Until the End of Time tries to use physics to find the meaning of life
Brian Greene's new book argues that life is rare and extraordinary, probably transient, and that in the search for purpose, the only significant answers are ones we create
Source: Newscientist.com
Date: 18 February, 2020
How did life happen and where is it headed?
Now there is a conundrum we can struggle with in the dead of night. But it is one that Brian Greene is actually equipped to try to answer in his latest book, Until the End of Time.
Greene, director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at Columbia University, New York, hunts for humanity’s place in a universe when everything is governed by unwavering physical laws, to which we are no exception. He asks: “Could life be such a long-shot possibility that it arose only once… Or is life the natural outcome, perhaps even the inevitable outcome?”
How, then, do we work out our place in the universe? And where does that leave us?
One thing is for certain: virtually everything we know of now will one day cease to exist, a fact Greene lays out from the start. Although the breakdown of stars, planets and galaxies is billions of years away, Greene encourages us to cast our minds to the future, on almost unfathomable timescales – and to consider how those minds might be shaped and their fate ultimately determined by the universal forces at work.
It is an intriguing thought: can life persist in the wake of cosmic deterioration? Indeed, can thought? These ideas underlie a deep human striving, as Greene shows in his exploration of the origin and basis for art, storytelling and religion, among the meaning-making tools that may have emerged from nature’s drive towards survival.
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