Book DescriptionCustomers Review: It is not typical for me to purchase the latest science book. But the New York Times review (“…a love letter to the ephemeral cosmic moment when everything is possible…”) caught my attention. Now, having been unable to put the book down, I can say it is thoroughly thrilling and not to be missed. There is a great deal of science covered, but I would not even categorize this as a science book. Greene has come forward with a deeply felt (and deeply moving) meditation on the human condition and has placed this meditation within the ultimate cosmic setting—the development of the universe starting at the big bang and reaching all the way out to timescales of the extremely far future. Developing two overarching themes in which evolution tends to create order while entropy tends to degrade it, the book explores the origin of life, the mysteries of consciousness, the puzzles of free will, the nature of religious experience, the prevalence of creative expression, and inevitable disintegration of everything. Heavy stuff for sure, but Greene’s lyrical writing lightens the load, and his interjection of personal moments adds a human quality that transforms the journey into personal reflection that, at one and the same moment, has a universal appeal. The concepts are not watered down so various sections require focused attention, but Greene holds your hand the whole way, acting as a generous guide to some of the most heady of ideas. I will be thinking about these ideas for a long time to come.
WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT: “The purpose of this book is to provide … clarity. We will journey across time, from our most refined understanding of the beginning to the closest science can take us to the very end. We will explore how life and mind emerge from the initial chaos, and we will dwell on what a collection of curious, passionate, anxious, self-reflective, inventive, and skeptical minds do, especially when they notice their own mortality. We will examine the rise of religion, the urge of creative expression, the ascent of science, the quest for truth, and the longing for the timeless. The deep-seated affinity for something permanent … will then propel our continued march toward the distant future, allowing us to assess the prospects for everything we hold dear, everything constituting reality as we know it, from planets ands stars, galaxies and black holes, to life and mind. Across it all, the human spirit of discover will shine through.”I was excited to read this book. I liked its subtitle and description; they spoke to me. But the book didn’t. So much science! I found it largely inaccessible. It was not only a challenging read, it was slightly too challenging. I am not a science nerd, and explanations of scientific concepts frequently went sailing right over my head. Concepts seemed just beyond my understanding, just out of reach. As you might guess, eventually I gave up; I just wasn’t getting anything out of it.Well written. Articulate. Erudite. Complex. Overwhelming.BOTTOM LINE: While the subject matter is broadly appealing, in reality this book is best read by those with a real affinity for science.
It can’t be said that Brian Greene doesn’t aim high in Until the End of Time. In some three hundred pages he tries to explain the Big Bang, cosmic evolution, stellar formation, the beginnings of life, the beginnings of consciousness, the role of art and religion in civilization and the ultimate fate of the universe. Quite a story!As an explainer of complex scientific theories, particularly physics, Greene is on a par with popularizing scientists like Richard Dawkins or Stephen Hawking. Of course, if you found a Brief History of Time incomprehensible then you are likely to find large parts of Until the End of Time similarly difficult. I had a bit of an edge as my undergraduate major was in physics.Greene is also honest that many of the phenomena he tries to fashion as chapters in his story remain scientific enigma. He does a good job of reviewing competing theories of life’s origin, the evolutionary grounding of the arts, etc.What I found hard to justify is the amount of space Greene devotes to speculations about the distant future of the universe. He seems to make the error in reasoning that since we’ve discovered laws of physics that seem to apply to objects billions of years old we can similarly apply these to what the universe will be like in billions of years.The lacuna in this argument is that modern physics is only a century old. Most of the advances in cosmology are even more recent. Why should we think that a hundred year old discipline can make accurate predictions across uncountable eons in the future?Astronomers like to point out that human civilization would be only a few seconds long if the history of the universe were condensed to a year. It seems rather myopic to not notice that modern physics is only tenths of a second long and that it will probably evolve in unfathomable ways in the next thousand years, let alone the next billion.Because Greene spends so much of this book on this topic, even concluding the book with a call to create our own meanings because the universe will finally end in entropic coldness, this seems like a major flaw.However, much of the book does communicate difficult scientific concepts to a lay audience in a way I could understand. I’m glad I read the book and recommend it to others. I merely think a little humility about the possible developments in a century old human enterprise would’ve made much of the book a little more realistic and less like the outpourings of a wild imagination.
I’ve read Brian Greene’s previous books and enjoyed them all. Part of the fun is struggling through concepts that feel alien to the human mind; even when the ideas don’t feel intuitive, attempting to wrap your mind around it opens up new lines of thinking. This new book by Mr. Greene is of a different sort. It takes a step back from the minutiae of quantum mechanics and casts a much longer arc—indeed, about as long as human comprehension allows. If you come at this journey with an open mind you will be rewarded with some of the finest prose from one of the world’s most gifted thinkers. If, however, you are a Facebook PhD, all but certain you already understand the mystery of life, the universe and everything, you may do better to choose a book that does not seek to challenge your preconceived beliefs. |
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