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jazzy_daveBrian Greene "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe" (Penguin)
Brian Greene is a very smart fellow, with a deep understanding of physics, and a wide range of knowledge in other disciplines. He is at his best when explaining cosmology and theoretical physics, but less convincing towards the end of the book, when discussing consciousness and meaning.
The relentless increase in entropy is the major villain of this book, sending the universe towards a dark future without organized matter. Evolution has locally produced molecules, life, and temporary order, by using sources of low entropy energy, but in turn dissipating the heat produced by the processes producing the order into the surrounding universe. There comes a time when the universe has no more low entropy sources of energy.
I wish Greene hadn't come up with the term "entropy two-step" to describe this exchange and then proceed to use it every few pages as a shorthand. He is worried about extracting free will and philosophical meaning out of the idea that physical systems can be described, in theory, completely by the movement of their particles. I see this worry in many books about consciousness, and I think it is overstated.
The very readable narrative portion of the book is 326 pages, and the more exacting mathematical and physical details, index, and bibliography comprises another 102 pages.
Brian Greene is a very smart fellow, with a deep understanding of physics, and a wide range of knowledge in other disciplines. He is at his best when explaining cosmology and theoretical physics, but less convincing towards the end of the book, when discussing consciousness and meaning.
The relentless increase in entropy is the major villain of this book, sending the universe towards a dark future without organized matter. Evolution has locally produced molecules, life, and temporary order, by using sources of low entropy energy, but in turn dissipating the heat produced by the processes producing the order into the surrounding universe. There comes a time when the universe has no more low entropy sources of energy.
I wish Greene hadn't come up with the term "entropy two-step" to describe this exchange and then proceed to use it every few pages as a shorthand. He is worried about extracting free will and philosophical meaning out of the idea that physical systems can be described, in theory, completely by the movement of their particles. I see this worry in many books about consciousness, and I think it is overstated.
The very readable narrative portion of the book is 326 pages, and the more exacting mathematical and physical details, index, and bibliography comprises another 102 pages.
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