Until the End of Time (book)
 Hardcover edition | |
| Author | Brian Greene |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | Cosmology |
| Genre | Popular science |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf |
Publication date | February 18, 2020 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print, e-book, audiobook |
| Pages | 448 pp. |
| ISBN | 978-0241295984 |
| Preceded by | The Hidden Reality |
Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe is a popular science book by American physicist Brian Greene. The book was published in February 2020 by Alfred A. Knopf.[1][2][3] It was also translated into Indonesian version entitled "Hingga Akhir Waktu: Akal Budi, Zat, dan Pencarian Makna dalam Alam Semesta yang Berevolusi" published in February 2022 by Gramedia,[4] and into Polish version titled "Do końca czasu. Umysł, materia i nasze poszukiwanie sensu w zmieniającym się Wszechświecie".[5] This is his fifth full-length book.
Reception
[edit]A reviewer of Kirkus Reviews stated, "The author of several bestselling explorations of cutting-edge physics turns his attention to the cosmos, and readers will encounter his usual astute observations and analysis... An insightful history of everything that simplifies its complex subject as much as possible but no further."[6] A reviewer of Publishers Weekly commented, "Curious readers interested in some of the most fundamental questions of existence, and willing to invest some time and thought, will be richly rewarded by his fascinating exploration."[7]
References
[edit]- ^ Overbye, Dennis. Just a Few Billion Years Left to Go. February 17, 2020. New York Times. Retrieved March 10, 2020.
- ^ BWW News Desk (January 10, 2020). "Physicist and Author Brian Greene is Coming to The Music Hall with UNTIL THE END OF TIME". BroadwayWorld. Retrieved January 31, 2020.
- ^ Stockton, Nick (May 8, 2017). "Physicist Brian Greene talks science, politics, and ... Pluto?". Wired. Retrieved January 31, 2020.
- ^ "Hingga Akhir Waktu".
- ^ "Do końca czasu. Umysł, materia i nasze poszukiwanie sensu w zmieniającym się Wszechświecie | Brian Greene". Lubimyczytać.pl (in Polish). Retrieved June 30, 2024.
- ^ "UNTIL THE END OF TIME by Brian Greene | Kirkus Reviews". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved January 31, 2020.
- ^ "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved January 31, 2020.
This article about a non-fiction book on popular culture is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Categories: 2020 non-fiction books
Books by Brian Greene
Popular physics books
Cosmology books
Alfred A. Knopf books
Popular culture book stubs
==
From Australia
Marie Santsingh
5.0 out of 5 stars Delighted to listen to this beautifully written book, and wow'd at the splendour of our universe!
Reviewed in Australia on 10 April 2020
Loved how poetically Brian Greene writes about this amazing subject.
3 people found this helpful
Helpful
Report
Stephen Wilson
1.0 out of 5 stars Another physicist's stretch
Reviewed in Australia on 17 June 2021
I am sorely disappointed by this work. Greene is so cock-sure that the laws of physics removes the possibility of choice, that he literally relegates the central question of free will to an end note (46 on page 156). On the dilemna of punishment in the face of people having no choice in what they do, he tries to make the situation palateable:
"So if punishment prevents or dissuades you and/or others from subsequently undertaking unacceptable actions, then through punishment we have guided society toward a more satisfactory outcome" (p355).
But there is no "if" about it in Greene's universe! There can be no counterfactuals or alternatives; all we have is a pre-determined sequence of configurations of particles. No one had a free hand to design the sociolegal system to have a deterrent effect; it just does what it does. So there is no solace in thinking that punishment can deter wrongdoing.
Every single time Greene uses the word "if" he's fooling himself and his readers.
Now, I am not saying that Greene is wrong about determinism. He might be right that there is no choice or free will. I just don't think he can dismiss the implications so casually.
Here's the sort of deep question I wish Greene would look at. If (see what I did there) sociolegal systems do have this apperance of creating deterrence for a net good to society, then why is that the case? In a purely clockwork unmiverse, what sort of telological pressure is there to have these systems come about? This feels to me like a spin on the anthropic principle.
2 people found this helpful
Helpful
Report
From other countries
Iman Mukherjee
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read
Reviewed in the United Arab Emirates on 11 August 2020
Verified Purchase
One of the most thought-provoking reads ever in recent times.
Report
Nani
5.0 out of 5 stars Scienza, filosofie, letteratura contribuiscono a descrivere la complessità' dell'esistenza
Reviewed in Italy on 20 April 2020
Verified Purchase
Greene e' uno scrittore con una prosa ricca e precisa, unisce una vasta competenza scientifica specifica ad una vasta cultura filosofica e letteraria, esplora l'oggettivita' senza timore di esporre i propri punti di vista, offre una visione dell'umana complessità' che unisce la profondita'scientifica al bisogno delle narrative individuali che assumono rilevanza nel processo di selezione.
Report
Translate review to English
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Un livre important
Reviewed in France on 5 November 2020
Verified Purchase
Pour tous ceux qui s'intéressent aux questions de la vie et la mort, de l'origine et la fin de l'univers, de l'homme, de l'intélligence, du cerveau, de la langue, de la créativité et du sens de la vie.
3 people found this helpful
Report
Translate review to English
Carl Gynt
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Reviewed in Brazil on 16 June 2023
Verified Purchase
By far, the most accessible brian's book!
Report
Nithin
5.0 out of 5 stars Greatest cosmological book ever
Reviewed in India on 16 February 2023
Verified Purchase
First, i am a commerce student. And yet I have read this book twice. And this helped me get back to Cosmology. You don't need to have any scientific background to read this. Author who is my favourite theoretical physicist. I used to watch his lectures on YouTube. And then about this. It is an end to end Cosmological study. But only thing u need to remember is that i need to study it slowly. And trust me it will give help you develop a Cosmological Dimension to you life. And since then i am an active reader on Physics and cosmology.
3 people found this helpful
Report
T. J. Cooke-Davies
5.0 out of 5 stars Prepare to have your horizons broadened
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 February 2021
Verified Purchase
If you value both the richness of the humanities and the rigour of science, you will find much to reward you in this stimulating book. In a sense, it is the ultimate ‘big history’ book written from the perspective of a prominent theoretical physicist. But, like all good stories, it takes the reader on an engaging adventure which will challenge them to explore their most deeply held values. I enjoyed it immensely.
5 people found this helpful
Report
ARASU Sankaran
5.0 out of 5 stars Book
Reviewed in Germany on 15 July 2022
Verified Purchase
Halfway
Report
T.Mohr
5.0 out of 5 stars No Problem
Reviewed in Japan on 10 September 2022
Verified Purchase
予定通り到着、品質も問題なし。
Report
Translate review to English
==
Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe
Brian Greene
4.03
5,446 ratings719 reviews
Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Readers' Favorite Science & Technology (2020)
From the world-renowned physicist and bestselling author of The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos, a captivating exploration of deep time and humanity's search for purpose
In both time and space, the cosmos is astoundingly vast, and yet is governed by simple, elegant, universal mathematical laws.
On this cosmic timeline, our human era is spectacular but fleeting. Someday, we know, we will all die. And, we know, so too will the universe itself.
Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to understand it. Greene takes us on a journey across time, from our most refined understanding of the universe's beginning, to the closest science can take us to the very end. He explores how life and mind emerged from the initial chaos, and how our minds, in coming to understand their own impermanence, seek in different ways to give meaning to experience: in story, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and our longing for the timeless, or eternal. Through a series of nested stories that explain distinct but interwoven layers of reality-from the quantum mechanics to consciousness to black holes-Greene provides us with a clearer sense of how we came to be, a finer picture of where we are now, and a firmer understanding of where we are headed.
Yet all this understanding, which arose with the emergence of life, will dissolve with its conclusion. Which leaves us with one realization: during our brief moment in the sun, we are tasked with the charge of finding our own meaning.
Let us embark.
Genres
Science
Nonfiction
Physics
Philosophy
Audiobook
Space
History
...more
384 pages, Hardcover
First published February 18, 2020
Book details & editions
2,897 people are currently reading
23.8k people want to read
About the author
Profile Image for Brian Greene.
Brian Greene
46 books3,790 followers
Follow
Brian Randolph Greene is an American theoretical physicist and mathematician. Greene was a physics professor at Cornell University from 1990–1995, and has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996 and chairman of the World Science Festival since co-founding it in 2008. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi–Yau manifolds (concretely relating the conifold to one of its orbifolds). He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point.
Greene has become known to a wider audience through his books for the general public, The Elegant Universe, Icarus at the Edge of Time, The Fabric of the Cosmos, The Hidden Reality, and related PBS television specials. He also appeared on The Big Bang Theory episode "The Herb Garden Germination", as well as the films Frequency and The Last Mimzy. He is currently a member of the board of sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
Show more
Readers also enjoyed
On the Origin of Time: Stephen Hawking's Final Theory
Thomas Hertog
4.08
1,696
Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime
Sean Carroll
4.07
5,443
The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: Space, Time, and Motion
Sean Carroll
3.97
1,298
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time
Sean Carroll
4.05
6,589
The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
Sean Carroll
4.18
9,536
The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything
Michio Kaku
4.11
7,086
Alien Earths: The New Science of Planet Hunting in the Cosmos
Lisa Kaltenegger
4.05
733
Reality is Not What it Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity
Carlo Rovelli
4.33
14.7k
Quantum Supremacy
Michio Kaku
3.79
2,150
Einstein's Unfinished Revolution: The Search for What Lies Beyond the Quantum
Lee Smolin
3.93
1,019
Probable Impossibilities: Musings on Beginnings and Endings
Alan Lightman
3.96
894
What Is Life? with Mind and Matter and Autobiographical Sketches
Erwin Schrödinger
4.14
7,115
The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
Michio Kaku
4.09
15k
The Order of Time
Carlo Rovelli
4.12
33.5k
The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality and Our Destiny Beyond Earth
Michio Kaku
4.18
11.4k
Through Two Doors at Once: The Elegant Experiment That Captures the Enigma of Our Quantum Reality
Anil Ananthaswamy
4.25
779
White Holes
Carlo Rovelli
4.1
4,162
Physics of the Impossible
Michio Kaku
4.1
40.2k
The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever
Christopher Hitchens
4.03
18.6k
Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization
Neil deGrasse Tyson
4.11
12.7k
All similar books
Ratings & Reviews
My Review
Profile Image for Sejin.
Sejin
3 reviews
Want to read.
Rate this book
Write a Review
Friends & Following
No one you know has read this book. Recommend it to a friend!
Community Reviews
4.03
5,446 ratings719 reviews
5 stars
1,922 (35%)
4 stars
2,163 (39%)
3 stars
1,048 (19%)
2 stars
241 (4%)
1 star
72 (1%)
Search review text
Search review text
Filters
Displaying 1 - 10 of 719 reviews
Profile Image for BlackOxford.
BlackOxford
1,095 reviews
69.4k followers
Follow
April 8, 2024
“I Think That I Think, Therefore I Think That I Am”
- Ambrose Bierce
I am reminded not only of Ambrose Bierce’s aphorism above (which is mentioned by Greene) but also of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s comment upon visiting a bridge under construction in the North of England. Hearing the almost incomprehensible Scots and Geordie banter among the workers, he remarked ‘Isn’t it amazing what people who talk like that can do?’
It is indeed almost miraculous what human beings can do with language. But many believe they can use language not just to build bridges but to tell the rest of us about ultimate reality. Descartes used language to prove the reality of his own existence in his famous Cogito Ergo Sum. Before him, Anselm of Canterbury used language to demonstrate what he thought was the reality of the divine by simply defining God as ‘that of which nothing greater can be thought’. Brian Green thinks we’ll eventually be able to explain everything about reality - ourselves and God included - if we just tell enough stories about it.
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.
The story he likes best because of its inclusiveness is that of gravity and entropy. The way he tells it, gravity is the force which sparked the entire cosmos in the Big Bang. A small and statistically unlikely perturbation in the microscopic ball of proto-energy caused that extremely low entropy ball to expand in a billionth of a second to a universe billions of light years in size. The photons and other nuclear material contained in the original singularity are spread through newly existing high-entropy space virtually instantaneously. Ever since, gravity and entropy have been in a continuous battle, driving not just the creation and destruction of galaxies, stars and planets, but also the life that has emerged on the latter, including us. We are little islands of relatively low entropy, contributing the best we can to the eventual heat-death of the universe. Even without our industrial level carbon footprints, we can’t help but turn high quality energy into useless background radiation.
Great story. But here’s a layman’s problem: Gravity hasn’t been considered a force, much less the originary creative force, since Einstein formulated his theory of relativity. Gravity, as I understand it, is a perturbation of space-time. So when Greene states “According to the general theory of relativity, the gravitational force can be repulsive,” I start to get seriously confused. Did space-time exist before the Big Bang? If not, how can gravity be its motivating factor?
And Greene goes on to explain that critical moment of orgasmic cosmic release, “When a tiny speck of space finally makes the statistically unlikely leap to low entropy, repulsive gravity jumps into action and propels it into a rapidly expanding universe—the Big Bang,” I am left speechless as he treats this non-thing of entropy as a substance that colonises the newly formed world. Entropy is not a force or a substance but a descriptive condition. Having it do cosmic battle with another non-force/non-substance like gravity seems to me to be pushing a metaphor beyond its design tolerances.
Is he condescending to popular usage or just being sloppy? In any case, I’d really like to understand how a tiny nick in the constitution of the speck of initial energy could cause an apparent violation of quantum laws of movement wherein light and atomic particles can move millions of time faster than photons (not to mention matter) can travel. His cavalier treatment of time and alternative entropic ‘trials’ before the Big Bang seem to me just hand-waving. I felt like an eager adolescent searching for the dirty bits in Lady Chatterley’s Lover. But just when things start to get really hot, Greene changes the subject.
According to this story, if the universe is expanding forever, entropy is the winner of the cosmic game and the universe is effectively eternal. On the other hand, if there is an ultimate cosmic collapse, gravity triumphs. But in the latter case, there would be a limit to gravity’s reign, just as there is in the formation of stars. When densities increase sufficiently, nuclear fusion kicks in, and gravity gets checked and the gravity/entropy “two-step” is ignited anew. So the whole process would start again - and crucially not from the same place as the Big Bang. But this too implies eternity.
Eternity bothers me because it points to something beyond language. It’s an indication, like the word ‘God’, of the ultimate inadequacy of language to describe reality (‘reality’ is also one of those words). I am encouraged that Greene doesn’t think that a single scientific or mathematical story is sufficient and that we must ‘sweep in’ as many accounts of existence as we can, including non-scientific ones. But I despair when someone like Greene thinks that this will improve our understanding of reality. It may help us to stop persecuting each other; it will certainly result in faster, more powerful, and more varied machines and products of all sorts. But it will get us no closer to reality, to that which is permanently beyond language.
american
philosophy-theology
science
114 likes
3 comments
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤.
Jenna ❤ ❀ ❤
892 reviews
1,634 followers
Follow
April 7, 2020
"In the search for value and purpose, the only insights of relevance, the only answers of significance, are those of our own making. In the end, during our brief moment in the sun, we are tasked with the noble charge of finding our own meaning.
Well, this was a bit of a train wreck. It started out interesting. I was really into the first 3 chapters, especially the third, "Origins and Entropy". After that, as another reviewer ironically noted, the book itself appears to suffer an increase in entropy.
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.
And he lost me. Perhaps it was simply that I was really wanting some cold hard facts, something that would require my brain to let go of every other thought and just focus on what I was reading. Something that would give my brain some structure for a time. Some people escape through reading with books that don't require any or much thought. That doesn't work for me. In order to escape reality (and who doesn't want to escape a little during a pandemic?!) I need a book that demands total attention. A book that engages my grey matter sufficiently that I let go of all my present worries. Books on this subject are often my ticket to escape. Unfortunately, this particular one just didn't do it.
It meandered and so did my thoughts. Though it sometimes talked of complex physics, it more often talked about things that didn't require my full attention.
I do appreciate that it doesn't require a background in complex mathematics as some physics books do. It's easy to understand, though I found there to be far too many explanations and examples for just about everything. I got it the first time, I kept thinking; now the additional examples just gives my brain cells room to think (obsess!) about teeny tiny viruses.
4-5 stars for the first 3 chapters. 2 for the filler chapters. 5 stars for the next to last chapter and 3 for the last. I'm no mathematician but I'll just do a rough estimate and average it out to 3 stars.
cogito-ergo-sum
non-fiction
science-matters
112 likes
2 comments
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Kevin Kuhn.
Kevin Kuhn
Author
2 books
660 followers
Follow
May 21, 2022
A remarkable book. Did you ever wish you could sit down with one of the top theoretical physicists, someone that was responsible for groundbreaking discoveries in superstring theory, and ask them about life, the universe, and everything? Well . . . wish granted.
Let’s start with a couple of warnings. If physics isn’t your thing, if you don’t find the double-slit experiment mind-blowing, or the relatively recent discovery of the Higgs Boson particle shocking, you may find this book - a quantum leap too far. But, if you’ve ever wondered why there is something instead of nothing, or how life or consciousness may have started, you’ll find this book entirely readable, although you may have to clear headspace to fully digest it. IMHO, Greene breaks through in this book, from being an excellent communicator and making the insanely complex understandable (his prior books), to an author that is profound and a great storyteller (this book).
A second warning, this book contains some truths that are disturbing and may create extreme existential dread. His explanations of the relentless march of entropy, the case for predestination, and the various terminations of Earth, life, and reality itself, can be difficult to accept. If you have strong religious sensitivities, you also may want to think twice about reading this book. However, I will add that Greene wrote this work with humility and empathy. The book is meticulously researched, he never asks you to take his word. It has 74 pages of footnotes and references. In addition, he shows compassion for the reader, recognizing the moments that cause anxiety and softening them with his stories of his own prior bias and fears.
If you still want to continue, you will be richly rewarded. Green tells a cohesive story which begins with the lure of eternity, then follows with the origin of the universe, life, and consciousness, recognizes the special nature of belief, language, and stories, and ends with an examination of the end of all things. It’s a compelling tale, supported by math, facts, and the continuous progress of physics. You’ll dive into the big bang, black holes, evolution, DNA, and consciousness. His prose is often as good as any fiction novelist and the story arc of the universe is the most majestic of all tales.
A masterwork by a brilliant scientist that has taken the time to share his life’s work with us in a breathtaking and compassionate way. A grand journey through matter and time, revealing difficult truths, but leaving space to appreciate beauty and meaning in our existence. Five stars going supernova one by one.
112 likes
2 comments
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Brian Clegg.
Brian Clegg
Author
154 books
2,984 followers
Follow
February 18, 2020
Things start well with this latest title from Brian Greene: after a bit of introductory woffle we get into an interesting introduction to entropy. As always with Greene's writing, this is readable, chatty and full of little side facts and stories. Unfortunately, for me, the book then suffers something of an increase in entropy itself as on the whole it then veers more into philosophy and the soft sciences than Greene's usual physics and cosmology.
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.
Of course it's perfectly possible to write good science books on, say, consciousness or language - but though Greene touches on the science, there far too much that's more hand-waving. And good though he is at explaining physics, I'm not sure Greene is the right person for the job of dealing with these softer subjects.
Overall, despite the problems I had with it, it's a slick, well-written book, but it's not what I want from a popular science title - too subjective, too flowery and lacking the sense of wonder and fascination I want from good science writing. It may well appeal if touchy-feely is your thing, and Greene continues to add in little scientific asides as he goes, but I'm afraid I lost interest in a big way.
It often seems that science writers have to get one 'inner feelings' kind of book off their chest: hopefully Greene can now return to what he does best.
64 likes
1 comment
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Infinite Jen.
Infinite Jen
94 reviews
723 followers
Follow
November 12, 2023
Are you the type of person who gets teary eyed from thinking about a cosmos studded with stars that are constantly engaged in thermonuclear bickering with a relentless gravitational crush? Well, hold on, I’ve got something in my eye. Have you ever, after deliriously consuming grandma’s confections with your scalded bare hands, saw a remaining dollop of sugary goodness sitting squarely in the middle of the pie pan, the edges of which, if taken as points, all seemed perfectly equidistant from the remains? If you’re anything like me, that moment marked for you a turning point, in which the Schwarzschild Radius ceased to be a mere theoretical construct, and came to inform your taste in apple pie henceforth.
So, first things first. There’s an obvious comparison to be made here for anyone that’s read The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, and if you have, imagine that this book is basically that, but focused less on psychology, and more on The Second Law of Thermodynamics, and how life staves off entropic degradation on the molecular level. If you’re not familiar with that book, or if you think I’m invoking Aleister Crowley; let me summarize. Becker argued that much of the striving we do in life is motivated by the dichotomy between our ability to reach towards the divine while being creatures who go back into the dirt. This cognitive dissonance, he reasoned, causes us to muster our creative and industrious impulses in the face of this absurdity. In a similar fashion, this book covers key scientific insights in our ongoing quest to discover our place in the cosmos, and reconcile the knowledge of not only our own impermanence, but that of the universe as well.
Here’s some things you’ll learn about: The salience of entropy in our lives (The aforementioned Second Law not to be confused with a Crowley injunction). Evolution by natural selection. Speculation on the antecedents of DNA. The central importance of Redox Reactions in metabolizing pie, and Black Holes. After this, the book necessarily becomes more philosophical in nature, with examinations of epistemology, language, consciousness, free will, religion, and finally our raison d'être. Some people may be put off by this move into the speculative and poetic, and if you’re looking for a book that’s purely grounded in scientific reasoning, look elsewhere.
For me, as a person who, while not religious, does experience awe in the way that Einstein captured in his more deistic scribbling, I found it highly enjoyable, and would recommend it to anyone with a similar disposition. Greene, as usual, writes in a witty and accessible style, and adopts an appropriately humble and open minded position on the big questions of our existence.
Let’s close this review out with a couple of quotes.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” — Carl Sagan.
“A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty - it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.” — Albert Einstein.
58 likes
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Barbara.
Barbara
1,582 reviews
5,175 followers
Follow
February 24, 2024
Brian Greene is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician, and string theorist who writes books about science for the general public.
Author Brian Greene
In this tome, Greene contemplates the universe, from it's inception to it's inevitable demise. Greene writes, "Planets and stars and solar systems and galaxies and even black holes are transitory. The end of each is driven by its own distinctive combination of physical processes, spanning quantum mechanics through general relativity, ultimately yielding a mist of particles drifting through a cold and quiet cosmos."
We don't need to worry much about the end of the universe because it probably won't happen for trillions and trillions of years. On the other hand, the end for an individual living creature - like a human being - is much closer.
Greene suggests that the knowledge of inevitable death drives people to leave a mark, to accomplish something that lasts beyond themselves. This may be the impetus that inspires scientists, scholars, artists, musicians, writers, etc.
In fact it's what drives Greene himself. He writes, "I've gone forward with an eye trained on the long view, on seeking to accomplish something that would last."
The decay of the universe is driven by the second law of thermodynamics, which says that the production of waste is unavoidable. Greene notes, "The second law describes a fundamental characteristic inherent in all matter and energy, regardless of structure or form, whether animate or inanimate. The law reveals (loosely) that everything in the universe has an overwhelming tendency to run down, to degrade, to wither." In other words, disorder is more likely than order.
Greene provides simple examples to demonstrate this. For instance, if you vigorously shake 100 coins and throw then down, it's a hundred billion billion billion times more likely that you'll get 50 heads and 50 tails (a high entropy, low order configuration) rather than all heads or all tails (a low entropy, high order configuration).
So going from the past to the future, entropy is overwhelmingly likely to increase.
You may ask, 'How then did organized things like stars, planets, bacteria, rhododendrons, dogs, humans, etc. come to be'?
Greene explains that (temporary) organization occurs via the entropic two-step, which is a "process in which the entropy of a system decreases because it shifts a more than compensating increase in entropy to the environment." To use humans as an example, we take in energy (food, air) to sustain our bodies, but we give off even more energy as waste products (heat).
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....
......and finally into RNA, DNA, proteins, and other molecules that make up living things. Greene explains all this in detail, and - for me - was among the most interesting parts of the book.
As masses of particles that follow universal laws, do we have free will, unlike a rock for example? This is a question of great interest to many philosophers and scientists. Greene observes that, "as living creatures [our] particles are so spectacularly ordered, so breathtakingly configured, that they can undertake exquisitely choreographed motions that are not possible for [rocks]." So we can walk, cook, read, play computer games, go shopping, play sports, and so on. Though our particles ARE bound by physical laws, and we DON'T have free will, we apparently CAN control our behavior. Greene is a bit murky about this, and I would have liked a better explanation. 😏
Greene explains how Darwinian evolution drove the development of living things, from the simple to the complex. For instance, animal life advanced from single celled organisms,
to primitive creatures like sponges,
to more complex organisms like fish,
to land animals like salamanders,
and on and on to VERY intelligent primates (us).
It all happened because of Darwin's law of natural selection or 'survival of the fittest.'
For humans, natural selection favored physical traits - including our big brains - that allowed us to use tools; run from danger; kill prey; make fires; build shelters; etc. Greene posits that more nebulous human endeavors, like language; story-telling; art; religion; music; and so on ALSO helped us survive.
Greene's lengthy discussions about this are a little cloudy, but I got the jist....such behaviors cement us into communities, which are adaptive for survival. In any case, they fit into the 'survival of the fittest' scenario.
Getting back to the fate of the universe, Greene mentions various theories about the destiny of the cosmos. Scientists have observed that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate. No one knows what will happen in the future, but various possibilities are suggested, such as: the rate of expansion will speed up even more and the universe will rip apart;
the expansion will slow down and the universe will collapse with a big crunch;
the universe will collapse and expand over and over again...like a sort of cosmic yoyo; and more.
These discussions include consideration of gravity, repulsive gravity; dark energy, electromagnetic and nuclear forces, the Higgs field, and other such things that physicists love. No matter what, however, the universe will ultimately disintegrate into widely separated teeny tiny particles that are randomly drifting around.
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."
So, does human life matter. If we won't survive for eternity, should we sit back and do nothing? Greene doesn't think so. He writes "our moment is rare and extraordinary" and "it's utterly wondrous that a small collection of the universe's particles can rise up, examine themselves and the reality they inhabit, determine just how transitory they are, and with a flitting burst of activity create beauty, establish connection, and illuminate mystery."
So go on and do your thing. 😊
Greene includes the work and opinions of many scientists and philosophers in his discussions, and tells personal anecdotes to illustrate some points - like the time he blew up the oven at the age of ten; or was thrilled by the aurora borealis; or saw his daughter let go of a soaring swing and tumble to the ground.
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.
You can follow my reviews at https://reviewsbybarbsaffer.blogspot....
40 likes
Like
Comment
Profile Image for Ryan Boissonneault.
Ryan Boissonneault
207 reviews
2,210 followers
Follow
February 26, 2020
Problems with the physicalist approach to Big History
Big history is a specific approach to history that examines the universe and the human story at its largest possible scales, from the big bang to the present to the distant future. It seeks to unify all physical, biological, psychological, and historical events within a single explanatory framework, often reductionist in nature. Since everything in such a history is claimed to be ultimately reducible to the laws of physics (in the reductionist versions), such a narrative seems particularly suited for a theoretical physicist to tell.
Enter Brian Greene and his latest foray into the field of big history, Until the End of Time. There’s no question that Greene is well-suited for the task; in addition to his deep expertise in theoretical physics, he also has the unmatched ability to clearly explain complex scientific concepts. The beginning chapters are a testament to this, as Greene takes the reader through the origins of the universe to the present day by explaining, with a liberal dose of clever analogies, how the fundamental concepts of entropy, energy, and evolution guide the physical, chemical, and biological processes that make up our world.
While some may find this narrative approach (which is conspicuously devoid of anything “supernatural” or “divine”) depressing, others (like me) will find it utterly fascinating and even, in a sense, liberating. Greene shows us that by contemplating the universe at its largest scales—and by recognizing the impermanence of everything—we can come to more deeply appreciate our fleeting moments on this earth. And, even more importantly, we can learn to embrace the responsibility we all have to create our own meaning in our lives, while avoiding the somewhat childish view that meaning has to be imposed on us from above for life to have any value.
As the book progresses, however, things get murkier. Philosophically, one thing you can say about Green is that he is consistent in his reductionist stance. Greene believes that everything can be explained—at least theoretically—with reference only to the laws and motions of fundamental particles. He does admit, however, that the prospect of actually doing this is virtually impossible, as the human mind (and for that matter any computer) does not have the cognitive or computational capacity to make such calculations.
The eruption of a volcano, the causes of the second World War, and your inner experiences and emotions, for example, could be explained by physical laws, it’s just that we don’t have the capability of doing so. This is why we must study geological phenomena, history, and psychology at different, emergent levels, levels that we can cognitively handle. But this doesn’t mean that, in reality, it’s not “physics all the way down,” which Greene unabashadely believes.
This qualified reductionist approach, however persuasive it appears, runs into its biggest challenge in the chapter on consciousness. In fact, it is here that I believe Greene’s philosophy is most subject to criticism.
To say that consciousness is reducible to the motions of particles is to not fully appreciate the difference between scientific explanation and experience itself. Thomas Nagel, in his famous essay, What Is It Like to Be a Bat?, neatly elucidates the problem. As Greene wrote:
“Since our mode of engagement with the world is profoundly different [from the bat], there is just so far our imagination can take us into the bat’s inner world. Even if we had a complete accounting of all the underlying fundamental physics, chemistry, and biology that make a bat a bat, our description would still seem unable to get at the bat’s subjective “first-person” experience. However detailed our material understanding, the inner world of the bat seems beyond reach. What’s true for the bat is true for each of us.”
This demonstrates, at least to me, that there is another aspect to consciousness that is clearly not of a physical nature (also see the philosophical experiment Mary’s Room). What does it even mean to say that a thought, or the experience of the color red, is physical? Science advances by ignoring subjective experience and by quantifying the objects of experience. It is therefore a mistake to think that science can turn in on consciousness and quantify it in the same manner, without any major intellectual revolution in how we see the world.
Well, Brian Greene seems to think that all we need is more physics and neuroscience and we can finally understand, not only what it is like to be a bat, but our own consciousness. This, despite the fact that every advance in neuroscience gets us no closer to understanding consciousness than the ancient Greeks. I’m just not convinced that more of the same is going to make any difference (or how it even could make any difference).
In regard to possible intellectual revolutions, Greene mentions panpsychism but fails to mention the Interface Theory of Perception, which says that the relationship between our perceptions and reality is like the relationship between a desktop interface and a computer. According to this theory, we have for centuries been under the impression that science investigates the natural world when all it has been investigating is the “virtual desktop” of the brain, which tells us as much about the natural world as our computer interface tells us about the circuits of the computer. This, I believe, may be a promising line of research but will fundamentally alter the way we think about reality (see The Case Against Reality by cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman).
Next, Greene addresses free will, telling us, unsurprisingly, that it is an illusion. Since he already told us that consciousness is simply the physical arrangement of particles in our brain, then it follows that our thoughts and actions are entirely determined by physical laws. His physicalism forces him to this conclusion, but, as we saw, if he’s wrong about consciousness, he could also be wrong about free will.
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.
It’s also worth considering the implications of Greene’s position, if he is right and our behavior is entirely physically determined. If Greene is right, it means that the big bang set off a mathematically-defined, predetermined course for every particle in the universe, some of which would eventually coalesce into the solar system, earth, life, humans, minds, and eventually Brian Greene, who would write a book telling you, the reader, that your subjective experience of free will is actually an illusion that you can’t help but thinking due to this very sequence of events.
If he is right, of course, this is pretty amazing, especially since that would mean that the physical laws have conspired over billions of years so that he, Brain Greene, can serve as the messenger of such a profound insight. But I think you can forgive me for thinking that this may not be the case. Consciousness and free will are still open questions that we are nowhere near understanding.
There is one further point that no scientist or physicalist has ever, as far as I know, adequately addressed. It is this: If everything is determined, and free will doesn’t exist, and no conscious creatures could have acted otherwise than they did, then what function does consciousness serve? If everything is predetermined by the laws of physics, then what good does it do me (or any conscious creature) to have the illusion of choice?
Stated another way, if physical processes produce consciousness, but consciousness does not have a reciprocal effect on physical processes, then consciousness is entirely inept at impacting any outcome whatsoever. Therefore, if we follow Greene in his physicalism, consciousness completely loses its evolutionary rationale.
37 likes
Like
Comment
==
==
==
