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

by Brian Greene

But the rhythm of birth and death, emergence and disintegration, creation and destruction that we’ve witnessed playing out along the timeline will persist. The entropic two-step and the evolutionary forces of selection enrich the pathway from order to disorder with prodigious structure, but whether stars or black holes, planets or people, molecules or atoms, things ultimately fall apart. Longevity varies widely. Yet the fact that we will all die, and the fact that the human species will die, and the fact that life and mind, at least in this universe, are virtually certain to die are expected, run-of-the mill, long-term outcomes of physical law. The only novelty is that we notice.