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

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The reader should keep in mind that if free will is bound up with consciousness—and if we don’t yet have a coherent scientific account of consciousness—then we don’t yet have a coherent scientific account of free will. Therefore, there is little compulsion for me to jettison my own belief in some form of free will—based on the totality of my experience—on the basis of a scientific explanation that doesn’t exist. Greene, a Columbia professor of mathematics and physics, the cofounder of the World Science Festival, and a regular television guest expert, has been heading in this direction throughout his writing career. His first book, The Elegant Universe, popularized string theory for a lay audience and established his ability to make sense of the seemingly incomprehensible. His next books, The Fabric of the Cosmosand The Hidden Reality, sampled the more amorphous subjects of space, time, and parallel universes. In Until the End of Time he doesn’t quite abandon the confines of physics, but he does embrace pretty much every other science out there, and he does so in the service of exploring, as the subtitle says, “mind, matter, and our search for meaning in an evolving universe.” In the manner of the natural philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Greene has become a generalist. Robert wants to meet her to talk about publishing her books... Tragedy strikes them all as the previous story and in another life, out of body experience they are together until the end of time... Until the End of Time is a departure from his previous works. He spends significantly less time with the math and physics that help to explain the fabric of our existence and delves into more humanistic and spiritualistic realms. Greene starts with discussing the opposing forces of gravity and entropy and how the interplay between these two forces has allowed the conditions for matter and life. I was along for the ride during this discussion.

Bill, a dedicated young lawyer working at his family’s prestigious New York firm, leaves everything he trained for to follow his dream and become a minister in rural Wyoming. Jenny, his wife, is a stylist whose heart and soul are invested in fashion. She leaves the milieu and life she loves to join him. The certainty they share is that their destinies are linked forever. As well as offering lucid, detailed accouns of the science behind the big bang, the development ofthe cosmos, the emergence of life and human conscoiusness, and the inevitable exeinction of the cosmos, Greene’s treatise is motivated by a personal search for equanimity.” — The Guardian The above quote and so many others make me swoon over Brain Greene books. This book was filled with such phrases from beginning to end.The point then, is that when evaluating free will there is much to be gained by shifting attention from a narrow focus on ultimate cause to a broader perusal of human response. Our freedom is not from physical laws that are beyond our ability to affect, our freedom is to exhibit behaviors—leaping, thinking, imagining, observing, deliberating, explaining, and so on—that are not available to most other collections of particles.Human freedom is not about willed choice, everything science has so far revealed has only strengthened the case that such volitional intercession in the unfolding of reality does not exist. Instead, human freedom is about being released from the bondage of an impoverished range of responses that has long constrained the behavior of the inanimate world.” Chapter Four (Information and Vitality) moves into the question of: What is life? “If we could identify what animates a collection of particles, what molecular magic sparks the fires of life, we would take a significant step toward understanding life’s origin and the ubiquity or not, of life in the cosmos.” 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. Greene is an elegant, eloquent writer . . . beautifully written. . . . An energizing, fascinating exploration of origins and endings.” — The Providence Journal In 1975, we meet Bill, a lawyer working in New York. He decides he wants to follow his dream and become a minister. Bill’s wife Jenny has worked hard in her career to get to where she is now, but together they leave their old life behind to pursue Bill’s dreams, with the knowledge that whatever happens, they are facing it together. In the present day, Lillibet lives in a strict Amish community, but she has ambitions and dreams of one day being a writer, composing her novel by candlelight at night. Robert is a hard-working man, on the hunt for one big hit novel to publish. When Lillibet’s work falls into his hands, he discovers not only a great book, but a new person to connect with…

So, we get chapters on consciousness, language, belief and religion, instinct and creativity, duration and impermanence, the ends of time and, most cringe-making as a title, 'the nobility of being'. Unlike the dazzling scientific presentation I expect, this mostly comes across as fairly shallow amateur philosophising. Much to his credit, Miller mentions paleobiologist Stephen Jay Gould and geneticist Richard Lewontin’s 1979 “Spandrels of San Marco” paper in Chapter Five (“The Mind of a Primate”), hailing it as a major critique of the adaptationist view of Natural Selection prevalent in current evolutionary theory and especially, its recognition that other evolutionary processes, not only Natural Selection, are responsible for the history of life on our planet. Gould and Lewontin were responding to the “just so” tales of evolutionary adaptations in organisms, noting that such “adaptations” may be unintended consequences of evolution, in a manner consistent with the existence of spandrels within the domes of cathedrals like the one in San Marco, Italy that appear – and Miller notes this in italics - “whether you want them or not.” It is this expansionist view of evolution that underscores his subsequent discussion of the emergence of reason, human consciousness and free will. As for humanity, we won't be around forever. Greene writes, "The entire duration of human activity - whether we annihilate ourselves in the next few centuries, are wiped out by a natural disaster in the next few millennia, or somehow find a way to carry on until the death of the sun, the end of the Milky Way, or even the demise of complex matter - would be fleeting."Greene considers himself a reformed reductionist - that is, someone who used to believe in one fundamental story about reality. He now believes that the scientific stories by chemists, physicists, and biologists are not the only stories that are meaningful. “There are many ways of understanding the world,” he says. A non-scientist who reads novels, biographies, and poetry can only agree. What matters for him is that the stories that are told are increasingly consistent and coherent with each other. It is unclear how he proposes to compare, say, Finnegans Wake and the second law of Thermodynamics for consistency and coherence. Nevertheless, this is his measure not just of scientific progress but also of human cultural development. Until the End of Time is encyclopedic in its ambition and its erudition, often heartbreaking . . . A love letter to the ephemeral cosmic moment when everything is possible.”

In Chapter Two (The Language of Time), he calls up the second law of thermodynamics, which states that all things deteriorate over time. He asks, Why is the future different from the past?I am a big fan of Danielle Steel so I was very much looking forward to reading this! Until The End Of Time is a beautiful beautiful story. Danielle weaves two separate love stories set nearly four decades apart together with a few vital themes and similarities – love, understanding, fate, destiny and hope. There’s tremendous joy in witnessing a brilliant and curious mind wrestle with such profound issues. [Greene] takes readers on a remarkable journey.” Greene lays out a logical and intriguing timeline, based on many scientific theories and a lot of mathematical constructs, to explain how one thing leads to another. What I found amazing is the range of topics that the author discusses. For example, cosmology, the early universe, quantum physics, development of hominids, the human race, the brain, mind, consciousness, language, etc. He covers every scale, from the smallest, quantum mechanics, to the largest - the universe itself. Steel επιλέγει να αφηγηθεί την ιστορία της σε έναν τόπο αλλά σε δύο χρόνους, που χωρίζονται μεταξύ τους με απόσταση σχεδόν σαράντα ετών. Δύο ζευγάρια που αν και θεωρητικά δεν έχουν τίποτα κοινό μεταξύ τους, κατά κάποιον τρόπο, συνδέονται, με τα πεπρωμένα τους να είναι δεμένα με μια αόρατη μαγική κλωστή που σε καλεί να την ακολουθήσεις σε μία διαδρομή γεμάτη από εκπλήξεις και ανατροπές. Τουλάχιστον, αυτή είναι η πρόθεση της συγγραφέως, αφού ορισμένες μικρές λεπτομέρειες θα μπορούσε να τις είχε χειριστεί λίγο καλύτερα, έτσι ώστε να συγκαλύψει ορισμένα στοιχεία για λίγο μεγαλύτερο διάστημα, αναστέλλοντας για λίγο ακόμα την βεβαιότητά μας γι' αυτό που θα επαληθευόταν λίγο αργότερα. Παρ' όλα ταύτα, η πλοκή είναι αρκετά ενδιαφέρουσα και καταφέρνει να κρατήσει τον αναγνώστη σε μία εγρήγορση που δεν τους επιτρέπει να βαρεθεί. However, the book’s dual approach—a unique meshing of logical science and philosophy—is exactly what made Until the End of Time such a compelling read. While I would be lying if I said I understood all of the physics behind our universe’s beginning, middle, and end, the fact that science points to sentient life beginning (and probably ending) in a cosmological blink of an eye is as clear of a statement on our transience as we can get. Not to mention that conditions conducive to life, self-aware or otherwise, appear to have emerged by chance, merely one out of many possibilities set into motion after the Big Bang, and overseen by immutable physical laws.