46 pages • 1 hour read
Alan LightmanEinstein's Dreams
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1992A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Search for God, the Theory of Everything
In the first Interlude, Besso asks why Einstein is so fixated on time. Einstein replies that he’s studying time in order “to get close to The Old One” (39), meaning God. However, Einstein doesn’t mean God in the Western, monotheistic sense. Rather, he’s referring to cosmic religion. In 1922, while speaking to a student named Esther Salaman, Einstein said: ”I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details” (Lincoln, Don. “Einstein’s Quest to ‘Know God’s Thoughts’ Could Take Millennia.” LiveScience, 4 Jun. 2019.). This is more commonly referred to as the search for the Theory of Everything (TOE), which to Einstein was God. It was the vast intelligence and creativity required to create the system of rules and beauty that Einstein observed with ”rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection” (Mallove, Eugene. “Einstein’s Intoxication With the God of the Cosmos.” The Washington Post, 22 Dec. 1985). Einstein’s theory of special relativity began to link natural laws together, an important building block in striving for a theory to explain all of life and the cosmos. He saw this achievement as merely one step in his ultimate goal of understanding the God of the cosmos, the God that was divine order.
The 28 April 1905 dream stands out as the most aligned with Einstein’s personal beliefs. In this world, time is an absolute: “For surely nothing could be created perfect without a Creator. Nothing could be universal and not be divine. All absolutes are part of the one absolute” (25). In this, Einstein’s perception of time as an absolute, and thus part of a larger One Absolute, explains why he struggled so mightily in his quest to understand this one aspect of the cosmic order. To understand time would be one step closer to understanding the Theory of Everything, or the One Absolute, the Old One, and cosmic religion.
Nevertheless, several dreams suggest that time is something that shouldn’t or can’t be known. Attempts to quantify “that which should not be measured” (118) results in pain and loss. In dreamworlds where characters try to control time (for example, in the world where birds are time and people try to catch them to freeze time), the result is unfulfilling at best and destructive at worst. In the dreamworld where people build their lives at great heights, their bones weaken and they die prematurely. Contorting, controlling, and trapping time all result in grief. Through these dreams, the novel’s imagined Einstein may have been wondering about his own arrogance in believing that he could understand time and thus God. He’s fearful of the repercussions, and these fears, these doubts, seep into his dreams.
Although the novel concludes with an Epilogue in which Einstein’s typist arrives and his theory will be submitted for publication, the novel thematically suggests that although Einstein brings humanity closer to understanding time, its true nature is possibly unknowable. Because people are biased by this world, where time functions under the laws of physics to which people are beholden, they’re incapable of fully grasping time objectivity. The human element in the time conundrum is the unpredictable aspect that makes time impossible to explain. In several of the dreamworlds, the only people who understand time are lonely, murdered, mentally unstable, or outcast.
Humanity as an Absolute
Each dreamworld is unique, creative, and well-imagined. Each world offers another way to look at time. The only thing that differs in each dream is the concept or perception of time. The only constant in all the dreams is humanity. Although the many characters who appear in the dreamworlds aren’t named and are often described only vaguely, they symbolize humanity’s potential response to tweaks in the laws governing time. Readers’ humanity is the thread that ties the dreams together. The imagined Einstein spends several torturous months dreaming about worlds in which time functions differently, mining his dreams for clues as to the true nature of time. These often result in sad, painful, grief-filled dreams, which convey sadness. In the context of the dreamworlds, this deep sense of humanity lies with Einstein. In the context of the novel, the humanity lies with readers.
In the world where time is sticky, “each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone” (48). Neither Einstein nor readers can imagine such a lonely existence. The dreams end abruptly after moments of deep sorrow and empathy, suggesting that Einstein awoke. The sudden cessation offers readers relief but suggests that the dreamer abandoned the imagined world. Einstein was unwilling to pursue an understanding of time that didn’t relate to his understanding of humanity, just as readers don’t wish to linger in a world of pain.
In these imagined worlds, the human form is unaltered, and the human soul is altered very little. In fact, much of the novel concerns just how human the humans are in these alternate time-impacted worlds. Men are ambitious and lustful, women are desiring and caring, children have abandon and innocence, and the elderly look on in jealousy. In nearly every world, humans are presented as a complex web, interconnected and reliant on one another for happiness. Every world is defined through the lens of how average citizens in Berne might be impacted by alterations to the cosmic order that result from slight tweaks in the rules governing time. With a small change here or there, the cosmic order is disrupted, and a lover cries, a mother weeps, or a son howls. Their pain is raw and relatable. As a result, the dreams explore humanity’s reaction to time as much as how time interacts with the other absolutes in the natural order.
Discovery at the Intersection of Art and Science
The novel’s exploration of the intersection of art and science reflects author Alan Lightman’s background as both a physicist and a novelist (and as a professor who has taught in both the sciences and humanities). Lightman even cofounded an interdisciplinary program at MIT for writing about the sciences, another testament to his straddling of human understanding across traditionally separated fields. His work deals with the mechanical and the body, the mind and the soul, the head and the heart.
Conceptually, the novel exemplifies what is achievable through blending art and science. The dreamworlds are textured, sensory-saturated experiences, which require critical thought to understand the structural and mechanical aspects that separate one dreamworld from the others. Thus, the text forces readers into a balancing act, given that no world is comprehensible without understanding both the artistic and the mechanical.
Similarly, Einstein famously spoke of how his imagination powered his mind. In using both the dreamworld and the real world, the logical mind and the creative mind, the head and the heart, Einstein suggested that the truth lies in a place accessible only when both opposing forces come together in unity. Art needs science to reach an understanding of time, and vice versa. Tellingly, in the novel, the imagined Einstein doesn’t search the library, the physics lab, or the consortium for inspiration on how he might better understand time. Instead, he looks inward, to his dreams. If Einstein is part of the Theory of Everything, then the answers lie within him. By mining his dreams for inspiration and knowledge, Einstein does the impossible: He shatters the human understanding of time and makes it possible to dream of one day understanding the cosmic order.
