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Review originally published January 22, 2021 “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.” 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 i
“I Think That I Think, Therefore I Think That I Am” - Ambrose BierceI 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 man...
Every chapter is interesting, but this book seems to go in circles. I just cannot figure out what the author intended for the overall theme. Brian Greene is a well-known author and physicist. He delved into so many different subjects--it was hard to keep track what he was ultimately driving at.The beginning of the book was about the beginning of time, about the laws of thermodynamics and entropy, and the structure of DNA. So far so good. Then the book diverges into religion, philosophy, consciou...
Brian Greene is an American theoretical physicist, mathematician, and string theorist who writes books about science for the general public.Author Brian GreeneIn 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, ultim...
"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 entr...
Greene's ode to eternity is mostly a reductionist rehash.I want to make something clear, I REALLY like Brian Greene. I've read all previous books that he's written and was absorbed the entire time. He truly has brought conceptual theoretical physics to the masses and I will forever be grateful to him.Until the End of Time is a departure from his previous works. He spends significantly less time with the math and physics that help to explain the fabric of our existence and delves into more humani...
I have read most of Brain Greens works. I am a layman of physics and perhaps not the best to comment on the mathematical side of anything but I guess I fit the typical pop science consumer market. Generally, our "types" love the cold hard facts sprinkled with the way those facts could relate to grand ideas. I suppose that this is what we look for in this genre. If that is what you are after this is not what you will find with this book. I find this book fascinating because it really shows the au...
Brian Greene Takes us through an engaging journey powered by science, given significance by humanity, and the source of a vigorous and enriching adventure. Brian Greene fundamentally changed my view of Entropy and his elaboration over the entropic two-step concept and the dance between order and disorder in this universal tendency toward higher Entropy and disorder. It is a journey that takes us from the beginning of time to something akin to the end, and through the journey explore the breathta...
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, b...
Problems with the physicalist approach to Big HistoryBig 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...
If you're into stuff like this, you can read the full review."Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" by Brian Greene"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana." - Groucho Marx Have you ever seen an industrial vibratory feeder? In the lower level it does not matter if the motor goes back or forth because in the next level it is just vibration that makes the work. So, in the quantum level it does not matter which direction it has because
I won this book in a Goodreads Giveaway.“In the fullness of time all that lives will die.”That is the first sentence of the first chapter of Brian Greene’s new book, Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe.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.I found this book to be more...
My interest in books on epistemology and cosmology is a personal and emotional one as much as an intellectual one. Why do I have my particular perspective on the universe given a world with almost ten billion other similar brains? Faced with a finite lifespan, what sort of mark do I leave on existence? In a universe as vast as this, what impression, if any, will the human race have as a whole?There are plenty of popular science books that have provoked these thoughts, but it's been a while since...
26th book for 2020.This came across as an interesting, but somewhat poorly constructed book.The early chapters on the physics of entropy were interesting, but then we suddenly had chapters on language and consciousness, which felt somewhat randomly tacked on; and while Greene is clearly very smart, the chapters were not particularly deep—just what you could expect from someone smart who had read up a bit a topic that interested them. And then we had some deep-time ultimate fate of the Universe s...
"It is likely that you don't consider yourself to be a steam engine or perhaps even a physical contraption. I, too, only rarely use those terms to describe myself." ~ Brian GreeneThe above quote and so many others make me swoon over Brain Greene books. This book was filled with such phrases from beginning to end. From the perspective of the entropic universe, Greene tries to understand the evolution of living things and, in particular, the evolution of human brains, which are capable of contempl...
An End of Time Best DeferredA long, long time ago in college, I was the sole skeptic and “evolutionist” in the Brown University chapter of the Campus Crusade for Christ. One night I attended a meeting featuring the California college chairman of Campus Crusade, who recommended strongly that I might consider reading Thomas Jefferson’s version of the Bible, since Jefferson removed all references to the supernatural in his extensively edited edition, and one I am certain was well received by fellow...
“The point then, is that when evaluating free will there is much to be gained by shifting attention from a narrow focus on ultimate cause to a broader perusal of human response. Our freedom is not from physical laws that are beyond our ability to affect, our freedom is to exhibit behaviors—leaping, thinking, imagining, observing, deliberating, explaining, and so on—that are not available to most other collections of particles.Human freedom is not about willed choice, everything science has so fa...
Unilluminating There is not much to learn from this book if you are interested to understand physical reality. The book starts well with the second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy, but the key aspects of information processing and the role of non-equilibrium thermodynamics is very briefly discussed. Chapters 6-11 did not make significant additions to the general discussions. It merely diluted the discussion relevant for the organization of matter (atoms and molecules) to form a
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” “We revere the absolute but are bound to the transitory.” Not bad, not great, interesting for sure.
This was one of the most meaningful books I have ever read. At first I was skeptical that anyone could, in a single volume, do justice to not only cosmological history but find a means for convincingly incorporating human activities from storytelling to myth-making to religious practice and also creative expression. But by blending the core principles of entropy and evolution, in their most general forms, Greene weaves a tight tapestry that pulls together an enormous body of insight. I don't kno...