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

by Brian Greene

The general directive, emphasized colorfully in a famous paper by Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, is that you can’t cherry-pick evolution.27 Evolution sometimes offers only package deals. Big brains of the grey-white human variety, chock-full of densely connected neurons, are really good for survival, but perhaps something intrinsic to their design ensures that they revel in story. Consider, for instance, that our success as social beings relies in part on having good intel—who’s up, who’s down, who’s strong, who’s vulnerable, who’s trustworthy. Because of the adaptive utility of such information, we are inclined to pay attention when it is available. And when in possession of such information, it is not uncommon to share it in exchange for burnishing our social status. As fiction is rife with information of this sort, our adaptively molded minds may be primed to perk up, listen, and repeat, even though the narrative is fanciful. Natural selection would thus smile on brains as they grew more adept at social living while rolling its eyes when listening to their obsessive storytelling.