Physics and Beyond: Encounters and Conversations

Werner Heisenberg

“The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality. And splitting this reality into an objective and a subjective side won’t get us very far.”

Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr on science and spirituality:

Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters, 1932-1958

C. G. Jung

The invention of synchronicity – how iconic psychiatrist Carl Jung and Nobel-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli bridged mind and matter:

On Dialogue

David Bohm

The great physicist David Bohm on the paradox of communication, the crucial difference between discussion and dialogue, and what is keeping us from truly listening to one another:

Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics

Ruth Lewin Sime

“Science makes people reach selflessly for truth and objectivity; it teaches people to accept reality, with wonder and admiration, not to mention the deep joy and awe that the natural order of things brings to the true scientist.”

How pioneering physicist Lise Meitner discovered nuclear fission, was denied the Nobel Prize, but went on to pave the way for women in science nonetheless:

The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself

Sean Carroll

“The world is what exists and what happens, but we gain enormous insight by talking about it — telling its story — in different ways.”

Existential therapy from the universe – physicist Sean Carroll on how “poetic naturalism” illuminates our human search for meaning:

Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman

James Gleick

Knowledge was rarer then. A secondhand magazine was an occasion… Each book Richard possessed burned itself into his memory… Knowledge was scarce and therefore dear.

Wonderful read on the source of Richard Feynman’s genius and how the precious scarcity of knowledge imbued one of humanity’s most beloved minds with “the pleasure of finding things out":

A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design

Frank Wilczek

“You can recognize a deep truth by the feature that its opposite is also a deep truth.”

Nobel-winning physicist Frank Wilczek on complementarity as the quantum of life and why reality is woven of opposing truths:

Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Carlo Rovelli

“Ever since we discovered that Earth is round… we have understood that reality is not as it appears to us: every time we glimpse a new aspect of it, it is a deeply emotional experience.”

Wonderful read on the enchantment of Einstein’s relativity, “the most beautiful theory”:

A Glorious Accident: Understanding Our Place in the Cosmic Puzzle

Wim Kayzer

“Our universe is the most interesting of all possible universes, and our fate as human beings is to make it so.”

Freeman Dyson on our place in the cosmic puzzle – wisdom from one of the greatest scientific minds of our time:

Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe

Lisa Randall

Harvard physicist and cosmologist Lisa Randall—one of a handful of women in the entire history of science to have risen to this level of influence—tells a thrilling cosmological detective story of how the universe evolved and what made our very existence possible, linking dark matter to the extinction of the dinosaurs:

Knocking on Heaven’s Door: How Physics and Scientific Thinking Illuminate the Universe and the Modern World

Lisa Randall

“The universe is humbling. Nature hides many of its most interesting mysteries.”

Cosmologist and particle physicist Lisa Randall on the sublime and the essential differences in how art, science, and religion make sense of the universe – wonderfully mind-expanding read:

The Ending of Time: Where Philosophy and Physics Meet

David Bohm & Jiddu Krishnamurti

“One cannot accumulate love.”

Trailblazing physicist David Bohm and Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti in a mind-bending conversation about intelligence, love, and how to transcend the wall of being:

How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space

Janna Levin

“The simpler the insight, the more profound the conclusion.”

Is the universe infinite or finite? Mind-bending read from astrophysicist Janna Levin, who sets out to answer the question in letters to her mother:

Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light

Leonard Shlain

“Art and physics, like wave and particle, are an integrated duality … two different but complementary facets of a single description of the world.”

Leonard Shlain on how integrating wonder and wisdom enriches our lives:

Alice in Quantumland: An Allegory of Quantum Physics

Robert Gilmore

An imaginative allegory of quantum physics, written and illustrated (!) by a CERN physicist, doubly brilliant for flying in the face of gender stereotypes with a female protagonist who makes sense of some of the most intense science of all time.

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