January 5, 2021 • 46 mins
Theoretical Physicist Brian Greene’s new book “Until the End of Time” contemplates the entirety of human history and the known universe in a single volume. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe chat with the author about the cosmos, the human experience and science communication during a global pandemic. (Originally published 4/16/2020)
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's not Saturday,
but we are going to be airing a vault episode
today to help us get through some holiday outages. Uh
so this is going to be the episode that originally aired.
What date was this, Rob, This would have been uh four,
six early pandemic days. I think this was one where
(00:29):
so this is an interview with the physicists Brian Green,
who had written a great book called Until the End
of Time. But I think this is one where my
my internet failed and I had to duck out at
the last minute before the interview. But you you bravely
soldiered on. Robert. Yeah, that's right, we had we had
we both prepared some questions to ask him, so I
(00:49):
ended up asking questions on your behalf. And I can't
remember if we went and went back and re recorded
you so that you were asking your own questions, or
we just talked about doing that. I don't remember how
it came together, as is the case for a lot
of you. Um that month is kind of a blur,
but we managed to pull it off and it was
a fun chat. I think I might have rerecorded my questions.
(01:10):
I'm not sure, but if if you hear me sounding
weird in this episode, that's why. Yeah. I think one
day we'll just put together a super cut of us
doing uh uh, you know, introduction chats with our guests
during the pandemic, where we talked through our technical problems
and what the headphones we have and where we're recording.
Um is a but probably a lot of amusing behind
(01:33):
the scenes stuff there that would be massively entertaining to
all the people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, alright, Well, anyway, we
hope you enjoyed this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
(01:58):
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
today we're bringing you an interview with the physicist and
author Brian Green. This one was a real treat, except
we did have a major audio snag that did mean
that I was not able to be on the call
during this interview. So if you hear any kind of
like uh, weird sound shenanigans going on in the moments
(02:20):
my questions come in, will be real with you. It's
because I had to go back and record them later.
But Robert, you you did me a great honor and
asking my questions for me during the interview. So thank
you for doing that. Uh, Robert, what was it like
speaking to Brian Green? I have to ask, Uh, it
was it was pretty great. I had I had interviewed
him once before at the World Science Festival. The World
(02:41):
Science Festival for anyone who who doesn't know it doesn't remember,
is uh is this awesome gathering of of minds that
happens every year in New York. But then it is
then all these different panel conversations about these mind blowing
topics they go out on the internet, um over you know,
the months to follow. And so I had I had
(03:03):
talked to him briefly about black holes, kind of a rushed,
you know, busy kind of interview, and that was a
couple of years ago. But this was this was a
lot more relaxed, Like I was talking from my closet.
He was talking from you know, I think a study
or or or some similar room in his own home.
And so it felt felt a bit more laid back,
(03:25):
uh this time around, though it was of course, you know, disappointing.
We weren't able to have you in there as well, Joe.
But more to the point, Brian is just, uh, you know,
a brilliant mind. He's you know, one of the best
known proponents, if not the best known proponent living proponent
of superstring theory. UH. The co founder of the World
Science Foundation, UH, Professor of Mathematics and Physics, Department of
(03:47):
Mathematics at Columbia University in New York City, and he's
the author of several books UM The Elegant Universe in
UM The Fabric of the Cosmos in two thousand four,
Acharus at the Edge of Time in two thousand eight,
which is a children's book, UH that that you know,
breaks down black holes for young readers. UH, there's the
(04:08):
Hidden Reality, Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the
Cosmos from eleven, and then his latest book, UH one
of the main reasons we uh, we decided to chat
with in this episode until the end of time mind
matter in our search for meaning in an evolving universe.
I really enjoyed this book. One thing I was surprised
(04:29):
by is how many subjects he gets into. This book
is about the idea of of finitude and impermanence and
he so he of course explores physics, you know, the
history of the universe and the future fade of the universe, uh,
in a physical sense, but he also spends a lot
of time talking about like the social sciences and the
humanities and our obsession with living forever or or with
(04:51):
impermanence and loss and uh. And I found it a
really interesting and actually kind of beautiful book. Yeah I
I'm going to stress this again during the interview to itself.
But if you are hesitant about picking up this book
because you're thinking, oh, it's it's a book by physicist,
it's gonna be it's just gonna be a bunch of
physics stuff. It's gonna be about black holes. It's gonna
be hard to relate. No, no, no, this book is
(05:11):
is very relatable. It's you know, what's somewhere in the
neighborhood of three hundred and something pages, but but covers
a lot of ground and a lot of relatable ground,
getting into you know, at times, how the how, how
the how, how our brains contemplate the cosmos, where religion
comes from, uh, you know, the the role of scientific
(05:31):
investigation in our sort of you know, quest to deal
with the undeniable reality of mortality in our lives. Yeah.
He even gets into realms like like philosophy of mind
and like you know, the cognitive science of religion, which
we talked about on the show a good bit and
and uh and mythology and all that. And I would
(05:53):
say I was really impressed. He does a really good
synthesis of complex topics that are outside his field. And um,
I thought it was just a really thoroughly informative and entertaining,
uh journey to go on. Yeah. And of course, if
if anyone out there is if you are familiar with
the World Science Festival, then you you get a you
have a taste of the sort of interest Brian has
(06:14):
because you see the sort of topics that are covered
at World Science Festival. Uh, the diverse array of individuals
who are who gathered gathered there to discuss these topics.
And I think that's reflected in this book especially, So
highly recommend the book. It is available now. I think
in all formats you can get a you know, kindle edition.
I think the audio book is available. Uh. So it's
(06:34):
a it's a great book for any time. I think
it's especially a good book for our current reality. Totally alright, Well,
without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Brian. Your
new book is Until the End of Time, which is
an incredible title because there's this literal expectation of cracking
(06:55):
open a book with a name like that written by
a noted physicist. But there's there's also the personal aspect
of that title and the religious connotations of the phrase,
you know, all of which are a major part of
the book as well. How did all of this come
together in your your writing of Until the End of Time? Well,
it's a book that I've been thinking about in one
form or another for maybe thirty years, slowly gestating and
(07:19):
really recognizing the power of having a cosmic perspective where
you see your life as we all do in the
everyday sense of human experience, but you're able to tell
a parallel story where you recognize that you are part
of this grand cosmic convolting that reaches back to the
Big Bang and goes as far as our equations can
(07:43):
take us into the far future. And the depth of
perspective that that can provide is I think quite gratifying,
and that really was a motivation for writing the book
so that people can see their lives within a whole
variety of stories. The reductions to count, to the physicist,
all the way to the cosmological account of the astronomer.
(08:04):
You eve a wonderful interconnected tapestry of these subjects. But
but I do wonder did anyone try to dissuade you
from writing a book that covers ultimately the entirety of
human history and the known universe in a single volume. No.
But the usual reaction before had written the book was
how many volumes is it going to be? Is it
ten thousand pages? You know, there was a limit to
(08:27):
the number of words that anybody in a single lifetime
will be willing or able to read. Those sort of
equips were quite common. But the the idea of say
a three hundred page book, an ordinary length book taking
on cosmology, the origin of the universe, the origin of life,
the origin of mind, the meaning of consciousness, theorizing of language,
(08:50):
the telling of stories, the origin of myth, the origins
of religion, how that interweaves with human culture, creative expression,
and then onto the developments from today until time, scales
that are so fantastically long that we don't even have
names for the numbers that describe the durations that we're
(09:12):
talking about. Yeah, it's a it's a hefty chronicle. But
being able to sit down and read it in three
hundred pages to me with the point that you would
be able to see all of these unfoldings in a
reasonable period of time with minimal effort and to recognize
your place within it. Yes, And I do want to
stress to our our readers, our listeners rather that it
(09:33):
is a very very readable book. It's just there's you know,
it contains a dense amount of information, I guess, but
it is um uh. One never feels overwhelmed by all
of this data. It's it's presented in a wonderfully and
at times personable way. Yes, thank you. A core theme
of this book is the concept of entropy. Entropy is
(09:54):
kind of the evil sorcerer driving the magic of impermanence.
And I think sometimes people get confused when they hear
about entropy as tending toward disorder. You know, it's often
defined as as the tendency of things to move into
disorder because order and disorder seem like subjective concepts depending
on human judgment and in the book. You have a
(10:15):
wonderful way of explaining entropy in terms of statistics. It's
a way that makes clear how it's actually an objective phenomenon,
not depending on what feels orderly to a human observer.
Can you explain this here? Yes, And the quantitative version
of entropy does rely upon and resonate quite strongly with
(10:39):
the qualitative version that you just described. So roughly speaking,
when we talk about entropy, we're talking about disorder. And
the second law of thermodynamics is this idea that things
tend to go from order toward disorder. That's the natural
direction in which events unfold. And when you want to
make this more precise, because you're right when you hear that,
(11:01):
you're like, come on, physicists talking about like order and disorder.
You know, there doesn't seem to be enough rigor in
that kind of description, But we can make it quite
rigorous in the following sense. When things are highly ordered,
if you arrange the ingredients, you typically mess up that order. Right,
If your books are all in nice alphabetical order, someone
(11:24):
comes along when you're not looking and sort of rearranges
a few books. It's obvious that things have changed because
they're no longer in that nice orderly progression from A
to Z. So that's a situation in which there are
very few rearrangements that would leave the system unchanged. And
that counting of the number of rearrangements is what we
(11:44):
mean by low disorder. On the contrary, if those books,
if they're all just kind of, you know, thrown in
a heap on your desk, someone comes along and they
rearrange the disordered mess you'll never even know that they
were there, because that rearrange mint and a whole host
of other rearrangements leave the messing looking heap of books
(12:05):
looking like a messy heap of books. So in that case,
there are many rearrangements that leave the system looking pretty
much unchanged. And so what we physicists do We simply count.
It's accounting exercise. Give us a system, will count how
many rearrangements of the ingredients leave it looking the same unchanged,
versus how many leave it looking changed. And a disordered
(12:27):
system high entropy means there are many rearrangements that have
no impact. An ordered system low entropy means are very
few rearrangements that leave it looking the same. That's how
we make it precise. Why is it that seemingly orderly
structures like stars, planets, and life forms are not violations
of the universe's tendency toward disorder. Yeah, that's a big
(12:50):
that's a big puzzle, and it's certainly an issue that
I spend some time on in the book because it's
one of the critical questions to ask and one of
the important questions to answer. And here's how the answer goes.
This law of thermodynamics, the second law that says that
things go from order to disorder, says that, in an
(13:12):
overall sense, if you look at the entirety of a
physical system, or let's just be grandiose, the entirety of
the universe, over time, the entirety will go from order
toward disorder. But that does not prevent little pockets of
order from forming here and there, so long as in
(13:32):
the process of those orderly formations coming together, they release
enough heat and waste and disorder to the environment to
compensate for the order that happens in that local environment.
And stars are the perfect example. You've got this gas
is floating in space. Gravity has the capacity to pull
(13:55):
things together, and as the gas comes together, it ultimately
ign Night's nuclear processes because it becomes so hot and
dense through the gravitational pull driving it into an ever
smaller region of space. And that actually is an orderly configuration.
But in the process of that orderly configuration forming, heat
(14:15):
and light is given off by the birth of the star,
and that heat and light spreads to the wider environment,
injecting disorder into the surroundings, and that disorder in the
surroundings compensates and more than compensates for the order that's
formed in the star itself. And I call this the
(14:37):
entropic two step. What it is, it's kind of a dance. Right,
You've got order happening here, right, you've got disorder happening here.
And if they choreographed their dance in the right way,
then the overall entropy goes up, even though you can
have orderly structures form in the process. Some of my
favorite passages in the book concern it's core templation of impermanence. Specifically,
(15:02):
when you get into into discussions of consciousness and the
human experience and religion, you write that you're you remain
partial to Stephen J. Gould's take that quote, all religion
began with an awareness of death. Can you expound on this, Well,
religion is this wondrous, really human construct that allows us
(15:26):
to cope with some of the most difficult of challenges
that we face. In the most difficult challenge of all
is the realization that we are impermanent, the realization that
we will all die, and early on religion came up
with a number of very powerful ways of dealing with
(15:50):
that singular realization. I mean, think about it. There are
species on the planet that react to death, elephants more,
and they're dead. But I don't think that their elephants
that are walking around saying, wow, I'm going to die
one day, what's the point of being here? And then
what's it all about? I don't think that they take
it in in that way, while we humans do. And
(16:11):
so religion came up with or provided us a number
of ways of dealing with that. I mean, you know,
if you don't view death as the end, if you
view death as a stepping stone to another existence, another life,
well that certainly is is something that is deeply consoling.
Right if you think of death as one of a
(16:33):
cycle of births and death and rebirths, So that again
it's just part of this ongoing cyclical process that ultimately
will take it to some promised state of being, some
state of calm, nirvana, whatever you want to call it.
That's another powerful way of dealing with this realization. So
(16:53):
within almost every religion is some means of coping with death.
And that's why Steve even Jay Gould described religions as
originating in the realization of our own mortality. And to me,
it's a very powerful tool that some rely upon in
order to cope with a devastating recognition of mortality. And
(17:18):
do you see that as part of the the human
condition reflected in the pursuit of science as well? I do.
In a different way. We scientists are are driven to
understand where we came from, how we develop, how we evolve,
how the universe will evolve, or driven to find the
deep laws that undergird existence. And look, different scientists will
(17:41):
do this for different reasons, but I can speak personally.
I am driven at a fundamental level by the recognition
of the finite time that I have here, and I
deeply want to know as much as I can about
how I find myself in this predicament at all, and
I want to understand, and it's a beautiful story when
(18:04):
you understand it. How the Big Bank gave rise to galaxy, stars, planets,
and ultimately life. I deeply want to understand how life
emerge and how consciousness flourishes within certain of those living systems.
I mean, we are conscious beings and that's where our
footprint in reality has it's it's it's impact right without consciousness,
(18:28):
as as a number of great thinkers across the ages
have said, you've got nothing, and so deeply understanding the
sequence of events that led us to this place where
we can look out and wonder and ask questions and
and experience each other and experience beauty. To me in
the brief flash of time that I have here, I
(18:50):
want to understand that as fully as possible. So, you know,
there's this wonderful sociology social anthropologist Ernest Becker. I've had
a great impact on me back when I read his work,
and I guess it was the seventies and eighties, a
long time ago now. And you know he said in
a book called The Denial of Death that all of
human activity can be traced to trying to cope with
(19:15):
this realization that we have these minds that can soar
to the edge of the universe, and yet after a
century we are put into the ground and we're turned
into dust. That is a stunning collision of perspective, and
we struggle to make sense of it. All right, we
need to take a quick break, but we will be
(19:35):
right back with more thank and we're back in chapter seven,
Brains and Belief. You follow the evolution of religious thought
and you compare it to scientific investigation, specifically mathematics and physics.
Could you speak to the basic similarities as you see them,
between Eastern religious cosmologies and science, as well as where
(19:58):
the often popularized similarities in Well, that's right. So a
lot of people are fond of citing parallels between insights
that emerged from Eastern religions, Eastern philosophies, and things that
have emerged in science, and in fact, in the book
(20:19):
I described a little bit of how you know, My
older brother is Hari Krishna dev devotee and has been
for decades, and certainly in the early days of his
involvement in that practice, when we would talk about work
I was doing in cosmology or physics, it was not
(20:40):
infrequent for him to say to me how we already
know all that you know? It's in this or that
Vedic text, which I found both curious and frustrating at
the same time. And when I followed some of those
through I understood where he was coming from. There was
a resident of language and perspective that you do find
(21:04):
between some of the things that we seek and some
of the things that have been sought after by thinkers
throughout the ages. We asked similar questions. In science, we
answer those questions with mathematics and with experiment and with observation.
And that's the way in which we feel that we're
making progress. And we can write down an equation that
(21:26):
can predict things about the universe that happened, you know,
billions of years ago, and then we look out in
the night sky to see what we think should be
the remnant of those processes from thirteen billion years ago.
And when we see those things out in the night
sky today, we say, wow. We we we seem to
(21:46):
understand something may not be the full truth, but we're
heading towards truth. And and the issue with Eastern philosophy
and Eastern religions is much of it emerges from introspection,
from an inner journey to understand the human reaction to
the universe, and so the barometer of of success and
(22:07):
truth is quite different. The barometer of truth is, you know,
does it feel right? Does it seem that this gives
me a better sense of how I fit within the
wider world. Those are important questions, but they're different questions
from the ones that we answer or at least try
to answer in science. And I will stress right here
and this is vitally. I think both are crucial to
(22:30):
having a full experience of the world. If you stop
with understanding the objective world through the language of mathematics
and observation and experiment, that's all that you do. You've
cut off the dominant thing that makes us who we are,
which is our inner world, our inner experience. So I
think you really need to blend the insights from all
(22:51):
of these perspectives in order to have the fullest experience
of reality. In one of the early chapters of the book,
you mentioned as in the side that physicists to use
not just what they know, not just proven theories and
mathematical reasoning to drive their research focus, but also what
you call a hard to describe intuitive mathematical sensibility. Now,
(23:12):
I know you say it's hard to describe, but can
you talk anymore about this kind of physicist's intuition. Yeah,
I thought I was getting myself off the hook by
objecting the hard to explain there, but but I'll do
my best. When you're trained in the language of mathematics,
you acquire a sense of which mathematical sentences are good.
(23:36):
Ones are sharp, ones are effective, ones are economical, ones
are beautiful, ones are elegant ones. It's like in English,
like we all are trained in a natural language. I mean,
you and I both speak English, maybe speak other languages too,
but in English we can recognize those sentences that are
(23:57):
are special. Right. We can read Shakespeare here and we
recognize what a turn of phrase that was in king Lear.
Or we can read Whitman and say, wow, what a
collection of words to put together in that line of
that poem and say leaves of grass or whatever it
is that moves us. Similarly, we can do that as
(24:19):
as scientists, as as mathematicians. And what we have found,
and this is the danger this is the danger zone.
What we found over the years is that those mathematical
sentences that have the cleanest, most economical, widest explanatory reach,
with the fewest number of assumptions, the fewest number of
(24:41):
instructions other sentences that you need to combine them with
to make sense of them. They seem to be the
mathematical sentences that describe reality. And why I say that's
dangerous is because it could easily be that our mathematical
esthetic sensibility changes or time, so that those sentences and
(25:03):
math that have proven relevant to the world are the
ones that strike us as beautiful and elegant. It could
well be this feedback loop, and so you have to
be very careful using this approach in trying to go
forward and understanding things. But when you're doing your cutting
into research at the frontier of understanding, and you don't
(25:25):
have experiment and you don't have observation yet to guide you,
that mathematical aesthetic sense is what we often do make
use of in order to go forward. So you've at
times described yourself as a reductionist. In common usage, I
think this label is often a pejorative. It's um It's
what you call somebody when you mean that they're ignoring
(25:48):
important qualities, nuances, or context in the course of explaining something.
Obviously you don't mean it in this pejorative sense. So
what is the scientific project of reductionism and how does
it in fluence the way you see the world. Well,
the project is quite straightforward. It's attempting to reduce reductionism,
trying to reduce all physical phenomenon, matter, and the processes
(26:11):
that happen in the world, reduce them to their most
fundamental ingredients, the most fundamental constituents, and the fundamental laws
that govern how those constituents interact with each other, how
they come together into larger agglomerations that ultimately yield structures
like stars, desks, planets, microphones, computer screens, and everything else
that we experience in the world around us. Now, you're right,
(26:34):
the phrase reductionists is often used as a pejorative and
the reason for that is partly maybe one of our
own making. Sometimes we scientists, when we speak of reductionism,
we end the conversation with the reductionist perspective, as if
that's all you ever need to know to understand the
(26:57):
deep qualities of reality. What we really mean by that,
or again, maybe I should speak for myself. People have
different views. What I mean by that is the reductionist
account the ingredients, and the laws provides the rock bottom
substrate on which reality is then built. And I fully
do believe that everything, people to planets are nothing but
(27:22):
collections of particles, large collections governed by physical law. But
I also saying, exactly the same breath, with the same
level of intensity, that you need to invoke other layers
of description that are more appropriate to the kinds of
questions that may interest you at other layers of reality.
(27:43):
So the chemist comes along and says, yeah, you physicists,
you talk about those fundamental particles, but I want to
talk about things that the level of adams and molecules. Fantastic.
The biologists comes along and says, look, your physicists, your
chemists assure, but I want to talk about things with
the level of cells and organ ells and the prophecies
that are underlying life. And yes, that's the right language
(28:04):
and the right level of description to use. And the
psychologist comes along, and the neuroscientist comes along and says,
I want to understand things at the level of human experience,
like what's happening in the brain. And so those are
the ingredients, and that's the language that those scientists and
those thinkers will use, and then the philosophers and the
(28:24):
humanists come along and they say, great, you physicists and scientists,
you talk about the underlying structure. But I want to
talk about things like human reflection and love and grief
and achievement and aspiration and and all those things that
occur up here at the human level. And you should
use that language, and you should describe reality in those terms.
(28:47):
It wouldn't make any sense to talk about the experience
of grief at the level of atoms, molecules, particles, and
Maxwell's equations of electro magnetism, right, You wouldn't gain the
kind of insight that you want. But the point that
I make in the book is that these stories are
not distinct in the sense that the physicists reductions account
(29:10):
threads through all of those stories, and it can give
you surprising insights even up here at the human level.
I would never want to use it as a substitute
for Shakespeare, or for Rembrandt, or for Picasso, the or Beethoven,
the kinds of creations that deeply affect us as human beings.
(29:33):
I don't want to describe that in terms of molecules
and atoms, but in principle you could, and that in
principle can give you some insights into particular the issue
of free will and so so there are connections between
these stories. But if you leave out the upper levels
and you focus solely on the reductions account, you deserve
to use it as a pejorative because you're missing out
(29:55):
on so many other qualities that are better described in
different languages. Let's talk about entropy in the long term
fate of the universe. What is the fate ultimately of
beings that can think, Well, it's a question that we
can address at least under the assumption that our current
understanding of the laws of physics and our current understanding
(30:17):
of the matter that makes up reality, that that is
a good description that will continue to hold arbitrarily far
into the future. If it doesn't, then then radically different
things might happen, But we'll be shooting in the dark
with our current level of understanding to conjecture what those
alternative futures might be. So if you grant me that
(30:38):
that I can use my current understanding of things to
go forward, then you can show that roughly by about
ten to the fifty or so years from now, it's
a big number. Right, we're now about ten to the
ten years from the Big Bang, and that difference of
forty is in the exponent so it's not forty more years, right,
it's multiplying it by tent at the forty which is
(30:58):
a huge factor. So very very far in the future,
you can argue, as actually Freeman Dyson, great physicist, once did,
that the process of thought considered to be a process
of computation, and that's really what each individual thought is.
It's taking some inputs and it's yielding some outputs. That
physical process necessarily is an entropically increasing process. Second thermodynamics,
(31:25):
which means it necessarily yields waste heat, and that waste
heat needs to be admitted to the wider world. And
we do that all the time. Right. If you had
a nice infrared camera on me right now, in my head,
I'm thinking hard to answer your questions, and you'd see
the heat coming off of my head. Right. We know
that like the military infrared goggles, you know that imagery
that that you can see that heat emanating from biological source.
(31:49):
Now in the far future, you can argue that the
universe at some point will not be able to absorb
that heat, It will be kind of stuffed with as
much as it can hold, and at that point of
thinking being thinks one more thought, it will not be
able to admit the heat, so it will burn up
in the entropic waste generated by the very process of
(32:10):
thought itself. So that's the sense in which thought will
come to an end under the assumptions that we're making.
Thought is not something that will be able to last
into eternity. And does that does that change the way
you or or affect the way you view the you know,
our current lives. What does that make what we do
(32:31):
you know, pointless? Or does it make what we do
more beautiful? I know you get into this a little
bit in the book. I do, and in many ways
it's the main point of the whole narrative is to
address that question. Because a natural reaction certainly is, you know,
if it's all going to go away, if matter is
going to disintegrate, if everythinking being will ultimately I think
(32:57):
it's final thought, then what's the point of it all?
Because I think many of us, and certainly I for
a long time, even if implicitly imagine that the importance
of a life or thinking personally in my own life
is that I'd leave some kind of mark, some kind
(33:17):
of legacy, either through my family and my kids, or
maybe through my work or through some kind of interaction
that would continue to ripple through the unfolding of the future,
having less and less impact over time, but nevertheless still
having an imprint out there, even if just in some
(33:40):
modest implicit way. But if there's no thinking beings left
in the far future, like like, what's the point? And
I went through a dark period in my own life
coming into terms with this question, but ultimately had kind
of I don't I don't know what the right word is.
An epiphany, uh, spiritual moment. I'm not sure what the
(34:04):
right language is. But there was a moment when I
kind of shifted my perspective radically and quickly to the
recognition that it's actually more powerful to recognize that we
have this little cosmic oasis in the unfolding of the
universe in which living beings and thinking beings can exist.
(34:25):
It's as if the universe rises up for a brief
moment and is able to look around and contemplate itself,
and we are the beings that allow that contemplation to
take place, and when you do that contemplation and recognize
that you are the result of quantum processes stretching back
to the beginning, each of which that could have turned
(34:45):
out like that way instead of this yielding a world
in which we would not be here. You recognize it's
astonishing that we are here, against astounding odds, we exist.
And it's even more than that. We are these special
collections that can think and reflect, and we can we
can do things right. We can have these conversations, we
(35:06):
can join into powerful coalitions that can do things that
the individual would be unable to write. We can build
the pyramids, we can we can write Beethoven's ninth cent
And if you allow us to take credit as a
species right, we we can figure out the equations of
quantum mechanics, the equations of the general theory of relativity,
(35:27):
allowing us to figure out all these qualities of the universe.
And to me, that just fills me with gratitude for
being here at all. So, rather than sort of looking
to the future or looking to some deity to bestow
meaning upon us, we recognize that we are empowered to
find our own meaning. That's the only place that meaning
(35:47):
is going to come from and when we do come
to terms with what matters to us in the here
and now, it's a more powerful version of meaning because
it's organic, it comes from ourselves. We manufacture it, for sure.
But how wonderful that we can manufacture it. How wonderful
that the collection of particles can ask these questions and
(36:09):
come to answers, even if our presence in the universe
is fleeting. It's such a powerful sentiment, such a powerful
view of things. I mean, it's the one century. But
but but even like specifically to what everyone is going
through right now, I think, yeah, for sure, I mean,
we are in an astonishing, devastating, painful, tragic era right
(36:37):
now that we hope will pass, of course, But I
do find solace in taking this cosmic perspective. It doesn't
take away the pain. Nothing will you lose a loved one,
Nothing will take away that pain. Time can sometimes heal,
but nothing can or should take away that pain. But
(36:58):
if at the same time, you can take a step
back and see the cosmic perspective, recognize that there is
this little piece of the cosmos that we inhabit in
both space and time, And how wondrous that is. I
think there's a degree of solace. Doesn't take away the tragedy,
(37:20):
but there's a degree of solace that that can provide,
which I think is quite powerful. All Right, we need
to take a quick break, but we will be right
back with more. And we're back now. You're, of course
the the co founder of the World Science Festival. Uh,
something that I look forward to every year. Such a
wonderful collection of great minds coming together to discuss scientific topics. Um.
(37:46):
But of course you had to make a very understandable
call to cancel the live portions of the through May
one event this year. Can can you touch on on
what the current or emerging plans are for for online presentations? Well,
the idea is to see this as both a challenge
(38:06):
an opportunity for the festival to create a new kind
of program. And what really distinguished us, say thirteen years
ago when we began the live Festival. At that time
there was not as much live event focus as there
is today, and we were kind of a pioneer in
(38:27):
taking ideas that are normally viewed as sort of abstract
and not for general consumption, and through the clever and
powerful production techniques of Tracy Day, the other co founder
who really cut her teeth in some of the best
broadcast television, you know, from Nightline and programs on CNN
(38:50):
and things of that sort. To take those techniques and
to create live programming that people would totally be immersed
even if they had no background in homology or neuroscience
or astronomy or you know, personalized medicine, you know, topics
across the board. So now we're changing gears and trying
(39:11):
to find a new way of doing digital programming that
will inject that same kind of creative focus to bring
these intellectual ideas out to the public. And you know,
independent of the current crisis. We began this already, so
we feel like we're well equipped to do so. We
had I don't know if you saw it, but last
(39:31):
maybe we had a special on PBS. It was our
first broadcast special. It was a live theatrical exploration of
Einstein's discovery of the general theory of relativity. And you know,
we teamed up with some of the greatest artists in
the live theatrical space, together with great performances on PBS,
(39:51):
to film in a manner a live presentation that would
work on a two dimensional screen and through interesting visual
and through a powerful musical score, and through taking the
ideas of general relativity and making them widely accessible, I
think we've created a very different experience of ein science discovery.
So that's the direction that we're head not with that
(40:14):
level of production for every event that will put online,
for sure, but that's our thinking to inject a new
level of creativity into online programming dealing with scientific subjects.
That's awesome because that's that's that's one of the things
I really love about the World Sciencestival every years that
you you know, you you bring in art, you bring
in music, and then in terms of the all these
(40:34):
great minds that come together to discuss it. You know,
you're bringing in you know, scientist, biologist, physicists. You know
you're bringing in occasionally philosophers or even the theologian thrown
into the mix to tackle these these you know, at
times just staggering questions about the cosmos and the human condition.
Exactly right, Yes, that's that's the philosophy, and you know,
(40:55):
to to bring together great thinkers that don't often talk
to each other, and to structure the conversation in a
way that the novice can feel that they're part of
the exploration. Now you you launched a web series on
March I Believe Your Daily Equation, which is available via
World Science Festival dot com but also the World Science
(41:16):
Festival YouTube page. Can you discuss your inspiration for this
series and and just tell us how it's been going. Well,
it was just a lark off the top of the head.
We're having a conversation one day about you know, typically
World Science Festival programs involve a lot of productions. It
takes a long time to create them. And I said, well,
(41:37):
now there's an opportunity to go to the other direction.
What if I just turned on my my webcam thing
and just each day talk about a new equation and
we're like, yeah, sure, why not go for it? So
so that's all it is. So there's literally no production.
I film it right here and each day I just
think about, Hey, what what equation would be kind of
(42:00):
and to describe to somebody who likes the ideas of
science but math is not really their thing, but they
might get a kick out of seeing the actual symbols
that are behind the scenes and gaining a quick understanding
of what they are. So we started with equals MC squared.
How could you not? So I sort of explain that,
(42:20):
and then did a bunch of equations in relativity time
slowing down lengths being contracted for an object in motion.
And then I've moved on to quantum mechanics. So I've
been sort of doing the very basic equations of quantumic
acts and I find it fun. And you know, the
audience that is sticking with me. You know, daily equation
(42:42):
is not exactly the title that may appeal to the
mass of public out there, but there are there are
people for whom that idea is a kick, And I
think we're all just having a good time, and it's
a sense of a little sense of community, a sense
of a small group of folks who come together each
day just to put the news to the side, put
(43:04):
all the difficult stuff to the side, and just think
about these simple, beautiful equations that touch on things that
transcend all of us. Yeah, that's great. We we do
really need content like that right now. Um On, on
the other hand, do do you feel that the world's
current struggle with the pandemic Do you think it's it's
it's it has sharpened or is sharpening the public's appreciation
(43:28):
for science and the importance of science communication. Well, I'd
like to say yes, but my experience is that even
in the face of great tragedy, when it passes, people
tend to revert to their more conventional ways of thinking
about things. And it is awful that we have leaders.
(43:51):
And this is the main thing. It's all of that
we've leaders who for the past number of years have
been casting a spurs is on science, detegrating scientists and
substituting opinion for observation, fact, data, and analysis. That I
hope will change. But the easiest way to change that,
(44:13):
of course, is a change of leadership, because most leaders
of the world recognize that power that science provides us
for figuring out the right path forward on a variety
of issues that will determine our fate. And it's just
tragic that there are leaders who don't think that way.
All right, Well, the book is until the end of time.
(44:36):
It's it's out now, and yeah, I just want to
just drive home just how how wonderful this book is.
We're just really thrilled to help, at least in some
small way, boost the signal on this one, that you know,
let our listeners know that they should they should check
it out. It's just it's just really excellent. Thank you, Brian.
Thanks for taking time out of your data to chat
with me. This has been a pleasure. Thank you very much.
(44:58):
Enjoyed it all right, So there you have it. Thanks
again to Brian Green for dropping by the show to
discuss his new book, Until the End of Time, Mind
Matter in Our Search for Meaning in Evolving Universe. It's
it's a brand new book just came out here in
available I believe in pretty much all formats right now.
(45:19):
So if you want to listen to it, if you
want to read it, uh digitally or in a physical copy,
you should be able to get your hands on it. Yeah.
I really enjoyed this one, and I think you will too. Yeah,
and keep an eye on World Science Festival because, like
Brian said, they're gonna be busting out some some online
content this year. So the same sort of great discussions
(45:41):
that they've had in previous years they're going to offer again,
but of course, due to our current circumstances, is going
to be in a slightly altered form. In the meantime,
if you would like to check out other episodes of
Stuff to Blow your mind, you can find us wherever
you get your podcast and wherever that happens to be.
Just make sure that you rate your review and you
subscribe huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer
(46:03):
Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in
touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hi,
you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is
(46:23):
production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my
heart Radio, this is the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's not Saturday,
but we are going to be airing a vault episode
today to help us get through some holiday outages. Uh
so this is going to be the episode that originally aired.
What date was this, Rob, This would have been uh four,
six early pandemic days. I think this was one where
(00:29):
so this is an interview with the physicists Brian Green,
who had written a great book called Until the End
of Time. But I think this is one where my
my internet failed and I had to duck out at
the last minute before the interview. But you you bravely
soldiered on. Robert. Yeah, that's right, we had we had
we both prepared some questions to ask him, so I
(00:49):
ended up asking questions on your behalf. And I can't
remember if we went and went back and re recorded
you so that you were asking your own questions, or
we just talked about doing that. I don't remember how
it came together, as is the case for a lot
of you. Um that month is kind of a blur,
but we managed to pull it off and it was
a fun chat. I think I might have rerecorded my questions.
(01:10):
I'm not sure, but if if you hear me sounding
weird in this episode, that's why. Yeah. I think one
day we'll just put together a super cut of us
doing uh uh, you know, introduction chats with our guests
during the pandemic, where we talked through our technical problems
and what the headphones we have and where we're recording.
Um is a but probably a lot of amusing behind
(01:33):
the scenes stuff there that would be massively entertaining to
all the people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, alright, Well, anyway, we
hope you enjoyed this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
(01:58):
My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
today we're bringing you an interview with the physicist and
author Brian Green. This one was a real treat, except
we did have a major audio snag that did mean
that I was not able to be on the call
during this interview. So if you hear any kind of
like uh, weird sound shenanigans going on in the moments
(02:20):
my questions come in, will be real with you. It's
because I had to go back and record them later.
But Robert, you you did me a great honor and
asking my questions for me during the interview. So thank
you for doing that. Uh, Robert, what was it like
speaking to Brian Green? I have to ask, Uh, it
was it was pretty great. I had I had interviewed
him once before at the World Science Festival. The World
(02:41):
Science Festival for anyone who who doesn't know it doesn't remember,
is uh is this awesome gathering of of minds that
happens every year in New York. But then it is
then all these different panel conversations about these mind blowing
topics they go out on the internet, um over you know,
the months to follow. And so I had I had
(03:03):
talked to him briefly about black holes, kind of a rushed,
you know, busy kind of interview, and that was a
couple of years ago. But this was this was a
lot more relaxed, Like I was talking from my closet.
He was talking from you know, I think a study
or or or some similar room in his own home.
And so it felt felt a bit more laid back,
(03:25):
uh this time around, though it was of course, you know, disappointing.
We weren't able to have you in there as well, Joe.
But more to the point, Brian is just, uh, you know,
a brilliant mind. He's you know, one of the best
known proponents, if not the best known proponent living proponent
of superstring theory. UH. The co founder of the World
Science Foundation, UH, Professor of Mathematics and Physics, Department of
(03:47):
Mathematics at Columbia University in New York City, and he's
the author of several books UM The Elegant Universe in
UM The Fabric of the Cosmos in two thousand four,
Acharus at the Edge of Time in two thousand eight,
which is a children's book, UH that that you know,
breaks down black holes for young readers. UH, there's the
(04:08):
Hidden Reality, Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the
Cosmos from eleven, and then his latest book, UH one
of the main reasons we uh, we decided to chat
with in this episode until the end of time mind
matter in our search for meaning in an evolving universe.
I really enjoyed this book. One thing I was surprised
(04:29):
by is how many subjects he gets into. This book
is about the idea of of finitude and impermanence and
he so he of course explores physics, you know, the
history of the universe and the future fade of the universe, uh,
in a physical sense, but he also spends a lot
of time talking about like the social sciences and the
humanities and our obsession with living forever or or with
(04:51):
impermanence and loss and uh. And I found it a
really interesting and actually kind of beautiful book. Yeah I
I'm going to stress this again during the interview to itself.
But if you are hesitant about picking up this book
because you're thinking, oh, it's it's a book by physicist,
it's gonna be it's just gonna be a bunch of
physics stuff. It's gonna be about black holes. It's gonna
be hard to relate. No, no, no, this book is
(05:11):
is very relatable. It's you know, what's somewhere in the
neighborhood of three hundred and something pages, but but covers
a lot of ground and a lot of relatable ground,
getting into you know, at times, how the how, how
the how, how our brains contemplate the cosmos, where religion
comes from, uh, you know, the the role of scientific
(05:31):
investigation in our sort of you know, quest to deal
with the undeniable reality of mortality in our lives. Yeah.
He even gets into realms like like philosophy of mind
and like you know, the cognitive science of religion, which
we talked about on the show a good bit and
and uh and mythology and all that. And I would
(05:53):
say I was really impressed. He does a really good
synthesis of complex topics that are outside his field. And um,
I thought it was just a really thoroughly informative and entertaining,
uh journey to go on. Yeah. And of course, if
if anyone out there is if you are familiar with
the World Science Festival, then you you get a you
have a taste of the sort of interest Brian has
(06:14):
because you see the sort of topics that are covered
at World Science Festival. Uh, the diverse array of individuals
who are who gathered gathered there to discuss these topics.
And I think that's reflected in this book especially, So
highly recommend the book. It is available now. I think
in all formats you can get a you know, kindle edition.
I think the audio book is available. Uh. So it's
(06:34):
a it's a great book for any time. I think
it's especially a good book for our current reality. Totally alright, Well,
without further ado, let's jump into the interview. Brian. Your
new book is Until the End of Time, which is
an incredible title because there's this literal expectation of cracking
(06:55):
open a book with a name like that written by
a noted physicist. But there's there's also the personal aspect
of that title and the religious connotations of the phrase,
you know, all of which are a major part of
the book as well. How did all of this come
together in your your writing of Until the End of Time? Well,
it's a book that I've been thinking about in one
form or another for maybe thirty years, slowly gestating and
(07:19):
really recognizing the power of having a cosmic perspective where
you see your life as we all do in the
everyday sense of human experience, but you're able to tell
a parallel story where you recognize that you are part
of this grand cosmic convolting that reaches back to the
Big Bang and goes as far as our equations can
(07:43):
take us into the far future. And the depth of
perspective that that can provide is I think quite gratifying,
and that really was a motivation for writing the book
so that people can see their lives within a whole
variety of stories. The reductions to count, to the physicist,
all the way to the cosmological account of the astronomer.
(08:04):
You eve a wonderful interconnected tapestry of these subjects. But
but I do wonder did anyone try to dissuade you
from writing a book that covers ultimately the entirety of
human history and the known universe in a single volume. No.
But the usual reaction before had written the book was
how many volumes is it going to be? Is it
ten thousand pages? You know, there was a limit to
(08:27):
the number of words that anybody in a single lifetime
will be willing or able to read. Those sort of
equips were quite common. But the the idea of say
a three hundred page book, an ordinary length book taking
on cosmology, the origin of the universe, the origin of life,
the origin of mind, the meaning of consciousness, theorizing of language,
(08:50):
the telling of stories, the origin of myth, the origins
of religion, how that interweaves with human culture, creative expression,
and then onto the developments from today until time, scales
that are so fantastically long that we don't even have
names for the numbers that describe the durations that we're
(09:12):
talking about. Yeah, it's a it's a hefty chronicle. But
being able to sit down and read it in three
hundred pages to me with the point that you would
be able to see all of these unfoldings in a
reasonable period of time with minimal effort and to recognize
your place within it. Yes, And I do want to
stress to our our readers, our listeners rather that it
(09:33):
is a very very readable book. It's just there's you know,
it contains a dense amount of information, I guess, but
it is um uh. One never feels overwhelmed by all
of this data. It's it's presented in a wonderfully and
at times personable way. Yes, thank you. A core theme
of this book is the concept of entropy. Entropy is
(09:54):
kind of the evil sorcerer driving the magic of impermanence.
And I think sometimes people get confused when they hear
about entropy as tending toward disorder. You know, it's often
defined as as the tendency of things to move into
disorder because order and disorder seem like subjective concepts depending
on human judgment and in the book. You have a
(10:15):
wonderful way of explaining entropy in terms of statistics. It's
a way that makes clear how it's actually an objective phenomenon,
not depending on what feels orderly to a human observer.
Can you explain this here? Yes, And the quantitative version
of entropy does rely upon and resonate quite strongly with
(10:39):
the qualitative version that you just described. So roughly speaking,
when we talk about entropy, we're talking about disorder. And
the second law of thermodynamics is this idea that things
tend to go from order toward disorder. That's the natural
direction in which events unfold. And when you want to
make this more precise, because you're right when you hear that,
(11:01):
you're like, come on, physicists talking about like order and disorder.
You know, there doesn't seem to be enough rigor in
that kind of description, But we can make it quite
rigorous in the following sense. When things are highly ordered,
if you arrange the ingredients, you typically mess up that order. Right,
If your books are all in nice alphabetical order, someone
(11:24):
comes along when you're not looking and sort of rearranges
a few books. It's obvious that things have changed because
they're no longer in that nice orderly progression from A
to Z. So that's a situation in which there are
very few rearrangements that would leave the system unchanged. And
that counting of the number of rearrangements is what we
(11:44):
mean by low disorder. On the contrary, if those books,
if they're all just kind of, you know, thrown in
a heap on your desk, someone comes along and they
rearrange the disordered mess you'll never even know that they
were there, because that rearrange mint and a whole host
of other rearrangements leave the messing looking heap of books
(12:05):
looking like a messy heap of books. So in that case,
there are many rearrangements that leave the system looking pretty
much unchanged. And so what we physicists do We simply count.
It's accounting exercise. Give us a system, will count how
many rearrangements of the ingredients leave it looking the same unchanged,
versus how many leave it looking changed. And a disordered
(12:27):
system high entropy means there are many rearrangements that have
no impact. An ordered system low entropy means are very
few rearrangements that leave it looking the same. That's how
we make it precise. Why is it that seemingly orderly
structures like stars, planets, and life forms are not violations
of the universe's tendency toward disorder. Yeah, that's a big
(12:50):
that's a big puzzle, and it's certainly an issue that
I spend some time on in the book because it's
one of the critical questions to ask and one of
the important questions to answer. And here's how the answer goes.
This law of thermodynamics, the second law that says that
things go from order to disorder, says that, in an
(13:12):
overall sense, if you look at the entirety of a
physical system, or let's just be grandiose, the entirety of
the universe, over time, the entirety will go from order
toward disorder. But that does not prevent little pockets of
order from forming here and there, so long as in
(13:32):
the process of those orderly formations coming together, they release
enough heat and waste and disorder to the environment to
compensate for the order that happens in that local environment.
And stars are the perfect example. You've got this gas
is floating in space. Gravity has the capacity to pull
(13:55):
things together, and as the gas comes together, it ultimately
ign Night's nuclear processes because it becomes so hot and
dense through the gravitational pull driving it into an ever
smaller region of space. And that actually is an orderly configuration.
But in the process of that orderly configuration forming, heat
(14:15):
and light is given off by the birth of the star,
and that heat and light spreads to the wider environment,
injecting disorder into the surroundings, and that disorder in the
surroundings compensates and more than compensates for the order that's
formed in the star itself. And I call this the
(14:37):
entropic two step. What it is, it's kind of a dance. Right,
You've got order happening here, right, you've got disorder happening here.
And if they choreographed their dance in the right way,
then the overall entropy goes up, even though you can
have orderly structures form in the process. Some of my
favorite passages in the book concern it's core templation of impermanence. Specifically,
(15:02):
when you get into into discussions of consciousness and the
human experience and religion, you write that you're you remain
partial to Stephen J. Gould's take that quote, all religion
began with an awareness of death. Can you expound on this, Well,
religion is this wondrous, really human construct that allows us
(15:26):
to cope with some of the most difficult of challenges
that we face. In the most difficult challenge of all
is the realization that we are impermanent, the realization that
we will all die, and early on religion came up
with a number of very powerful ways of dealing with
(15:50):
that singular realization. I mean, think about it. There are
species on the planet that react to death, elephants more,
and they're dead. But I don't think that their elephants
that are walking around saying, wow, I'm going to die
one day, what's the point of being here? And then
what's it all about? I don't think that they take
it in in that way, while we humans do. And
(16:11):
so religion came up with or provided us a number
of ways of dealing with that. I mean, you know,
if you don't view death as the end, if you
view death as a stepping stone to another existence, another life,
well that certainly is is something that is deeply consoling.
Right if you think of death as one of a
(16:33):
cycle of births and death and rebirths, So that again
it's just part of this ongoing cyclical process that ultimately
will take it to some promised state of being, some
state of calm, nirvana, whatever you want to call it.
That's another powerful way of dealing with this realization. So
(16:53):
within almost every religion is some means of coping with death.
And that's why Steve even Jay Gould described religions as
originating in the realization of our own mortality. And to me,
it's a very powerful tool that some rely upon in
order to cope with a devastating recognition of mortality. And
(17:18):
do you see that as part of the the human
condition reflected in the pursuit of science as well? I do.
In a different way. We scientists are are driven to
understand where we came from, how we develop, how we evolve,
how the universe will evolve, or driven to find the
deep laws that undergird existence. And look, different scientists will
(17:41):
do this for different reasons, but I can speak personally.
I am driven at a fundamental level by the recognition
of the finite time that I have here, and I
deeply want to know as much as I can about
how I find myself in this predicament at all, and
I want to understand, and it's a beautiful story when
(18:04):
you understand it. How the Big Bank gave rise to galaxy, stars, planets,
and ultimately life. I deeply want to understand how life
emerge and how consciousness flourishes within certain of those living systems.
I mean, we are conscious beings and that's where our
footprint in reality has it's it's it's impact right without consciousness,
(18:28):
as as a number of great thinkers across the ages
have said, you've got nothing, and so deeply understanding the
sequence of events that led us to this place where
we can look out and wonder and ask questions and
and experience each other and experience beauty. To me in
the brief flash of time that I have here, I
(18:50):
want to understand that as fully as possible. So, you know,
there's this wonderful sociology social anthropologist Ernest Becker. I've had
a great impact on me back when I read his work,
and I guess it was the seventies and eighties, a
long time ago now. And you know he said in
a book called The Denial of Death that all of
human activity can be traced to trying to cope with
(19:15):
this realization that we have these minds that can soar
to the edge of the universe, and yet after a
century we are put into the ground and we're turned
into dust. That is a stunning collision of perspective, and
we struggle to make sense of it. All right, we
need to take a quick break, but we will be
(19:35):
right back with more thank and we're back in chapter seven,
Brains and Belief. You follow the evolution of religious thought
and you compare it to scientific investigation, specifically mathematics and physics.
Could you speak to the basic similarities as you see them,
between Eastern religious cosmologies and science, as well as where
(19:58):
the often popularized similarities in Well, that's right. So a
lot of people are fond of citing parallels between insights
that emerged from Eastern religions, Eastern philosophies, and things that
have emerged in science, and in fact, in the book
(20:19):
I described a little bit of how you know, My
older brother is Hari Krishna dev devotee and has been
for decades, and certainly in the early days of his
involvement in that practice, when we would talk about work
I was doing in cosmology or physics, it was not
(20:40):
infrequent for him to say to me how we already
know all that you know? It's in this or that
Vedic text, which I found both curious and frustrating at
the same time. And when I followed some of those
through I understood where he was coming from. There was
a resident of language and perspective that you do find
(21:04):
between some of the things that we seek and some
of the things that have been sought after by thinkers
throughout the ages. We asked similar questions. In science, we
answer those questions with mathematics and with experiment and with observation.
And that's the way in which we feel that we're
making progress. And we can write down an equation that
(21:26):
can predict things about the universe that happened, you know,
billions of years ago, and then we look out in
the night sky to see what we think should be
the remnant of those processes from thirteen billion years ago.
And when we see those things out in the night
sky today, we say, wow. We we we seem to
(21:46):
understand something may not be the full truth, but we're
heading towards truth. And and the issue with Eastern philosophy
and Eastern religions is much of it emerges from introspection,
from an inner journey to understand the human reaction to
the universe, and so the barometer of of success and
(22:07):
truth is quite different. The barometer of truth is, you know,
does it feel right? Does it seem that this gives
me a better sense of how I fit within the
wider world. Those are important questions, but they're different questions
from the ones that we answer or at least try
to answer in science. And I will stress right here
and this is vitally. I think both are crucial to
(22:30):
having a full experience of the world. If you stop
with understanding the objective world through the language of mathematics
and observation and experiment, that's all that you do. You've
cut off the dominant thing that makes us who we are,
which is our inner world, our inner experience. So I
think you really need to blend the insights from all
(22:51):
of these perspectives in order to have the fullest experience
of reality. In one of the early chapters of the book,
you mentioned as in the side that physicists to use
not just what they know, not just proven theories and
mathematical reasoning to drive their research focus, but also what
you call a hard to describe intuitive mathematical sensibility. Now,
(23:12):
I know you say it's hard to describe, but can
you talk anymore about this kind of physicist's intuition. Yeah,
I thought I was getting myself off the hook by
objecting the hard to explain there, but but I'll do
my best. When you're trained in the language of mathematics,
you acquire a sense of which mathematical sentences are good.
(23:36):
Ones are sharp, ones are effective, ones are economical, ones
are beautiful, ones are elegant ones. It's like in English,
like we all are trained in a natural language. I mean,
you and I both speak English, maybe speak other languages too,
but in English we can recognize those sentences that are
(23:57):
are special. Right. We can read Shakespeare here and we
recognize what a turn of phrase that was in king Lear.
Or we can read Whitman and say, wow, what a
collection of words to put together in that line of
that poem and say leaves of grass or whatever it
is that moves us. Similarly, we can do that as
(24:19):
as scientists, as as mathematicians. And what we have found,
and this is the danger this is the danger zone.
What we found over the years is that those mathematical
sentences that have the cleanest, most economical, widest explanatory reach,
with the fewest number of assumptions, the fewest number of
(24:41):
instructions other sentences that you need to combine them with
to make sense of them. They seem to be the
mathematical sentences that describe reality. And why I say that's
dangerous is because it could easily be that our mathematical
esthetic sensibility changes or time, so that those sentences and
(25:03):
math that have proven relevant to the world are the
ones that strike us as beautiful and elegant. It could
well be this feedback loop, and so you have to
be very careful using this approach in trying to go
forward and understanding things. But when you're doing your cutting
into research at the frontier of understanding, and you don't
(25:25):
have experiment and you don't have observation yet to guide you,
that mathematical aesthetic sense is what we often do make
use of in order to go forward. So you've at
times described yourself as a reductionist. In common usage, I
think this label is often a pejorative. It's um It's
what you call somebody when you mean that they're ignoring
(25:48):
important qualities, nuances, or context in the course of explaining something.
Obviously you don't mean it in this pejorative sense. So
what is the scientific project of reductionism and how does
it in fluence the way you see the world. Well,
the project is quite straightforward. It's attempting to reduce reductionism,
trying to reduce all physical phenomenon, matter, and the processes
(26:11):
that happen in the world, reduce them to their most
fundamental ingredients, the most fundamental constituents, and the fundamental laws
that govern how those constituents interact with each other, how
they come together into larger agglomerations that ultimately yield structures
like stars, desks, planets, microphones, computer screens, and everything else
that we experience in the world around us. Now, you're right,
(26:34):
the phrase reductionists is often used as a pejorative and
the reason for that is partly maybe one of our
own making. Sometimes we scientists, when we speak of reductionism,
we end the conversation with the reductionist perspective, as if
that's all you ever need to know to understand the
(26:57):
deep qualities of reality. What we really mean by that,
or again, maybe I should speak for myself. People have
different views. What I mean by that is the reductionist
account the ingredients, and the laws provides the rock bottom
substrate on which reality is then built. And I fully
do believe that everything, people to planets are nothing but
(27:22):
collections of particles, large collections governed by physical law. But
I also saying, exactly the same breath, with the same
level of intensity, that you need to invoke other layers
of description that are more appropriate to the kinds of
questions that may interest you at other layers of reality.
(27:43):
So the chemist comes along and says, yeah, you physicists,
you talk about those fundamental particles, but I want to
talk about things that the level of adams and molecules. Fantastic.
The biologists comes along and says, look, your physicists, your
chemists assure, but I want to talk about things with
the level of cells and organ ells and the prophecies
that are underlying life. And yes, that's the right language
(28:04):
and the right level of description to use. And the
psychologist comes along, and the neuroscientist comes along and says,
I want to understand things at the level of human experience,
like what's happening in the brain. And so those are
the ingredients, and that's the language that those scientists and
those thinkers will use, and then the philosophers and the
(28:24):
humanists come along and they say, great, you physicists and scientists,
you talk about the underlying structure. But I want to
talk about things like human reflection and love and grief
and achievement and aspiration and and all those things that
occur up here at the human level. And you should
use that language, and you should describe reality in those terms.
(28:47):
It wouldn't make any sense to talk about the experience
of grief at the level of atoms, molecules, particles, and
Maxwell's equations of electro magnetism, right, You wouldn't gain the
kind of insight that you want. But the point that
I make in the book is that these stories are
not distinct in the sense that the physicists reductions account
(29:10):
threads through all of those stories, and it can give
you surprising insights even up here at the human level.
I would never want to use it as a substitute
for Shakespeare, or for Rembrandt, or for Picasso, the or Beethoven,
the kinds of creations that deeply affect us as human beings.
(29:33):
I don't want to describe that in terms of molecules
and atoms, but in principle you could, and that in
principle can give you some insights into particular the issue
of free will and so so there are connections between
these stories. But if you leave out the upper levels
and you focus solely on the reductions account, you deserve
to use it as a pejorative because you're missing out
(29:55):
on so many other qualities that are better described in
different languages. Let's talk about entropy in the long term
fate of the universe. What is the fate ultimately of
beings that can think, Well, it's a question that we
can address at least under the assumption that our current
understanding of the laws of physics and our current understanding
(30:17):
of the matter that makes up reality, that that is
a good description that will continue to hold arbitrarily far
into the future. If it doesn't, then then radically different
things might happen, But we'll be shooting in the dark
with our current level of understanding to conjecture what those
alternative futures might be. So if you grant me that
(30:38):
that I can use my current understanding of things to
go forward, then you can show that roughly by about
ten to the fifty or so years from now, it's
a big number. Right, we're now about ten to the
ten years from the Big Bang, and that difference of
forty is in the exponent so it's not forty more years, right,
it's multiplying it by tent at the forty which is
(30:58):
a huge factor. So very very far in the future,
you can argue, as actually Freeman Dyson, great physicist, once did,
that the process of thought considered to be a process
of computation, and that's really what each individual thought is.
It's taking some inputs and it's yielding some outputs. That
physical process necessarily is an entropically increasing process. Second thermodynamics,
(31:25):
which means it necessarily yields waste heat, and that waste
heat needs to be admitted to the wider world. And
we do that all the time. Right. If you had
a nice infrared camera on me right now, in my head,
I'm thinking hard to answer your questions, and you'd see
the heat coming off of my head. Right. We know
that like the military infrared goggles, you know that imagery
that that you can see that heat emanating from biological source.
(31:49):
Now in the far future, you can argue that the
universe at some point will not be able to absorb
that heat, It will be kind of stuffed with as
much as it can hold, and at that point of
thinking being thinks one more thought, it will not be
able to admit the heat, so it will burn up
in the entropic waste generated by the very process of
(32:10):
thought itself. So that's the sense in which thought will
come to an end under the assumptions that we're making.
Thought is not something that will be able to last
into eternity. And does that does that change the way
you or or affect the way you view the you know,
our current lives. What does that make what we do
(32:31):
you know, pointless? Or does it make what we do
more beautiful? I know you get into this a little
bit in the book. I do, and in many ways
it's the main point of the whole narrative is to
address that question. Because a natural reaction certainly is, you know,
if it's all going to go away, if matter is
going to disintegrate, if everythinking being will ultimately I think
(32:57):
it's final thought, then what's the point of it all?
Because I think many of us, and certainly I for
a long time, even if implicitly imagine that the importance
of a life or thinking personally in my own life
is that I'd leave some kind of mark, some kind
(33:17):
of legacy, either through my family and my kids, or
maybe through my work or through some kind of interaction
that would continue to ripple through the unfolding of the future,
having less and less impact over time, but nevertheless still
having an imprint out there, even if just in some
(33:40):
modest implicit way. But if there's no thinking beings left
in the far future, like like, what's the point? And
I went through a dark period in my own life
coming into terms with this question, but ultimately had kind
of I don't I don't know what the right word is.
An epiphany, uh, spiritual moment. I'm not sure what the
(34:04):
right language is. But there was a moment when I
kind of shifted my perspective radically and quickly to the
recognition that it's actually more powerful to recognize that we
have this little cosmic oasis in the unfolding of the
universe in which living beings and thinking beings can exist.
(34:25):
It's as if the universe rises up for a brief
moment and is able to look around and contemplate itself,
and we are the beings that allow that contemplation to
take place, and when you do that contemplation and recognize
that you are the result of quantum processes stretching back
to the beginning, each of which that could have turned
(34:45):
out like that way instead of this yielding a world
in which we would not be here. You recognize it's
astonishing that we are here, against astounding odds, we exist.
And it's even more than that. We are these special
collections that can think and reflect, and we can we
can do things right. We can have these conversations, we
(35:06):
can join into powerful coalitions that can do things that
the individual would be unable to write. We can build
the pyramids, we can we can write Beethoven's ninth cent
And if you allow us to take credit as a
species right, we we can figure out the equations of
quantum mechanics, the equations of the general theory of relativity,
(35:27):
allowing us to figure out all these qualities of the universe.
And to me, that just fills me with gratitude for
being here at all. So, rather than sort of looking
to the future or looking to some deity to bestow
meaning upon us, we recognize that we are empowered to
find our own meaning. That's the only place that meaning
(35:47):
is going to come from and when we do come
to terms with what matters to us in the here
and now, it's a more powerful version of meaning because
it's organic, it comes from ourselves. We manufacture it, for sure.
But how wonderful that we can manufacture it. How wonderful
that the collection of particles can ask these questions and
(36:09):
come to answers, even if our presence in the universe
is fleeting. It's such a powerful sentiment, such a powerful
view of things. I mean, it's the one century. But
but but even like specifically to what everyone is going
through right now, I think, yeah, for sure, I mean,
we are in an astonishing, devastating, painful, tragic era right
(36:37):
now that we hope will pass, of course, But I
do find solace in taking this cosmic perspective. It doesn't
take away the pain. Nothing will you lose a loved one,
Nothing will take away that pain. Time can sometimes heal,
but nothing can or should take away that pain. But
(36:58):
if at the same time, you can take a step
back and see the cosmic perspective, recognize that there is
this little piece of the cosmos that we inhabit in
both space and time, And how wondrous that is. I
think there's a degree of solace. Doesn't take away the tragedy,
(37:20):
but there's a degree of solace that that can provide,
which I think is quite powerful. All Right, we need
to take a quick break, but we will be right
back with more. And we're back now. You're, of course
the the co founder of the World Science Festival. Uh,
something that I look forward to every year. Such a
wonderful collection of great minds coming together to discuss scientific topics. Um.
(37:46):
But of course you had to make a very understandable
call to cancel the live portions of the through May
one event this year. Can can you touch on on
what the current or emerging plans are for for online presentations? Well,
the idea is to see this as both a challenge
(38:06):
an opportunity for the festival to create a new kind
of program. And what really distinguished us, say thirteen years
ago when we began the live Festival. At that time
there was not as much live event focus as there
is today, and we were kind of a pioneer in
(38:27):
taking ideas that are normally viewed as sort of abstract
and not for general consumption, and through the clever and
powerful production techniques of Tracy Day, the other co founder
who really cut her teeth in some of the best
broadcast television, you know, from Nightline and programs on CNN
(38:50):
and things of that sort. To take those techniques and
to create live programming that people would totally be immersed
even if they had no background in homology or neuroscience
or astronomy or you know, personalized medicine, you know, topics
across the board. So now we're changing gears and trying
(39:11):
to find a new way of doing digital programming that
will inject that same kind of creative focus to bring
these intellectual ideas out to the public. And you know,
independent of the current crisis. We began this already, so
we feel like we're well equipped to do so. We
had I don't know if you saw it, but last
(39:31):
maybe we had a special on PBS. It was our
first broadcast special. It was a live theatrical exploration of
Einstein's discovery of the general theory of relativity. And you know,
we teamed up with some of the greatest artists in
the live theatrical space, together with great performances on PBS,
(39:51):
to film in a manner a live presentation that would
work on a two dimensional screen and through interesting visual
and through a powerful musical score, and through taking the
ideas of general relativity and making them widely accessible, I
think we've created a very different experience of ein science discovery.
So that's the direction that we're head not with that
(40:14):
level of production for every event that will put online,
for sure, but that's our thinking to inject a new
level of creativity into online programming dealing with scientific subjects.
That's awesome because that's that's that's one of the things
I really love about the World Sciencestival every years that
you you know, you you bring in art, you bring
in music, and then in terms of the all these
(40:34):
great minds that come together to discuss it. You know,
you're bringing in you know, scientist, biologist, physicists. You know
you're bringing in occasionally philosophers or even the theologian thrown
into the mix to tackle these these you know, at
times just staggering questions about the cosmos and the human condition.
Exactly right, Yes, that's that's the philosophy, and you know,
(40:55):
to to bring together great thinkers that don't often talk
to each other, and to structure the conversation in a
way that the novice can feel that they're part of
the exploration. Now you you launched a web series on
March I Believe Your Daily Equation, which is available via
World Science Festival dot com but also the World Science
(41:16):
Festival YouTube page. Can you discuss your inspiration for this
series and and just tell us how it's been going. Well,
it was just a lark off the top of the head.
We're having a conversation one day about you know, typically
World Science Festival programs involve a lot of productions. It
takes a long time to create them. And I said, well,
(41:37):
now there's an opportunity to go to the other direction.
What if I just turned on my my webcam thing
and just each day talk about a new equation and
we're like, yeah, sure, why not go for it? So
so that's all it is. So there's literally no production.
I film it right here and each day I just
think about, Hey, what what equation would be kind of
(42:00):
and to describe to somebody who likes the ideas of
science but math is not really their thing, but they
might get a kick out of seeing the actual symbols
that are behind the scenes and gaining a quick understanding
of what they are. So we started with equals MC squared.
How could you not? So I sort of explain that,
(42:20):
and then did a bunch of equations in relativity time
slowing down lengths being contracted for an object in motion.
And then I've moved on to quantum mechanics. So I've
been sort of doing the very basic equations of quantumic
acts and I find it fun. And you know, the
audience that is sticking with me. You know, daily equation
(42:42):
is not exactly the title that may appeal to the
mass of public out there, but there are there are
people for whom that idea is a kick, And I
think we're all just having a good time, and it's
a sense of a little sense of community, a sense
of a small group of folks who come together each
day just to put the news to the side, put
(43:04):
all the difficult stuff to the side, and just think
about these simple, beautiful equations that touch on things that
transcend all of us. Yeah, that's great. We we do
really need content like that right now. Um On, on
the other hand, do do you feel that the world's
current struggle with the pandemic Do you think it's it's
it's it has sharpened or is sharpening the public's appreciation
(43:28):
for science and the importance of science communication. Well, I'd
like to say yes, but my experience is that even
in the face of great tragedy, when it passes, people
tend to revert to their more conventional ways of thinking
about things. And it is awful that we have leaders.
(43:51):
And this is the main thing. It's all of that
we've leaders who for the past number of years have
been casting a spurs is on science, detegrating scientists and
substituting opinion for observation, fact, data, and analysis. That I
hope will change. But the easiest way to change that,
(44:13):
of course, is a change of leadership, because most leaders
of the world recognize that power that science provides us
for figuring out the right path forward on a variety
of issues that will determine our fate. And it's just
tragic that there are leaders who don't think that way.
All right, Well, the book is until the end of time.
(44:36):
It's it's out now, and yeah, I just want to
just drive home just how how wonderful this book is.
We're just really thrilled to help, at least in some
small way, boost the signal on this one, that you know,
let our listeners know that they should they should check
it out. It's just it's just really excellent. Thank you, Brian.
Thanks for taking time out of your data to chat
with me. This has been a pleasure. Thank you very much.
(44:58):
Enjoyed it all right, So there you have it. Thanks
again to Brian Green for dropping by the show to
discuss his new book, Until the End of Time, Mind
Matter in Our Search for Meaning in Evolving Universe. It's
it's a brand new book just came out here in
available I believe in pretty much all formats right now.
(45:19):
So if you want to listen to it, if you
want to read it, uh digitally or in a physical copy,
you should be able to get your hands on it. Yeah.
I really enjoyed this one, and I think you will too. Yeah,
and keep an eye on World Science Festival because, like
Brian said, they're gonna be busting out some some online
content this year. So the same sort of great discussions
(45:41):
that they've had in previous years they're going to offer again,
but of course, due to our current circumstances, is going
to be in a slightly altered form. In the meantime,
if you would like to check out other episodes of
Stuff to Blow your mind, you can find us wherever
you get your podcast and wherever that happens to be.
Just make sure that you rate your review and you
subscribe huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer
(46:03):
Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in
touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hi,
you can email us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow your Mind is
(46:23):
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