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

by Brian Greene

It is an ironic stance. Descartes’s “Cogito, ergo sum” summarizes our contact with reality. All else could be an illusion, but thinking is the one thing even the die-hard skeptic can be sure of. And notwithstanding Ambrose Bierce’s “I think that I think, therefore I think that I am,”2 if you are thinking, the case for existing is strong. For science to pay no mind to consciousness would be to turn from the very thing, the only thing, we each can count on. Indeed, for thousands of years many have denied the finality of death by hanging existential hope on consciousness. The body dies. That’s apparent, obvious, undeniable. But our seemingly persistent inner voice, as well as the abundant thoughts, sensations, and emotions filling each of our subjective worlds, speaks to an ethereal presence that, some have imagined, stands outside the base facts of physical existence. Atman, anima, immortal soul—it has been given many names, but all connote the belief that the conscious self taps into something that outlasts the physical form, something that transcends traditional mechanistic science. Not only is mind our tether to reality, perhaps it is our tether to eternity.