Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science

“The Stars & The Osprey” begins with Alan Lightman's late-night experience alone on the ocean when he felt connected to the stars and ends with a memorable eye-to-eye encounter with a wild creature. Alan attempts to reconcile these transcendent experiences with the material world of atoms and molecules. Can science explain such experiences in terms of the brain? Are humans nothing but matter?

“The Big & The Small” dramatizes the fact that humans are almost exactly the same distance—in terms of powers of ten—between an atom and a star. But where do we fit in the moral universe? Alan Lightman speaks with an advanced android and then a rabbi, a bio-ethicist, and the Dalai Lama about whether such a being could achieve consciousness and whether we could unplug her without asking permission.

“Homo Techno” features stories—including that of a paralyzed former gang member who received brain implants allowing him to move a robotic arm by pure thought—that prompt Lightman to think about how advances in science and technology are causing us to evolve into a new species, Homo Techno, part human and part machine. What essential qualities will we want to preserve? Curiosity? Anger? Love?