{"id":17359,"date":"2024-11-27T09:02:07","date_gmt":"2024-11-27T10:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=17359"},"modified":"2024-11-27T11:07:51","modified_gmt":"2024-11-27T11:07:51","slug":"book-review-the-miraculous-from-the-material-by-alan-lightman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=17359","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: \u2018The Miraculous From the Material,\u2019 by Alan Lightman"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In \u201cThe Miraculous From the Material,\u201d the best-selling author Alan Lightman examines the science behind the wonder.<\/p>\n

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THE MIRACULOUS FROM THE MATERIAL: Understanding the Wonders of Nature<\/strong>, by Alan Lightman<\/p>\n

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You are on a run early one winter morning and come to a favorite meadow where a layer of mist lies across the grass like a sheet of tissue over a box of new clothes. But why is it there? What is<\/em> the mist? Why has the cold night summoned it? Why does it keep within such defined boundaries? And why does it melt away as the sun rises?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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That experience inspired \u201cThe Miraculous From the Material,\u201d the new book by the prizewinning scientist, novelist and broadcaster Alan Lightman. His aim is to ask and answer questions about natural phenomena we might otherwise observe only with a sense of wonder.<\/p>\n

In a tombola of 36 bite-size essaylets, each accompanied by a photo, he looks at fireflies and flowers, hummingbirds and lightning, snowflakes and shooting stars. In some, the focus is wider \u2014 Saturn, DNA, atoms, people \u2014 but the method is the same: Find something beautiful and in a conversational, avuncular way explain its mathematics, physics and chemistry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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On the question of that morning mist: In the air immediately above the night-chilled ground, water vapor is condensed into visible miniature droplets. The heat of the rising sun returns them to invisible gas, or mist \u2014 damp, ground-cooled air.<\/p>\n

But as that nugget suggests, his title is upside down. He quotes Emerson\u2019s observation that nature \u201calways wears the colors of the spirit,\u201d but this is not an Emersonian exercise in finding the necessity of beauty \u201cunder which the universe lies.\u201d Rather, the author\u2019s overriding belief is in explicability \u2014 what he calls \u201cthe step-by-step progress of science to fathom the world.\u201d Lightman\u2019s reality is in the material fact; the rest of it is only what we happen to think or imagine. His book is dedicated not to the miraculous from the material but to the material from the miraculous.<\/p>\n

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In \u201cThe Miraculous From the Material,\u201d the best-selling author Alan Lightman examines the science behind the wonder.THE MIRACULOUS FROM THE MATERIAL: Understanding the Wonders of Nature, by Alan LightmanYou are on a run early one winter morning and come to a favorite meadow where a layer of mist lies across the grass like a sheet of tissue over a box of new clothes. But why is it there? What is the mist? Why has the cold night summoned it? Why does it keep within such defined boundaries? And why does it melt away as the sun rises?That experience inspired \u201cThe Miraculous From the Material,\u201d the new book by the prizewinning scientist, novelist and broadcaster Alan Lightman. His aim is to ask and answer questions about natural phenomena we might otherwise observe only with a sense of wonder.In a tombola of 36 bite-size essaylets, each accompanied by a photo, he looks at fireflies and flowers, hummingbirds and lightning, snowflakes and shooting stars. In some, the focus is wider \u2014 Saturn, DNA, atoms, people \u2014 but the method is the same: Find something beautiful and in a conversational, avuncular way explain its mathematics, physics and chemistry.On the question of that morning mist: In the air immediately above the night-chilled ground, water vapor is condensed into visible miniature droplets. The heat of the rising sun returns them to invisible gas, or mist \u2014 damp, ground-cooled air.But as that nugget suggests, his title is upside down. He quotes Emerson\u2019s observation that nature \u201calways wears the colors of the spirit,\u201d but this is not an Emersonian exercise in finding the necessity of beauty \u201cunder which the universe lies.\u201d Rather, the author\u2019s overriding belief is in explicability \u2014 what he calls \u201cthe step-by-step progress of science to fathom the world.\u201d Lightman\u2019s reality is in the material fact; the rest of it is only what we happen to think or imagine. His book is dedicated not to the miraculous from the material but to the material from the miraculous.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17361,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17359"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17362,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17359\/revisions\/17362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}