ipl-logo

Alan Lightman's Essay 'Our Place In The Universe'

360 Words2 Pages
Alan Lightman, a physicist, social entrepreneur, and creative writer of various works, including Our Place in the Universe: “Face to Face with the Infinite,” is written for the general public. This essay, takes the reader through humanity’s scientific discovery. For example, in his introduction, Lightman catches the reader’s attention by telling his own story so the readers can relate to it. Throughout the essay, the concept of size is predominant. Lightman conveys our place in the universe through the representation of a scale to let readers understand the universe. In this scale, Lightman starts small with the progress of human civilization and our measure of maps. This scale slowly becomes larger going from maps to valleys to cities to
Show More
Related
1351 Words | 6 Pages

Salem Alsari Mat 301 Dec,2017 Mathematics Through The Eyes of Faith The main aim of James Bradley and Russell Howell’s book is basically to address the unfamiliar relationship between mathematics as a major in the field of science and Christian/religious beliefs. Mathematics Through The Eyes of Faith consists of eleven chapters with each one representing an important common subject of the connection between math and faith. For example: infinity, dimensionality, chance. Moreover, each chapter ends with a list of substitute exercises for the student. Some of them are good old fashioned, logical mathematical exercises that would interest even the most advanced students of mathematics.

Read More
264 Words | 2 Pages

Contrasting the light, Muir offers bleak descriptions of the cheerless sicknesses to which nature has succumbed. Muir describes a scene as “a beautiful countenance destroyed by some dreadful disease” (“Reservations” par. 3). Though the isocolon of beautiful and countenance, he creates flowing tone; however, it stops from the harsh consonance of “dreadful disease,” bringing attention to this change. Muir contrasts the dystopic nature-free land in saying “[humans] may disappear without any burning or extraordinary commotion whatever” (“Universe” par. 7). By claiming a lack of dystopia, he appeals to his audience’s ethos; he creates a inner conflict about, as the title of the piece suggests, “Man’s Place in the Universe.”

Read More
694 Words | 3 Pages

Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams is the third book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series. Against a civilization that wishes for the total destruction of all other life, the main character, Arthur Dent, and his friends must save the Universe from Krikkit and its deadly wish. A group of robots that escaped from the Slo-Time seal on Krikkit attempt to hunt down all the pieces of the gate. Consequently, Arthur and his friends are rushing to stop them. Traveling from the Lord’s Cricket grounds on Earth to an airborne party lasting multiple generations, Arthur and his friends venture off to prevent these robots from gaining all the pieces of the gate.

Read More
2247 Words | 9 Pages

With furhter ado, may I present my first topic at hand, the infinite

Read More
154 Words | 1 Pages

In David Christian’s World History in Context” he talks about several forms of spatial and temporal scales. First Christian discusses the Ptolemaic system a spatial scale from medieval Europe. They believed that “ the earth was at the center of a series of transparent spheres” ( pg. 2 ). The people of medieval Europe also believed each sphere has its own solar system with stars, planets, and sun, and they all orbit around Earth. It wasn’t until Copernicus in the sixteenth century that the idea of the earth revolving around the sun was considered and it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that people started to think that the universe was “infinite in time and space.”

Read More
836 Words | 4 Pages

It is after two paragraphs exploring notions of man’s cosmic connection that Sagan asserts his first claim in the essay, “plainly there is no way back… we are stuck with science” (1). The compassionate tone persists even in assertions, as seen through the use of first person. More compassionate is the gentle acknowledgement of the pseudoscience appeal. “Yes, the world would be a more interesting place if there were UFOs lurking in the deep waters off Bermuda… or if our dreams could, more often than can be explained by chance and our knowledge of the world, accurately foretell the future” (1). This series of sentences ends the introduction.

Read More
1445 Words | 6 Pages

To belong to something is to share a sense of connection with a person, place or object. Many aspects of an individual’s life spans from the different relationships and experiences that they encounter, enriching their sense of belonging. The relationships between the main protagonists in Khaled Hosseini’s ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’ and Michael Kieran’s experiences presented in the ‘Your Story’ podcasts have a clear representation of how an individual’s sense of belonging can strengthen with relations and experience. Even if people’s experiences and relationships seem similar to another, they are all different because the different perspectives they gain from it develops an individual’s character.

Read More
744 Words | 3 Pages

I have never been in a class that teaches material like what we have discussed. We have talked about many things like the creation of our universe, the afterlife, dinosaurs, and more. During Professor Leach’s lecture on the creation of our “universe,” many points explained were mind-blowing. From many experiments and research made by scientist throughout many decades, Professor Leach agreed that our whole universe started from a “big bang” from a very tiny atom. My brain was all over the place after taking in all the information because everything added up perfectly.

Read More
593 Words | 3 Pages

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was originally a BBC radio broadcast1. It combines comedy and science fiction. It is the first novel in a series of five books and was published in 1979. The name of the novel refers to the electronic travel guide mentioned in the novel. Douglas Adams was the creator of the series which sold millions of books and let to numerous adaptions in TV and on stage.

Read More
1167 Words | 5 Pages

The big planet resembles both the earth and the outer space. The book is significant for this study as it stresses on the relevance of civilization. The weakness is that it depends more on fiction and it is somehow difficult to either believe or even understand some of the facts in the book. George, B. (2011). Civilized life in the universe: Scientists on intelligent extraterrestrials.

Read More
349 Words | 2 Pages

The term “Big History” created and spearheaded by historian David Christian, which refers to an academic discipline that has been established that evaluates history from the Big Bang to the Modern world that we live in. The analysis entails looking at the universe from significantly long time frames through the use of diverse multidisciplinary approach. The multidisciplinary approaches are based on numerous concepts derived from science and humanities that make it possible to analyze the existence of human beings from a wider perspective. The Big History integrates diverse studies such as the Earth, Cosmos, Humanity and life from an empirical evidence perspective aimed at exploring cause and effect relation to establish the origin of the universe.

Read More
1589 Words | 7 Pages

Sir Arthur C. Clarke is known as one of the most influential science fiction writers. With his imagination and writing ability, his books were loved by many and still are to this day. Clarke brought his experiences into his life and used his writing to express himself in a unique way. By looking at Childhood’s End, one can see that Arthur C. Clarke included the themes of technology and space exploration because of his curiosity of the unknown.

Read More
740 Words | 3 Pages

RESEARCH STATEMENT The enigmatic sky which once used to sing silent lullabies at night, one day tempted my developing consciousness to explore the perplex puzzles hidden there. For days, I kept on thinking about the vast mysterious kingdom up in the sky- millions of light years away from us. Consequently, it expanded my curiosity in such a level that I could not stop myself from peeping into it deeply in order to have some hope to apprehend the factual scenario. It was a stupendous experience to cognise the field, ’Physics’, not only dealing with the nature, but also explaining the relationship between the forces existing.

Read More
885 Words | 4 Pages

Brian Greene ties in complex ideas, of both his own and famous scientists in a way that is ultimately easy to understand.

Read More
782 Words | 4 Pages

The film Einstein and Eddington unfolds the story of how Arthur Eddington contributed to Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Einstein was the one who first introduced the concept of relativity, but Eddington was the one who finished the theory by proving Einstein’s claim. It all started when Eddington found out an anomaly with the behavior of Mercury; that Mercury’s behavior is against Newton’s theory. Eddington used Mercury as a counter example to disprove Newton’s theory. He consulted Einstein about this because Einstein’s theory seems to justify Mercury’s behavior and not the theory of Newton.

Read More

More about Alan Lightman's Essay 'Our Place In The Universe'

Related Topics

Open Document