Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

by Brian Greene

We emerge from laws that, as far as we can tell, are timeless, and yet we exist for the briefest moment of time.

We are guided by laws that operate without concern for destination, and yet we constantly ask ourselves where we are headed.

We are shaped by laws that seem not to require an underlying rationale, and yet we persistent...

The unfolding of any given life is beyond prediction. The final fate of any given life is a foregone conclusion.

far as we can tell, not only is each individual life finite, but so too is life itself.

Planet earth, which Carl Sagan described as a “mote of dust suspended on a sunbeam,” is an evanescent bloom in an exquisite cosmos that will ultimately be barren.

Nabokov’s description of a human life as a “brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness”6 may apply to the phenomenon of life itself.

As our trek across time will make clear, life is likely transient, and all understanding that arose with its emergence will almost certainly dissolve with its conclusion. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is absolute. And so, 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.