Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

Product Information

See also: The Fabric of the Cosmos (2004), The Elegant Universe (2010), The Hidden Reality (2011), all by Brian Greene

In Chapter Six (Language and Story), Greene wonders at how language has opened up the possibility of story-telling and imagination. The complexity of our language system and grammar structures is what sets us apart from all other animals. In this chapter, Greene explores this idea in depth, providing a history of linguistic thought. A burning question for scientists, philosophers and much of the general public is 'How did life begin?' In the eyes of physicists like Greene, the 'molecular spark' that animated a collection of particles to 'come alive' is explainable by natural laws we haven't yet discovered. The particles themselves slowly formed after the Big Bang, eventually organizing into proto DNA-like molecules that could reproduce themselves.... Greene’s main idea, his own grand unified theory of human endeavor, expanding on the thoughts of people like Otto Rank, Jean-Paul Sartre and Oswald Spengler, is that we want to transcend death by attaching ourselves to something permanent that will outlast us: art, science, our families and so forth. Brian Greene is a theoretical physicist but in this book he veers off into philosophy and linguistics and sociology and other sciences. 'Round and around we go. It was all over the place. It seemed to me that Mr. Greene decided to write a book about the future of the universe using his speciality of physics, but then found he had only enough material for a few chapters. Therefore, perhaps at the insistence of his publisher, he decided to add more chapters by discussing other scientific fields he has read up on. In both time and space, the cosmos is astoundingly vast, and yet is governed by simple, elegant, universal mathematical laws.

We are all little steam engines, apparently, and everything we accomplish has a cost. That is why your exhaust pipe gets too hot to touch, or why your desk tends to get more cluttered by the end of the day. What Greene offers readers instead, is a surprisingly reductionist view of evolution, not recognizing that Natural Selection – or as he more often refers to it, “Darwinian selection”- is not purely random, but instead, as both Gould and Miller have noted repeatedly in their writings, is constrained by both the environment and the prior phylogenetic – in plain English, genealogical – history of the population undergoing selection. One that doesn’t consider the possibility that humanity’s capacity for storytelling may be an unanticipated emergent property of underlying natural processes like Natural Selection, as well as more likely, the direct consequence of human cultural influences – not evolution – at work throughout humanity’s history, most likely starting as early as the time – approximately 600,000 years ago – that the lineage leading to us, Homo sapiens, split from our closest relatives, the Neandertals. The same is true for Greene’s contention that humanity is predisposed because of evolution to embrace religion, claiming that it is due to “Darwinian selection”, which even a religiously devout scientist like Miller has never once asserted.

I gave this book 2 stars for the sole reason that I enjoyed the first story. Although far from typical DS writing, the love story was believable. I am confused, however, by DS trying to convince us that an Episcopalian minister (or any Christian minister for that matter - denomiation unimportant) would believe in reincarnation. How absurd!!! I also feel this story abruptly ended, and the way in which it ended was somewhat predictable. The existence of life, and more particularly, conscious, thoughtful, self-reflective life is an astounding and wondrous quality of reality. All the same, I consider life and consciousness to be the result of the very same physical processes acting on the very same types of ingredients responsible for everything in the cosmos—shining stars to swirling galaxies. There is a beautiful continuity between the physical universe “out there” and the subjective universe of common experience. Understanding that continuity and grasping how life and consciousness fit on the cosmic timeline gives us an uncanny perspective. It is a perspective that allows us to feel a deep unity with a much larger, much older, and much grander reality.Greene has the rare ability to make difficult concepts accessible to non-specialists, and for science and math nerds, there are extensive notes (and a few equations) at the end of the book. All in all, a book worth reading for people interested in the subject. When you love there's should be this feeling which makes you smile and when your partner smiles you know in your gut that this is how it is supposed to be. Taking care of each other. Talking to each other and the best part was this only. They always talked to each other. There was no drama, no hidden agendas, only love. And when there's this much intensity of love you just let it engulf you and take you to places where it blossoms, all you feel is fragrance and you suddenly you realize you've become love. Brian Greene’s latest book Until the End of Time is a fascinating scientific journey from the beginning of the universe, the Big Bang, through a step by step analysis taking us trillions and trillions of years into the future, when the universe will disappear. Fortunately, or maybe not, the species of human beings will vanish trillions of years before the universe ends.

The best part of the book was 1st half. Jenny was a career oriented woman, she rose to a success and it took her 14 years to reach there, but there comes a time when you've to decide to what you will give priority, your family or your career. She chose her husband.A lot. Science is not in the business of making aesthetic judgements or providing standards of creativity or beauty, of course. But we are all physical beings whose physiological and neurological makeup have evolved under Darwinian pressures. Researchers over the past few decades have explored the possibility that much as our upright gait and opposable thumbs evolved by virtue of the adaptive advantages they provided our forebears, there are aspects of our behavior that also evolved because they enhanced our chance of surviving and reproducing, and thus passing on these very behavioral tendencies. Our creative and cultural activities may have thus been shaped— directly or indirectly—by evolution. They do. Einstein famously said that “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” There is no one who has said it better. My work for over three decades—seeking a deeper understanding of the big bang, nature’s forces, and the nature of physical reality—has been driven by an urge to experience the mysterious. And on rare occasions, some of those mysteries have resolved into breathtaking clarity. But it is only with art and the humanities that we gain the fullest, most visceral sense of both the wonders and the mysteries of life and experience. It is interesting that the evolutionary perspective doesn’t need to weigh-in on that question. Something can be adaptively useful whether or not it is true. For me what’s more important are the evolutionary and cultural roles that religions have played and continue to play. For the storyline I develop in the book, religions are valuable not because they provide insight into the factual nature of the physical world but because of their role in human development.