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A review by dinsdale
Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe by Brian Greene
4.0
I know Brian Greene from is guest appearances on the Star Talk podcast. He comes across as interesting and affable and I really enjoyed his latest book.
Greene touches on a plethora of science topics in this book and crams a whole lot in to the 325 pages of text. The book also contains 57 pages of notes if you really want to take a deep dive in to some of the subjects he covers. There is also an extensive bibliography, the author really did his research for this book.
This is sort of a high-level history of the universe, from the big bang to the nuances of the modern human condition, and is written in a more accessible manner than comparable books written by other scientists I've read. Greene has a way of explaining complex hard science topics to common folks like myself without hurting our brains too much, in most cases anyway. He throws some anecdotes in here and there so further explain and illustrate some of his points as well.
The chapters that stood out me were Brains and Belief, and Instinct and Creativity. The former was about how and why humanity developed certain beliefs such as religion and the latter was about the development of the arts and I really related to the music parts. I also liked his take on free will. although I've read deeper explanations from Dan Barker and Sam Harris, his concise explanation against free will made its point.
Some of the deeper cosmological and quantum mechanical ideas went in to my brain and didn't quite register. It's just hard for me to grasp the complexity of these subjects, I'm glad there are smart people out there who understand how the universe works fundamentally.
Overall, I thought this was a good read. Very interesting, not too long, and not too hard to understand, most of it anyway.
Greene touches on a plethora of science topics in this book and crams a whole lot in to the 325 pages of text. The book also contains 57 pages of notes if you really want to take a deep dive in to some of the subjects he covers. There is also an extensive bibliography, the author really did his research for this book.
This is sort of a high-level history of the universe, from the big bang to the nuances of the modern human condition, and is written in a more accessible manner than comparable books written by other scientists I've read. Greene has a way of explaining complex hard science topics to common folks like myself without hurting our brains too much, in most cases anyway. He throws some anecdotes in here and there so further explain and illustrate some of his points as well.
The chapters that stood out me were Brains and Belief, and Instinct and Creativity. The former was about how and why humanity developed certain beliefs such as religion and the latter was about the development of the arts and I really related to the music parts. I also liked his take on free will. although I've read deeper explanations from Dan Barker and Sam Harris, his concise explanation against free will made its point.
Some of the deeper cosmological and quantum mechanical ideas went in to my brain and didn't quite register. It's just hard for me to grasp the complexity of these subjects, I'm glad there are smart people out there who understand how the universe works fundamentally.
Overall, I thought this was a good read. Very interesting, not too long, and not too hard to understand, most of it anyway.