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

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It is perhaps ironic that Greene refers to Gould and Lewontin’s legendary “Spandrels of San Marco” paper, recognizing that it refers to “[a} given behavioral disposition may be the mere by-product of other evolutionary developments – developments that did enhance survival and thus did evolve in the usual way by natural selection”. Bur Greene misses the point, since he believes that “Darwinian selection” is responsible for humanity’s capacity for storytelling, without recognizing – as Gould, Lewontin and Miller have – that this capacity may be the unexpected consequence of Natural Selection acting on one or more traits. I love science, physics and cosmology and have studied these topics for decades. But, there’s always more to learn and this book is one of the most comprehensive. I’ve read. The one caveat, that might make this book a difficult read for some, is the amount of physics and mathematics that (I think) the reader should know prior to reading. I even found myself rereading some sections to really understand the concepts. But, if one is willing to skim past some of the more complex topics there’s still a lot of knowledge to be gained. How utterly wonderous it is 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.” The cosmological journey explores many of the scientific topics you might anticipate— the big bang, the emergence of galaxies, stars, and planets, the formation of complex atoms and molecules, and then on to the emergence of life. But a theme of the book is to consider these developments as part of a larger narrative arc—one that embraces the most iconic of human activities. And so the cosmological story leads us through the emergence of language, story, myth, religion, creative expression, and the very explorations of science itself. The unifying thread tying it all together is our common drive to find coherence in reality.

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. I would highly recommend this book. It does what all good books should do in changing your perspective on the world and all of its inhabitants. This was a funny buddy read in the book club and I really had a fun time learning a lot about our universe and how it has looked billions of years in the past as well as how it might look billions and trillions of years in the future. Greene was really good at giving examples via metaphors that made things feel more easily grasped by a layperson, something I very much appreciated since I'm not a physics major. 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. 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.

Author Q&A

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?’

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. Brian Greene is many people's favorite expositor of the more fascinating yet impenetrable topics in modern physics and his previous volumes have done so in very readable prose while at the same time maintaining a sense of wonder for the topic. This latest volume is much more meditative and much more reflective than any of his other works. Also, there is not a new way of thinking or a new theory presented here, rather what is examined are the necessary notions of time that are a by product of study of physics and cosmology. As a child, I remember feeling this deep sadness when I looked out the window and into the sky lit up by the Sun and knew that billions of years into the future the Sun would die. I don’t exactly remember how I came to know this fact, whether through a book, my parents telling me, or via one of the many space shows and documentaries playing on the family TV. In any case, it was one of those moments that caused me to reflect on my own impermanence—if the Sun couldn’t burn forever, then what did that mean for my own prospects?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. 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."

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. 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." Chapter Eight (Instinct and Creativity) explores humanity’s creation of art and its seeming insignificance towards aiding the survival of our species. “[W]hen our perceptions blend thought and emotion, when we feel thoughts as well as think them, our experience steps yet farther beyond the bounds of mechanistic explanation. We gain access to worlds otherwise uncharted.” 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.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. 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. 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. 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?

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. As with storytelling and religion, creative expression may have its own evolutionary role. The tight link between creativity, ingenuity, and innovation suggests that the arts may be closely associated with adaptively vital cognitive abilities. However, some have also suggested that the arts appeal to visual and auditory sensitivities that emerged through natural selection, but that artistic activities and experiences themselves have no intrinsic adaptive value. It is an ongoing discussion among researchers. My focus in the book is on the arts as a means we have used to find and communicate truths—human truths— that may resist direct expression through language. In the face of our own inevitable end, within a universe itself subject to long-term degradation and demise, story and religion and the arts are all a part of the human drive for something sublime. The first sentence pretty much sums up the whole thesis of the book—one day we will die. We all will, each as individuals. But also, one day, all of humanity and the world we reside in, will cease to be. Time will end.

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