Rebecca Goldstein

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein (born February 23, 1950) is an Americanphilosopher, novelist, andpublic intellectual. She has written ten books, both fiction and non-fiction. She holds a Ph.D. inphilosophy of science fromPrinceton University, and is sometimes grouped with novelists such asRichard Powers andAlan Lightman, who create fiction that is knowledgeable of, and sympathetic toward, science.^[5]^[6]

Rebecca Goldstein

Born	Rebecca Newberger (1950-02-23)February 23, 1950 (age 75) White Plains, New York, U.S.
Spouses	Sheldon Goldstein (m. 1969;div. 1999) Steven Pinker (m. 2007)
Children	Yael Goldstein Love (novelist) Danielle Blau (poet)^[2]^[3]^[4]

Education
Alma mater	Barnard College (BA) Princeton University (PhD)
Philosophical work
Institutions	Columbia University Rutgers University Trinity College Harvard University New York University^[1]

In her three non-fiction works, she has shown an affinity for philosophicalrationalism, as well as a conviction that philosophy, like science, makes progress,^[7] and that scientific progress is itself supported by philosophical arguments.^[8]

Increasingly, in her talks and interviews, she has been exploring what she has called "mattering theory" as an alternative to traditional utilitarianism.^[9]^[10] This theory is a continuation of her idea of "the mattering map", first suggested in her novelThe Mind–Body Problem. The concept of the mattering map has been widely adopted in contexts as diverse as cultural criticism,^[11]^[12] psychology,^[13] and behavioral economics.^[14]

Goldstein is a MacArthur Fellow, and has received theNational Humanities Medal^[15] and theNational Jewish Book Award.

Early life and education

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Goldstein, born Rebecca Newberger, grew up inWhite Plains, New York. She was born into anOrthodox Jewish family. She has one older brother, who is an Orthodoxrabbi, and a younger sister, Sarah Stern. An older sister, Mynda Barenholtz, died in 2001. She did her undergraduate work atCity College of New York,UCLA, andBarnard College,^[16] where she graduated asvaledictorian in 1972. After earning her Ph.D. inphilosophy fromPrinceton University, where she studied withThomas Nagel and wrote a dissertation titled "Reduction, Realism, and the Mind", she returned to Barnard as a professor of philosophy.^[17]

Career

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In 1983, Goldstein published her first novel,The Mind-Body Problem, a serio-comic tale of the conflict between emotion and intelligence, combined with reflections on the nature of mathematical genius, the challenges faced by intellectual women, and Jewish tradition and identity. Goldstein said she wrote the book to "insert 'real life' intimately into the intellectual struggle. In short, I wanted to write a philosophically motivated novel."^[18]

Her second novel,The Late-Summer Passion of a Woman of Mind (1989), was also set in academia.^[19] Her third novel,The Dark Sister (1993), was a fictionalization of family and professional issues in the life ofWilliam James. She followed it with a short-story collection,Strange Attractors (1993), which was a National Jewish Honor Book andNew York Times Notable Book of the Year.^[20] A fictional mother, daughter, and granddaughter introduced in two of the stories in that collection became the main characters of^[21] Goldstein's next novel,Mazel (1995), which won theNational Jewish Book Award^[22] and the 1995Edward Lewis Wallant Award.

AMacArthur Fellowship in 1996 led to the writing ofProperties of Light (2000), a ghost story about love, betrayal, andquantum physics. Her most recent novel is36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction (2010),^[6] which explores ongoing controversies over religion and reason through the tale of a professor of psychology who has written an atheist best-seller, while his life is permeated with secular versions of religious themes.^[6]National Public Radio chose it as one of its "five favorite books of 2010",^[23] andThe Christian Science Monitor named it the best book of fiction of 2010.^[24]

Goldstein has written twobiographical studies:Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel (2005); andBetraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity (2006).Betraying Spinoza combined her continuing interest in Jewish ideas, history, and identity with an increasing focus onsecularism,humanism, andatheism. Goldstein called the book "the eighth book I'd published, but [the] first in which I took the long-delayed and irrevocable step of integrating my private and public selves".^[25] Together with36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, it established her as a prominent figure in the humanist movement, part of a wave of "new new atheists" marked by less divisive rhetoric and a greater representation of women.^[26]

In 2014, Goldstein publishedPlato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won't Go Away, an exploration of the historical roots and contemporary relevance of philosophy.

In addition to Barnard, Goldstein has taught atColumbia,Rutgers, andTrinity College inHartford, Connecticut, and since 2014, she has been^[27] a visiting professor at theNew College of the Humanities in London. In 2016, she was a visiting professor in the English department atNew York University.^[28] In 2011, she delivered theTanner Lectures on Human Values at Yale University, "The Ancient Quarrel: Philosophy and Literature". She serves on the Council on Values of theWorld Economic Forum,^[29] and on the advisory board of theSecular Coalition for America.^[30]

Goldstein's writing has also appeared in chapters in a number of edited books, in journals includingThe Atlantic,The Chronicle of Higher Education,The New York Times Book Review,The New York Review of Books,The New Republic,The Wall Street Journal,Huffington Post,Tikkun,Commentary, and in blog format inThe Washington Post's "On Faith" section.^[31]^[32]

Personal life

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Goldstein married her first husband, physicistSheldon Goldstein, in 1969,^[33] and they divorced in 1999.^[33] They are the parents of the novelistYael Goldstein Love and poet Danielle Blau. In a 2006 interview with Luke Ford, Goldstein said:

I lived Orthodox for a long time. My husband was Orthodox. Because I didn't want to be hypocritical with our kids, I kept everything. I was torn like a character in a Russian novel. It lasted through college. I remember leaving a class on mysticism in tears because I had forsaken God. That was probably my last burst of religious passion. Then it went away, and I was a happy little atheist.^[33]

In 2007, Goldstein married cognitive psychologistSteven Pinker.^[34]