Cambridge, Massachusetts -- The historian Henry Adams used the second law of thermodynamics to show how civilizations disintegrate over time. Albert Einstein, in formulating the theory of relativity, was influenced by the Scottish philosopher David Hume.
Exploring the connections between physics and the humanities is one way of making science more interesting for non-science majors, says Alan Lightman, a professor of science and writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He uses that approach in his new textbook, Great Ideas in Physics, tailored for the non-scientist. The book intersperses basic principles of physics with excerpts from the works of Adams and Hume as well as Immanuel Kant, Edgar Allan Poe, and Vladimir Nabokov.
“The humanities is the way you make the science stick,” says Mr. Lightman, whose doctoral training is in physics. “When a new subject is put on your plate and you have no way of relating to it, there’s much less chance you’ll get interested and learn it than if it comes with connections to things you already know and love.”
Mr. Lightman heads MIT’s interdisciplinary Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, which includes courses for creative writers and science writers. He has also taught physics courses at MIT, and this spring will teach an introductory astronomy class.
Most introductory physics textbooks are of hefty bulk. Great Ideas in Physics, published this year by McGraw-Hill Inc., is a slim 250 pages.
His textbook is among the first to adopt some of the recommendations made by educators seeking to make introductory science courses more interesting and effective.
For example, Great Ideas in Physics emphasizes concepts over memorization of facts. But it doesn’t teach “watered-down science,” Mr. Lightman insists. The text looks more like a physics book, filled with equations and tables, than it does a humanities book.
“A lot of courses for non-scientists try to give them a taste of everything,” Mr. Lightman says. “If you give students a little bit of a lot of ideas, 10 years later they don’t remember anything. My book focuses on giving them a small number of big ideas -- and not just hitting them with facts.”
To be precise, his book focuses on four big ideas: the conservation of energy, the second law of thermodynamics, the relativity of time, and the wave-particle duality of light.
“They’re all landmark ideas in physics,” he says. “In the scientific domain these are like the paintings of Rembrandt and the plays of Shakespeare.”
Mathematics is the language of science, Mr. Lightman says, so any physics textbook must include some math. But because his book is for non-science majors, he avoided using calculus. In the book’s appendix, he reviews some basic mathematics, such as algebraic equations.
At least a dozen institutions, from the University of Oklahoma to Santa Barbara Community College, have purchased the book for classroom use this fall, according to Mr. Lightman and Donald Mason, marketing manager for science books at McGraw-Hill. However, it will be several months before Mr. Lightman knows exactly how the book was used and whether it was effective.
Some may find it strange that a textbook connecting physics to the humanities should be written by a professor at MIT, where science and technology are worshiped and where buildings are known more often by numbers than by names. Indeed, Mr. Lightman doesn’t use his textbook in courses at MIT because it is designed for humanities majors with little background in science and math.
Mr. Lightman, whose office is in Building 14, says his interests have always straddled science and the humanities. He received his doctorate in physics at the California Institute of Technology in 1974. Before joining MIT’s faculty in 1989, he taught physics and astronomy at Harvard University. Among other books, he has written two graduate-level physics texts and two collections of essays on the human side of science.
Great Ideas in Physics grew out of a physics course for non-science majors that Mr. Lightman taught as a visiting professor at Princeton University in 1988. He spent the next four years writing it, and even incorporated some ideas from his students at Princeton.
For example, a student in the class expanded on Adams’s use of the second law of thermodynamics. The student adapted the law -- which holds that all isolated physical systems unavoidably become more disordered in time -- to trace the breakup of feudal empires in China and Japan in the 1930’s and 1940’s. In the textbook, Mr. Lightman includes the student’s example as a suggested discussion topic.
“A non-science major doesn’t have the same mental orientation as a science major,” he says. “To get through, you need to put the humanities in in a substantial way. You can’t just pay lip service to the humanities.”
