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

by Brian Greene

Maybe we will fully grasp how the seemingly mundane, a glint of light reflecting from a spinning dinner plate, can churn through the powerful mind of a Richard Feynman and compel him to rewrite the fundamental laws of physics. More ambitious still, perhaps one day we will understand the workings of mind and matter so completely that all will be laid bare, from black holes to Beethoven, from quantum weirdness to Walt Whitman. But even without having anything remotely near that capacity, there is much to be gained by immersion in these stories—scientific, creative, imaginative—appreciating when and how they emerged from earlier ones playing out on the cosmic timeline and tracing the developments, both controversial and conclusive, that elevated each to their place of explanatory prominence.4