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

by Brian Greene

Over time, my emotional engagement with these ideas has refined. Now, more often than not, contemplating the far future leaves me with a feeling of calm and connection, as if my own identity hardly matters because it has been subsumed by what I can only describe as a feeling of gratitude for the gift of experience. Since, more than likely, you don’t know me personally, let me put this in context. I’m open-minded with a sensibility that demands rigor. I come from a world in which you make your case with equations and replicable data, a world in which validity is determined by unambiguous calculations that yield predictions matching experiments digit by digit, sometimes as far as a dozen places beyond the decimal point. So the first time I had one of these moments of calm connection—I happened to be at a Starbucks in New York City—I was deeply suspicious. Perhaps my Earl Grey was tainted with some bad soy milk. Or perhaps I was losing my mind.