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

by Brian Greene

Imagine that you and a rock, each minding your own business, are idly sitting next to each other on a park bench. As I walk by, you suddenly see that a hefty tree limb has snapped and is hurtling toward me. You leap from the bench and tackle me with great force, thrusting us both out of harm’s way. What is the explanation for your heroic, lifesaving act? All the particles making up you and all of those making up the rock are subject to the very same laws, and so neither you nor the rock has free will. Yet it is you who jumped from the bench while the rock just sat there. How do we explain this? You saved me but the rock didn’t because your particles are so spectacularly ordered, so breathtakingly configured, that they can undertake exquisitely choreographed motions that are not possible for the particles constituting the rock.42 As I walk by, you can wave, or say hello, or tell me you’ve solved the equations of string theory, or do jumping jacks, or save me from a falling branch, or a gazillion other possibilities. Photons that bounce off my face and enter your eyes, sound waves vibrating from a cracking branch that enter your ears, tactile influences from a strong breeze that blows against your skin, as well as a vast array of other stimuli external and internal, set off particle cascades throughout your body carrying signals that generate a wealth of sensations, thoughts, and behaviors, which are themselves yet other particle cascades. Thankfully for me, the specific par...