Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe
Brian Greene
Knopf (February 2020)

Here’s “a story that, at its core, stirs the soul” and the mind.

What motivated Brian Greene to create this book? After wide and deep research (see Pages 387-403), he wanted to share what he had learned abut “the beginning of time to something akin to the end, and through the journey explore the breathtaking ways in which restless and inventive minds have illuminated and responded to the fundamental transience of everything…Because the subject is vast and our pages limited, I have chosen to walk a tight path, pausing at various junctures I consider essential for recognizing our place within the larger cosmological story. It is a journey powered by science, given significance by humanity, and the source of a vigorous and enriching adventure.”

For non-scientists such as I, the “journey” to which Greene refers has special significance because so much of what he explores was previously unfamiliar. I agree with him that “much of human nature — from artistic exploration to scientific discovery — is driven by life reflecting on the finite nature of life.”

Only after I began to read this book did awareness of the coronavirus begin to escalate. The book’s title, Until the End of Time, has much different implications and potential consequences today than it did when it was published. The subject is so vast that those who read the book will have many differences of opinion about portions of the material (e.g. Greene’s discussion of entropy) but I think most readers will agree that Greene’s “journey” creates a pattern of intellectual stimulation that in some ways resembles a roller coaster ride.

These are the passages that caught my eye in the first five chapters, also listed to suggest the transitions within Greene’s coverage:

o Stories of Nearly Everything (Pages 5-10)
o Reflections on the Future (13-16)
o From This to That (22-23)
o Entropy: A First Pass, and, The Real Deal (24-31)
o Second Law of Thermodynamics (31-34, 39-41, 52-55, 57-65, and 281-283)

o You Are a Steam Engine (42-43)
o Repulsive Gravity (46-48)o (57-59)
o From Structure to Life (67-70)
o The Origin of the Elements (73-77)
o The Origin of the Solar System (77-79)

o The Unity of Life’s Information (87-90)
o Evolution Before Evolution (96-102)
o The Physics of Everything (106-107)
o In the Shadows (120-123)
o A Tale of Two Tales (130-132

o Theories of Everything (132-135)
o The Mind Integrates Everything (135-138)
o The Mind Models the Mind (139-142)
o Free Will (146-151)
o Relevance, Learning, and Individuality (153-159)

In recent months, I have read and reviewed Jonathan Israel’s A Revolution of the Mind and then The Enlightenment That Failed. I plan to re-read them after I re-read Until the End of Time because I am curious to see to what extent (if any) the dimensions of historiography that Israel examines and the cosmological dimensions that Brian Greene examines can be integrated. For example, how can science help us to gain a better understanding of the external realities of Radical Enlightenment?