WEBVTT 00:00:25.202 --> 00:00:26.802 Hello, everybody. 00:00:26.802 --> 00:00:29.032 Thank you for being here. 00:00:29.892 --> 00:00:33.571 In childhood, I wrote dozens of poems, 00:00:33.811 --> 00:00:36.282 and in my poetry, 00:00:36.282 --> 00:00:40.972 I tried to express my feelings about loneliness, 00:00:40.972 --> 00:00:43.406 my questions about death, 00:00:43.406 --> 00:00:46.646 my unrequited love for 14-year-old girls. 00:00:46.646 --> 00:00:47.966 (Laughter) 00:00:48.526 --> 00:00:50.723 Reading, listening, even thinking, 00:00:50.723 --> 00:00:55.680 I was mesmerized by the sounds and the movements of words. 00:00:55.680 --> 00:00:58.590 Words could be sudden, like "jolt," 00:00:58.590 --> 00:01:02.380 or words could be slow, like "meandering," 00:01:02.380 --> 00:01:05.893 words could be silvery, prickly to the touch, 00:01:06.433 --> 00:01:10.199 and by magic, words could create scenes and emotions. 00:01:11.489 --> 00:01:17.001 Between poems, I did scientific experiments, 00:01:17.001 --> 00:01:20.102 and these I conducted in a little laboratory, 00:01:20.102 --> 00:01:24.581 a homemade laboratory that I built off my second-floor bedroom, 00:01:24.581 --> 00:01:26.355 really, a large closet. 00:01:26.355 --> 00:01:31.255 And there I hoarded resistors, capacitors, 00:01:31.255 --> 00:01:33.885 wire of various lengths, 00:01:33.885 --> 00:01:38.173 test tubes, beautiful pieces of glassware. 00:01:38.173 --> 00:01:41.332 I loved my equipment; I loved to build things. 00:01:41.332 --> 00:01:42.785 By the age of 12, 00:01:42.785 --> 00:01:45.892 I had built a remote-control device 00:01:46.062 --> 00:01:50.650 that turned on the lights in any room of the house from any other room. 00:01:51.270 --> 00:01:54.682 When my scientific projects went awry, 00:01:55.562 --> 00:02:00.118 I could find certain fulfillment in mathematics. 00:02:00.668 --> 00:02:01.665 In geometry, 00:02:01.665 --> 00:02:07.744 I loved the inexorable relationships between lines and angles. 00:02:07.744 --> 00:02:10.703 And in algebra, I loved the abstraction - 00:02:10.703 --> 00:02:13.163 I loved letting X's and Y's 00:02:13.163 --> 00:02:17.107 stand for the number of nickels and pennies in a jar 00:02:17.107 --> 00:02:20.989 and then solving a connected set of equations 00:02:20.989 --> 00:02:23.619 one logical step after the other. 00:02:23.619 --> 00:02:27.588 I loved that shining purity of mathematics, 00:02:27.588 --> 00:02:29.128 that precision. 00:02:29.138 --> 00:02:32.792 I loved the certainty of mathematics. 00:02:32.792 --> 00:02:33.793 In mathematics, 00:02:33.793 --> 00:02:36.571 you were guaranteed an answer 00:02:36.831 --> 00:02:41.671 as clean and as crisp as a new 20-dollar bill, 00:02:41.671 --> 00:02:43.189 and when you found that answer, 00:02:43.189 --> 00:02:46.938 you knew that you were right, unquestionably right - 00:02:47.432 --> 00:02:51.489 the area of a circle is pi r-squared, period. 00:02:53.739 --> 00:02:56.397 Mathematics contrasted strongly 00:02:56.397 --> 00:03:00.606 with the ambiguities and the contradictions of people. 00:03:00.606 --> 00:03:03.198 The world of people confused me; 00:03:03.198 --> 00:03:06.832 the world of people had no logic or certainty: 00:03:06.832 --> 00:03:13.587 My Aunt Jean continued to drive recklessly in her little MG sports car 00:03:13.587 --> 00:03:15.263 even though everyone in the family 00:03:15.263 --> 00:03:18.636 told her that she would kill herself in that car one day. 00:03:19.146 --> 00:03:24.494 We had a wonderful woman named Blanche, who worked for our family for years. 00:03:24.904 --> 00:03:29.138 Blanche had to leave her husband after he abused her, 00:03:29.388 --> 00:03:34.117 and then, for many years later, spoke about him with affection. 00:03:34.117 --> 00:03:37.794 So how does one reconcile these different worlds, 00:03:37.794 --> 00:03:40.638 these seeming contradictions? 00:03:41.598 --> 00:03:44.857 Well, now having lived in two communities, 00:03:44.857 --> 00:03:47.961 the community of scientists and the community of artists, 00:03:47.961 --> 00:03:49.589 for many years - 00:03:49.599 --> 00:03:53.032 I've worked both as a physicist and as a novelist - 00:03:53.752 --> 00:03:57.744 I have tentative answers to some of these questions. 00:03:57.744 --> 00:04:02.836 So I wanted to tell you this morning a little bit about what I've learned 00:04:02.836 --> 00:04:07.510 about the different ways that scientists and artists approach the world - 00:04:07.510 --> 00:04:13.499 their different versions of truth and also some of the many similarities. 00:04:15.139 --> 00:04:19.191 A big distinction that I have found between physicists and novelists 00:04:19.191 --> 00:04:23.452 or, I should say, more generally, between scientists and artists 00:04:23.452 --> 00:04:27.836 is in what I will call "the naming of things." 00:04:27.836 --> 00:04:29.428 Roughly speaking, 00:04:29.708 --> 00:04:32.532 the scientist tries to name things 00:04:32.532 --> 00:04:36.432 and the artist tries to avoid naming things. 00:04:37.292 --> 00:04:38.440 To name a thing, 00:04:38.690 --> 00:04:41.050 you've gathered it, you've distilled it, 00:04:41.050 --> 00:04:42.103 you've purified it, 00:04:42.103 --> 00:04:43.780 you've put a box around the thing 00:04:43.780 --> 00:04:45.950 and said what's in the box is the thing 00:04:45.950 --> 00:04:48.956 and what's not in the box is not the thing. 00:04:49.446 --> 00:04:52.940 Consider, for example, the word "electron," 00:04:52.940 --> 00:04:56.002 which is a type of subatomic particle. 00:04:56.692 --> 00:04:58.230 As far as we know, 00:04:58.470 --> 00:05:02.069 all of the zillions of electrons in the universe are identical; 00:05:02.069 --> 00:05:04.798 there's only a single kind of electron. 00:05:05.088 --> 00:05:07.098 And to a modern physicist, 00:05:07.098 --> 00:05:11.281 the word electron means a particular equation - 00:05:11.281 --> 00:05:13.830 it's called the Dirac equation. 00:05:13.830 --> 00:05:19.114 And that equation summarizes everything that we know about electrons: 00:05:19.114 --> 00:05:24.927 the precise energy of electrons in atoms as they orbit the nucleus, 00:05:24.927 --> 00:05:28.920 the deflections of electrons in magnetic fields - 00:05:28.920 --> 00:05:32.730 all of that can be predicted to many decimal places 00:05:32.730 --> 00:05:37.021 with great accuracy by the Dirac equation. 00:05:37.421 --> 00:05:40.573 Every object in the physical universe 00:05:40.573 --> 00:05:44.782 the scientist wants to be able to name with this kind of precision. 00:05:45.592 --> 00:05:48.928 For scientists, it's a feeling of comfort, 00:05:50.178 --> 00:05:52.368 a feeling of power, 00:05:52.368 --> 00:05:54.408 and a sense of control 00:05:54.408 --> 00:05:58.356 to be able to name things in this way. 00:05:59.946 --> 00:06:06.599 The concepts that the artist deals with cannot be named. 00:06:06.599 --> 00:06:11.248 The novelist might use a word like "love" or like "fear," 00:06:11.248 --> 00:06:14.801 but those words don't really convey that much to the reader. 00:06:15.051 --> 00:06:19.188 For one thing, there are a thousand different kinds of love: 00:06:19.668 --> 00:06:21.668 there's the love that you feel for a mother 00:06:21.668 --> 00:06:24.800 who writes you every day your first summer away from home 00:06:24.800 --> 00:06:26.614 at summer camp; 00:06:26.614 --> 00:06:31.091 there is the love that you feel for a man or a woman that you've just made love to; 00:06:31.481 --> 00:06:34.505 there's the love that you feel for a friend 00:06:34.505 --> 00:06:38.461 who calls you right after you've split up from your spouse; 00:06:38.461 --> 00:06:40.835 and on and on. 00:06:41.675 --> 00:06:44.303 But it's not just the many different kinds of love 00:06:44.303 --> 00:06:48.566 that prevent the novelist from truly naming the thing, 00:06:48.566 --> 00:06:52.934 it's that the particular situation 00:06:52.934 --> 00:06:56.434 that creates the particular ache of love. 00:06:56.434 --> 00:07:00.611 That particular situation must be shown to the reader - 00:07:00.611 --> 00:07:05.431 not named but shown through the actions of characters. 00:07:05.676 --> 00:07:08.959 And if love is shown rather than named, 00:07:08.959 --> 00:07:13.640 then each reader will experience it in her own individual way, 00:07:13.640 --> 00:07:19.175 each reader will draw on her own adventures and misadventures with love. 00:07:19.495 --> 00:07:24.985 Every electron is identical, but every love is different. 00:07:25.745 --> 00:07:30.208 The novelist doesn't want to try to eliminate these differences, 00:07:30.208 --> 00:07:33.040 doesn't want to try to distill the meaning of love 00:07:33.040 --> 00:07:37.216 so that there is only a single meaning, as in the Dirac equation, 00:07:37.216 --> 00:07:41.003 because such a distillation is impossible 00:07:41.003 --> 00:07:44.517 and even an attempt at such a distillation 00:07:44.517 --> 00:07:51.316 would destroy that magical, delicate, participatory creative act 00:07:51.316 --> 00:07:55.226 that happens when a good reader reads a good book. 00:07:55.226 --> 00:08:00.756 In a sense a novel is not completed until it is read by a reader 00:08:01.206 --> 00:08:05.148 and every reader completes the novel in a different way. 00:08:06.488 --> 00:08:12.558 Well, there's another phenomena that's closely related to naming, 00:08:12.558 --> 00:08:17.908 and that is framing problems in terms of questions with answers. 00:08:18.988 --> 00:08:24.376 We scientists work by breaking the world down into smaller and smaller pieces 00:08:24.376 --> 00:08:30.409 until we have what we call well-posed problems 00:08:30.829 --> 00:08:33.886 that have clear and definite answers. 00:08:34.146 --> 00:08:38.126 It might take five years, it might take a hundred years to find the answer, 00:08:38.126 --> 00:08:40.362 but at any given moment of time, 00:08:40.362 --> 00:08:43.154 each scientist is working on something 00:08:43.154 --> 00:08:46.348 that he or she feels has a definite answer; 00:08:46.348 --> 00:08:50.399 for example, one such question might be: 00:08:50.689 --> 00:08:54.103 Where in a living organism are the instructions stored 00:08:54.103 --> 00:08:56.085 to create a new organism? 00:08:56.085 --> 00:08:58.775 This is a well-posed problem with a definite answer; 00:08:58.775 --> 00:09:02.707 it was answered in the 1800s and 1900s. 00:09:04.367 --> 00:09:08.572 But artists often don't care what the answer is 00:09:08.572 --> 00:09:14.476 because often answers - definite answers - don't exist in the arts; 00:09:15.256 --> 00:09:18.216 the arts are complicated 00:09:18.216 --> 00:09:23.627 by the intrinsic ambiguities and self-contradictions of people. 00:09:24.047 --> 00:09:25.286 This is one of the reasons 00:09:25.286 --> 00:09:30.188 why the characters in a good novel can be debated endlessly, 00:09:30.188 --> 00:09:35.922 why God held the apple in front of Eve and then forbade her to eat it. 00:09:36.592 --> 00:09:37.588 In the arts, 00:09:37.588 --> 00:09:41.969 there are many, many interesting questions that don't have answers, 00:09:41.969 --> 00:09:48.286 such as "Does God exist?" or "What is the nature of love?" 00:09:48.286 --> 00:09:51.499 or "Would we be happier if we live to be a thousand years old?" - 00:09:51.499 --> 00:09:55.030 and I'm grouping the arts and the humanities together here. 00:09:55.670 --> 00:09:58.462 These are very interesting questions; 00:09:58.462 --> 00:10:01.355 they provoke us, they stimulate our imagination, 00:10:01.355 --> 00:10:03.761 but they don't have clear and definite answers 00:10:03.761 --> 00:10:05.939 or maybe no answers at all. 00:10:06.559 --> 00:10:09.987 As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, 00:10:10.577 --> 00:10:16.456 "We should learn to love the questions themselves 00:10:16.456 --> 00:10:21.949 like locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue." 00:10:22.299 --> 00:10:28.679 And I have finally come to believe that we need both kinds of questions: 00:10:28.679 --> 00:10:33.874 we need questions with answers and we need questions without answers - 00:10:33.874 --> 00:10:37.951 that both kinds of questions are part of being human. 00:10:38.681 --> 00:10:41.205 Well, I've been speaking about some of the differences 00:10:41.205 --> 00:10:43.100 between the sciences and the arts - 00:10:43.100 --> 00:10:47.256 let me say a little bit about some of the similarities. 00:10:48.496 --> 00:10:49.499 The folklore 00:10:49.499 --> 00:10:55.132 is that artists make up everything and scientists don't make up anything. 00:10:55.732 --> 00:10:58.471 Well, both views are false. 00:10:59.051 --> 00:11:03.769 The imagination has always been important in a great scientist. 00:11:03.949 --> 00:11:08.509 And Albert Einstein had a phrase that he used - 00:11:08.509 --> 00:11:12.460 he called it "the free invention of the mind" in the sciences, 00:11:12.460 --> 00:11:15.668 and by that, the great scientist meant 00:11:15.668 --> 00:11:19.208 that we cannot discover all of the truths of nature 00:11:19.208 --> 00:11:21.845 simply by observation and experiment, 00:11:21.845 --> 00:11:25.339 that sometimes we have to start with mental constructions 00:11:25.339 --> 00:11:28.250 and then only later test those against experiment. 00:11:28.250 --> 00:11:32.398 And one of the greatest examples of Einstein's "free invention of the mind" 00:11:32.398 --> 00:11:36.348 was his work on time, called "the theory of special relativity." 00:11:36.348 --> 00:11:40.963 And in that work, Einstein begins with the stunning postulate 00:11:40.963 --> 00:11:44.348 that a light ray passes us at the same speed 00:11:44.348 --> 00:11:46.764 whether we're running towards the light ray 00:11:46.764 --> 00:11:48.066 or away from it - 00:11:48.066 --> 00:11:52.342 it makes no sense based on our day-to-day experience, 00:11:52.342 --> 00:11:54.395 it violates common sense, 00:11:54.395 --> 00:11:58.930 and yet Einstein realized that our common sense could be in error 00:11:58.930 --> 00:12:02.752 when it comes to the very high speeds of a light ray, 00:12:02.752 --> 00:12:06.234 and he made this leap of the imagination. 00:12:07.234 --> 00:12:12.370 But scientists can't make up everything even when they're developing new theories; 00:12:12.370 --> 00:12:15.552 I mean, you can't put forth a new law of gravity 00:12:15.552 --> 00:12:18.772 that says apples fall up instead of down - 00:12:19.022 --> 00:12:23.139 there's still a large body of known experimental evidence 00:12:23.139 --> 00:12:25.274 that we have to accord with. 00:12:25.274 --> 00:12:27.660 And I would argue that in the same way, 00:12:27.660 --> 00:12:33.393 there's a body of experimental evidence that the artist must accord with - 00:12:34.043 --> 00:12:40.307 it is the large catalog of known behavior in psychology of human beings 00:12:40.307 --> 00:12:41.699 called human nature, 00:12:41.699 --> 00:12:47.815 and those are the facts that the artist must accord with. 00:12:47.815 --> 00:12:51.249 And let me give you an example of what I'm talking about there. 00:12:52.119 --> 00:12:55.385 Suppose a novelist has created a character: 00:12:55.385 --> 00:12:59.884 a man about 40 years old, married with two children, 00:12:59.884 --> 00:13:02.388 who's just attended a Christmas party. 00:13:04.168 --> 00:13:09.191 Just for the sake of referring to him, let's call this fellow Gabriel. 00:13:09.691 --> 00:13:12.269 Well, we learn at the beginning of the story 00:13:12.269 --> 00:13:14.927 that Gabriel is not too sure of himself - 00:13:15.247 --> 00:13:18.404 he worried when he first got into the Christmas party, 00:13:18.404 --> 00:13:21.908 he worried that he had insulted the housekeeper's daughter, 00:13:21.908 --> 00:13:23.500 and a little bit later, 00:13:23.500 --> 00:13:27.967 he's worrying that his after-dinner speech is going to be condescending. 00:13:28.547 --> 00:13:31.125 Well, anyway, the party ends. 00:13:31.785 --> 00:13:36.754 Gabriel and his wife Greta have left their two children with a babysitter; 00:13:36.764 --> 00:13:40.038 they've decided to spend the night at a nearby hotel. 00:13:40.228 --> 00:13:43.260 Greta's been very quiet during the evening. 00:13:43.260 --> 00:13:45.106 So they walk out of the house, 00:13:45.106 --> 00:13:47.439 and they begin walking on a path 00:13:47.439 --> 00:13:49.891 towards their hotel in this little village. 00:13:50.121 --> 00:13:53.627 It's well after midnight now; it's beginning to snow. 00:13:54.467 --> 00:13:58.490 Gabriel looks over at his wife and admires her 00:13:58.490 --> 00:14:03.877 and hopes that she still feels in love with him 00:14:03.877 --> 00:14:07.712 even though she's had the drudgery of house work and children. 00:14:08.252 --> 00:14:10.068 So they reach their hotel, 00:14:10.068 --> 00:14:14.320 and they walk up this narrow curving stairway 00:14:14.320 --> 00:14:16.958 that's lit only by candlelight, 00:14:17.478 --> 00:14:19.479 and they enter their room, 00:14:20.109 --> 00:14:24.832 and by this time, Gabriel is feeling a lot of desire for his wife, Greta. 00:14:26.042 --> 00:14:29.728 And instead, she turns away from him and she begins weeping. 00:14:30.323 --> 00:14:32.643 And he asks her, "Why are you crying?" 00:14:32.913 --> 00:14:36.625 And she says that there was a sad song sung at the Christmas party 00:14:36.625 --> 00:14:38.593 that reminded her of a boy 00:14:38.593 --> 00:14:41.274 that she used to know long ago in her youth, 00:14:41.274 --> 00:14:44.042 a boy with large brown eyes. 00:14:44.712 --> 00:14:46.973 They used to go walking together. 00:14:47.503 --> 00:14:50.553 Gabriel feels a dread in his stomach, 00:14:50.553 --> 00:14:54.471 and he asks his wife, "Were you in love with this boy?" 00:14:54.771 --> 00:14:58.301 And she says, "Yes, we were great together at the time." 00:14:59.201 --> 00:15:03.936 And then Greta says, "He died at age 17." 00:15:04.876 --> 00:15:08.322 "What did he die of so young?" asks Gabriel. 00:15:09.662 --> 00:15:13.001 "I think he died for me," says Greta, 00:15:13.321 --> 00:15:17.979 and she begins sobbing all over again and throws herself to the bed. 00:15:18.889 --> 00:15:21.941 Well, this scene that I've just described, as some of you know, 00:15:21.941 --> 00:15:26.920 is the last scene of James Joyce's famous story The Dead, 00:15:26.920 --> 00:15:30.168 and the question is: How will Joyce end the scene? 00:15:30.638 --> 00:15:34.561 What will be Gabriel's reaction to his wife's confession? 00:15:34.561 --> 00:15:37.222 Suppose that he shows no reaction - 00:15:37.222 --> 00:15:41.566 would we as readers with our life experience believe that reaction? 00:15:41.926 --> 00:15:44.726 No, it would ring false. 00:15:45.256 --> 00:15:52.124 Or suppose Gabriel feels superior to this boy of the distant past, 00:15:52.124 --> 00:15:55.571 this long dead boy, and dismisses his wife's pain - 00:15:55.571 --> 00:15:57.870 would we believe that reaction? 00:15:57.870 --> 00:16:00.031 No, we wouldn't believe that either, 00:16:00.031 --> 00:16:04.877 because we know that Gabriel is too insecure a character for that. 00:16:05.477 --> 00:16:08.975 The ending that Joyce actually writes is this: 00:16:10.375 --> 00:16:15.941 Gabriel realizes that his wife has always loved this long dead boy 00:16:15.941 --> 00:16:20.042 more than she's ever loved him, her husband, 00:16:20.322 --> 00:16:23.513 and he also realizes that he's never loved any woman 00:16:23.513 --> 00:16:28.577 with the passion that she has just demonstrated for this boy. 00:16:29.557 --> 00:16:33.219 And all he can do after these realizations 00:16:33.869 --> 00:16:36.931 is sag against the windowpane, 00:16:36.931 --> 00:16:40.357 listening to the breathing of his wife as she sleeps, 00:16:40.357 --> 00:16:45.929 watching her as if he and she had never been man and wife. 00:16:46.519 --> 00:16:51.655 We believe this ending; we know that it's true even in fiction 00:16:51.655 --> 00:16:54.987 because it accords with our life experiences, 00:16:54.987 --> 00:17:01.068 with our understanding of human nature, and it causes us anguish. 00:17:02.748 --> 00:17:07.561 Both the scientist and the artist are seeking truth. 00:17:08.311 --> 00:17:09.430 In seeking truth, 00:17:09.430 --> 00:17:12.679 both the scientist and the artist must invent. 00:17:12.679 --> 00:17:15.594 Both kinds of invention are important. 00:17:15.594 --> 00:17:20.401 Both kinds of invention must be tested against experiment. 00:17:20.401 --> 00:17:25.499 The tests of the scientist's invention are more definitive; 00:17:25.499 --> 00:17:27.987 no matter how beautiful a scientific theory is, 00:17:27.987 --> 00:17:32.383 it has a terrible vulnerability - it can be proven false. 00:17:32.783 --> 00:17:39.304 A writer's characters or story cannot be proven definitively wrong, 00:17:39.634 --> 00:17:45.194 but they can ring false and thus lose their power with the reader, 00:17:45.194 --> 00:17:49.623 and in this way, the novelist is constantly testing his fiction 00:17:49.623 --> 00:17:53.744 against the accumulated life experiences of his readers. 00:17:57.784 --> 00:18:01.209 The scientists and the artists that I have known 00:18:01.209 --> 00:18:04.800 have at least one more thing in common: 00:18:05.460 --> 00:18:07.561 they do what they do because they love it 00:18:07.561 --> 00:18:11.310 and because they cannot imagine doing anything else - 00:18:11.770 --> 00:18:13.413 this is a compulsion. 00:18:13.413 --> 00:18:16.706 This compulsion is both a blessing and a burden. 00:18:16.706 --> 00:18:17.744 It's a blessing 00:18:17.744 --> 00:18:20.663 because the creative life is a beautiful life 00:18:20.663 --> 00:18:22.871 and it's not given to all of us, 00:18:23.161 --> 00:18:26.204 and it's a burden because when the call comes, 00:18:26.204 --> 00:18:30.772 it can be unrelenting and it can drown out the rest of life. 00:18:31.382 --> 00:18:33.823 This mixed blessing and burden 00:18:33.823 --> 00:18:37.840 must be the sweet hell that Walt Whitman referred to 00:18:38.130 --> 00:18:42.503 when he realized at a young age that he was destined to be a poet - 00:18:42.503 --> 00:18:46.012 "Never more shall I escape," wrote Whitman. 00:18:46.462 --> 00:18:48.981 This mixed blessing and burden 00:18:48.981 --> 00:18:53.782 must be why a visitor to the young Einstein's apartment in Bern 00:18:53.782 --> 00:18:58.983 found the physicists rocking the cradle of his son with one hand 00:18:58.983 --> 00:19:02.364 and doing mathematical calculations with the other. 00:19:02.364 --> 00:19:03.927 Thank you. 00:19:03.927 --> 00:19:05.272 (Applause)