Until the End of Time
Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe
Brian Greene
Having read it
★★★★☆
A really good book that started well, explaining plenty of things about how we treat and understand physics and painting a nicely balanced view of that and its context, as we understand the universe at the moment, with a little bit of philosophy thrown in (which I liked).
Those are all good factors that make this big book a readable and enjoyable one, but its end chapters, despite using a good example to help explain time’s sheer scale (and a bit that was 10 to the power of ten to the power of sixty-eight!) I felt it petered out a bit. But then, given the descriptions of how it will likely all fizzle out, it might make for an apt approach to ending the book given its subject! However, like all good reads, it assists in your thinking and considering of the subject, rather than providing definite answers!
A good passage
Without an environment chock-full of low-entropy ordered structure, we humans would not be here to notice.
A second good passage
In [Otto] Rank’s view, the artistic impulse reflects the mind taking charge of its fate, having the courage to rework reality, and embarking on the lifelong project of shaping its own idiosyncratic self. The artist moves toward psychic health by accepting mortality – we’re going to die, that’s that, get over it – and shifting the urge for eternity onto a symbolic form carried by creative works. This perspective casts the clich?d image of the tortured artist in a different light. According to Rank, coping with mortality through creating art is a pathway to sanity.
A third good passage
It is hard to know how the inhabitants of such regions would explain their good fortune in managing to survive. Or even if they’d be aware of their good fortune. Perhaps they’d have worked out the same understanding of physics as we have and would recognise that random fluctuations can result in rare and fortuitous outcomes. But that very knowledge would at the same time make clear that what they’re experiencing, while possible, is extraordinarily unlikely. From this realisation they might go on to conclude that they need to rework their understanding of physics. Think about it. Although the probabilistic laws of quantum physics allow for the possibility that I can walk through a solid wall, if I did, and did so repeatedly, we’d want to revamp our understanding of quantum physics. Not because I would have contravened the quantum laws. I would not have. It is simply that if supposedly unlikely events happen, and happen often, we’re apt to seek better explanations according to which the events are not so unlikely after all.