one wonders about where his interest in physics stops and literature begins. These short "dreams" beautifully illustrate various perspectives of time in a way that is easy to digest and provocative. For example, in one of his dreams about a world in which determinism is true, Lightman describes it like so:

"In a world of fixed future, life is an infinite corridor of rooms, one room lit at each moment, the next room dark but prepared. We walk from room to room, look into the room that is lit, the present moment, then walk on. We do not know the rooms ahead, but we know we cannot change them. We are spectators of our lives" (161).

Now, of course, determinism is not a particularly hard concept to communicate. But Lightman manages to convey the depressing claustrophobia that arises from a deep knowledge of this fact. He explores what it would be like to live in a world with a determined future and to actually be fully aware of our position. And this is only one of the dreams he has in this short novel. Lightman's book clocks in at 179 pages, but the reading is fast and light, quite like a collection of poetry. You can easily read this "novel" in one sitting. While this book does address some philosophical issues, there is nothing inside this novel that you can't handle. In fact, calling it a "physics" novel is quite misleading. It is a book of poetry for those who want to be transported from our experience of time into realms you've never even dreamed of before.

This book deserves many more than five stars for its potential to make you a better thinker!!

One of the most creative people I know (holder of dozens of patents that have created two new industries) first told me about this book. He said that Einstein's Dreams was better for stimulating new ideas than any other book he had ever read. Naturally, I added the book to my list . . . but didn't get around to it right away. That was a mistake! I found Einstein's Dreams better for stimulating creativity than all other creativity books I have read combined. I wish I had read Einstein's Dreams when it first came out.

Einstein, of course, was famous for this "thought experiments" in which he would imagine what would happen if he were placed in different circumstances. For example, what if he were riding on a photon of light? What would happen if he shined a flashlight ahead of him? How would someone riding on a parallel photon of light perceive his flashlight if he flashed it toward the other person?

The result of most of these thought experiments was to understand the nature of time, and to create his famous special and general theories of relativity. (If you want to know more about this subject, be sure to check out Professor Stephen Hawking's latest, The Universe in a Nutshell.)

Alan Lightman has created a novel built around 30 "dreams" (or scenarios) that make differing assumptions about time, and describe how the lives of ordinary people living in Switzerland in 1905 would be changed. In the process, you will probably have several epiphanies. For example, so much of the way we run our lives depends on the fact that time runs forward in what normally seems like a linear, predictable way . . . but without giving us certainty about what happens next in our lives. If time operated in a fractured way, for example, we would find little incentive to try to create connections to others and to create something better for the future.

The other epiphany you will probably have is that you can take everything that you believe to be well understood, and think about that factor as being dozens of different things using these dreams as templates. For example, you can apply the ideas in this book to an academic discipline like linguistics, art history, behavioral psychology, or anything else. In the process of thinking through these "factual" areas in terms of assuming that reality is different, you will immediately see "reality" more clearly and objectively than ever before.

Finally, you will realize that the greatest limitation we have in creating new learning is our lack of imagination. Fill in the empty spaces in our minds with new questions, new possibilities, and new problems, and vast new insights immediately emerge without using computers, mathematics, or any sort of technology. All you have to do is dream . . . or day dream, if you prefer.

My suggestion for you is that you plan to read this book several times. After the first time, when you have the idea of the book's approach well in hand, take something that you have absolute certainty about and apply the dreams here to your area of certainty. On the next reading, do the same thing with yet another subject. After you have done this a few times, come back and reread the book considering your first topic.

Another possibility is to take the 30 dreams and expand on what the author has written about the implications for time. A number of these are on the sketchy side, and you can make them more vivid and valuable to you if you flesh the dreams out.

I also suggest reading this book someplace where it is quiet, and you will not be disturbed. You will also probably find it helpful to ponder a little with each dream before moving onto the next one.

Imagine a scientist and a writer contemplating the range and meaning of life experience and collaborating on how best to depict them on the printed page. Now imagine the scientist and the writer bundled into one person and you have Alan Lightman, professor of physics and writing at MIT.

This is a book of deceptive brevity and focus. It is not a novel. Instead, it is a collection of short essays lucidly joined togheter by the common thread of supposing that time could exist in forms apart from the linear that we take to be true. It brilliantly seizes upon the familiar and revered Albert Einstein (who hypothesized that time slows as one approaches the speed of light) during his patent office days. Einstein features in these essays only tangentially; rather, it is his well-known idea about the progress of time that provides the reader with a logical foundation and a springboard for ruminations (dreams) about other courses time might take. Time might be circular, endlessly repeating, it might run backward, it might go so slowly as to be almost frozen, it might last a day, or it might last forever. The possibilities are explored in thirty separate ways, and Lightman the scientist is imaginative and exciting indeed.

This is all very interesting, but the crux of the essays, it seems to me, is how the movement of time would affect people living in these different scenarios. Thinking about how these things might happen, the book opens a window into the human heart. Here Lightman the writer displays insight, conveyed with delicacy and fragility. The tender longings of the parent, for example, are, with a few deft strokes of the pen, drawn in aching wishes that their babies, toddlers, and children could stay - O so much longer - the little ones they are. Lightman has an unusual gift for conveying meaning, not only with his sentences, but also with sentence fragments. Ordinarly this would exasperate me, but in this book, the technique added to its soaring beauty.

Einstein's Dreams is so short that you can whiz through it, but I think that, in so doing, you would shortchange not only the depth this book has to offer, but also your own reading pleasure. If it is read slowly, so as to soak in its messages and the wonder of its language, you will come away with much joy and much to think about.

Just what is Time? What is reality? Through the dreams of Lightman's recreation of Einstein, we are shown scores of philosophical possibilities, that are not quite reality, but not quite fantasy either.

Every chapter portrays a new world, a new reality, a new definition of time and space as dreamed up by the young pattent clerk on the verge of the major discovery of the Theory of Relativity. Each journey into Einstein's imagination show the reader just how similar these fantasies can be to what we perceive as reality.

It is impossible to read this book without imagining yourself as a character in each of these different realities, feeling as they feel, thinking as they think. Einstein's Dreams is a very quick read, but it leaves a lasting impression in your very soul. It goes to prove that big things still come in small packages.

Einstein's Dreams was a required reading book for my high-school physics class. Since reading this insightful book, I have recommended it to almost everyone I know. Alan Lightman has done an amazing job of questioning and challenging the average mind on complex ideas and theories of physics. Lightman uses Einstein's Dreams to show mystical and impractical ideas of time and space. This witty novel takes place in Berne, Switzerland in 1905. Einstein's journal is a phantasmagoria of dreams that take place from April 14 to June 28. Among twenty-some short and unrelated stories or theories of time, there are a few scattered interludes about Einstein and Besso (his close friend). These short stories explain the idea of parallel universes and the theory of relativity, which Einstein dreams about so vividly. He says, "I want to understand time because I want to get close to The Old One."

On the night of May 14th in Einstein's dreams time has an origin. This center point on Earth is where time is dispersed, it sprawls out and speeds up from here. At the center time stands still, people remain doing what they are doing forever, their simple motions may take decades or centuries in this slowly moving place of time. "...one sees parents clutching their children, in a frozen embrace that will never let go." Out of this center of time, things move at a much quicker pace. On the night of June 17th, Einstein dreams of a world in which time is not continuous. Much like a scratched CD skips, time would cut in and out leaving its victims paralyzed for the time being. "Nerve action flows through one segment of time, abruptly stops, pauses, leaps through a vacuum, and resumes in the neighboring segment." If one were to analyze time here, they would find that it is only paused for an instant, everything still appears and looks the same. But every so often a confusion or vagueness can fall over someone when this pause of skip in time occurs, it can be catastrophic.

In this small book there is no real plot, it is more of a collection of creative vignettes. The five carefully arranged interludes tell the sad and lonely story of Albert Einstein. All the interludes separate themselves by about eight chapters. The first chapter is titled Prologue; it introduces Einstein and his growing interest in time. "For the past several months, since the middle of April, he has dreamed many dreams about time. His dreams have taken hold of his research. His dreams have worn him out, exhausted him so he sometimes cannot tell whether he is awake or asleep." Einstein's small interest has begun to transform into an obsession. In the next Interlude Lightman introduces Einstein's friend Besso. Besso's character is concerned for Einstein's well-being. Einstein continues to ramble about his interest in time. Einstein seems to distance himself from his wife, Mileva. Besso is confused on why they were ever married, and Einstein is unsure himself.

The third interlude is uncomforting. Einstein has begun to look ill and sickly. Besso asked if he was ok; Einstein replied with he was making process. Einstein tells Besso that he feels very close to the truth. The fourth interlude tells of Einstein's inner struggles and how he wishes he could share them with Besso. Besso ensures Einstein that he believes in him. In the fifth, and last chapter of the novel titled Epilogue; Einstein realizes that his life is incomplete and lonely. "He feels empty. He has no interest in reviewing patents or talking to Besso or thinking of physics. He feels empty, and he stares without interest at the tiny black speck and the Alps."

The first and last chapters represent a parallel in this novel, both speak about the clock tower. The time tower represents the idea that time is universal and continuous. The Prologue starts with the idea of time and how it keeps the world we live in together. Einstein introduces many bizarre concepts of how time could be distorted in parallel universe. In the Epilogue Lightman displays, that Einstein is still held captive by time. Lightman has used this powerful yet petite novel to show how the everyday realities of our lives could be drastically different.

Make no mistake - this is not a thriller! Instead, it is a well-written, almost poetic series of meditations on a theme of "What if...?" How often, as children, did we ask ourselves questions, such as, "What if I walked upside down on the sky, and the earth was floating above me?" - usually while doing headstands! - that made no "sense", but flexed our mental muscles anyway? These are the same types of questions the author has our hero, Einstein, pondering as he moves through his days as a clerk in Vienna.

If you're looking for plot, you won't find it here. If you enjoy prose that is meditative, highly descriptive and original, this is your book. There are no great revelations; but the concepts, the alternate realities the author describes, do give you reason to ask yourself, "What if...?" Read this early in the morning, with a nice coffee and under a blanket, while the rest of the house is sleeping.

I have read this amazing book no less than 4 times. The firsttime I couldn't put it down and read right through. The second time,I read one chapter at a time (pun intended), thinking and rethinking. And each time since it just makes me smile.

Lightman's ability to create a tableau around the scene he describes is nothing less than magical. As you begin to read this thought-provoking little treasure, you quickly realize that either Lightman or Einstein is there with you, and you are not reading. You are being read to.

If you like to think about time and the world, this book will blow your mind. If you just love reading wonderful books and discovering amazing new ways to look at the world, you will hug this one to your breast and re-read it as many times as I have.

The chapter that describes time running backwards is still a favorite cocktail party conversation for me. And drives everyone I know to find this book and read every chapter.