- Good evening, I'm Steve Cohen,
professor at Columbia School
of International and Public Affairs
and Vice Dean of Columbia
School of Professional Studies.
Welcome to the second event
in our Ideas Exchange series this summer,
for those of you who joined us
for the last event, welcome back.
For those who are joining
for the first time,
I'll offer a brief introduction.
The Ideas Exchange is a unique program
we created out of our
recognition that so much
of what makes Columbia University special
is being part of the community and joining
the lively conversations that take place
between our faculty, our
students, alumni and friends.
The pandemic has meant we are
required to be off campus.
As much as we love our
campus is as important
as places people are more important,
buildings and facilities are
important with who we are,
is more important than where we are.
That's why this summer a
number of our top faculty
are both teaching and participating
in these special conversations
about their work,
its impact and how this pandemic
is influencing all of us.
For more information on
all the exciting events
and courses in Colombia this summer,
please visit summer dot
sps dot columbia dot edu.
That's my shameless pitch.
We're extremely fortunate to
have Professor Brian Greene
teaching a course this summer
and appearing here tonight.
It's really a unique opportunity
for Columbia students,
and all of us to tour the
history of time in the universe.
And here, Dr. Green discusses pathbreaking
and best selling book
Until The End Of Time.
Tonight, Professor green
will be interviewed
by Faith Sailie, the Emmy
Award winning journalist
who regularly appears on
NPR Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!
Tonight's guests will have
a conversation that traces
what we know about the
evolution of the universe,
and how the human search
for meaning straddles
both scientific endeavor
and the very human impulse
to find meaning to art,
philosophy and religion.
So with that, I'll turn to Faith
to begin tonight's discussion.
- Thank you so much Steven.
Brian, I'm now unmuted
thank you so much Steven
Brian I, behind Stephen in the background
because he's in New York
City, as am I and behind me
in the background, I hear the
7:00pm clap in New York City,
which is, what we do
for essential workers.
And it really reminds me that
we are in this very specific
moment of time, and your book, of course,
is called Until The End Of Time.
And it's been on my bedside,
which serves as my desk these
days for a little while now.
And I have to confess
that the title started
to have new resonance for me
after 12 weeks in lockdown.
And I wonder how has
your sheltering in place
wherever you are been and has time
taken on any kind of
a new meaning for you?
- Well, I think certain
aspects of time certainly have.
We have long known that we
are deeply social species,
I've long known that in an abstract sense.
But when you are cut off in a social sense
from the rest of the species,
it makes the need for that
kind of human contact,
all the more apparent.
And so to me, it really
serves to emphasize
at least in my mind, the kinds
of forces that are at work
driving us to be the species
the people that we are,
so much of what we do is driven
by the capacity of groups
of individuals to accomplish
things that individuals cannot.
So much of what we do is driven
by the need to communicate
so that the group can behave
in a much more effective way
than it otherwise would be able to.
And once you have the
means of communication
once you have language,
then things explode
in the history of the species.
So all of it is driven by
the need to have these deep
connections with those
who are in your group,
and that's exactly what we are
being denied at the moment.
So yeah, so there's a deep resonance
with many of the themes that
I developed in the book.
- And, you know, you've talked
about the need to connect,
I wonder how often do you
teach a summer course,
which is what you're doing now?
This is very special thing, right?
- No, I've never taught a summer course
and it felt to me like
the relevant time to do so
because what we want to
be clear is that yeah,
a lot of the world has had
to stop for good reason
for the preservation of the species,
but the vibrancy of the human
search for understanding
for meaning to get together in groups
and discuss ideas that matter to us.
That to me is a vital part of what we do
and to play small part in
that by having a summer course
where folks students can come
together and really think
about these ideas struck me
as something that in its own
small way would be a
contribution to trying to get us
to a place of normalcy
as the word is often used
but a place of being able to
get to the kinds of things
that matter to us, even in a situation
where we're being denied for good reason,
that typical kind of
freedoms that we enjoy.
- And I suspect for you as
someone who loves to teach
and connect with people this
is also feeling your soul
it's not you know--
- Yeah.
People showing up for this are probably
helping feel you as well.
And I do wonna give a warm welcome
to the whole Columbia community,
and especially the students
in your classes summer, I
think right now watching us
this kind of their homework
for tonight, right?
- Yeah, if they're not here
then both they're in trouble.
- Now, you can't tell them
what to wear to attend this,
but yeah
- Exactly.
- So yeah this summer courses
is basically an opportunity
to tour your new book with, you know,
it's the entire history of the universe
with you as a tour guide.
So how does this course differ from others
that you might teach in the
math and physics departments?
- Well, I think a way of
going about addressing
that question is to note
that while I was writing
Until The End Of Time,
I was teaching a version
of the course that I'm teaching right now
to students at Columbia.
- And what was that
course called first draft?
- (laughs) Yeah well, it's
funny, the students did not know
that I was in the process
of writing a book.
But for me, it was indeed an opportunity
to have young, curious, energetic,
often very independent minds,
responding to the kinds
of ideas that I was
developing in the book.
So It was a very useful
thing to have that kind
of ongoing conversation.
And I have to say that teaching
this material to students,
for me has been a radically
different experience
than any other teaching I have ever done.
Normally, when I teach a
course in quantum mechanics
or general relativity
or quantum field theory,
what is the goal?
The goal is, I want the
kids to get a technical
understanding of certain
equations, be able to solve them,
be able to analyze them,
and in that way gain this technology,
this mathematical technology
for solving and making headway
on certain kinds of problems.
This course is completely
different because in this book,
the goal is not to gain
technical proficiency
is to really think through
what fundamental science
can tell us, about the nature of the world
and about the nature of our lives.
Fundamental science is one story,
among a whole collection of nested stories
that read upon Schrodinger equation
and Einstein's field equations,
but build upon it in a language
more relevant to things
that matter to us every day,
I mean, the chemist takes
the physicists ideas,
so to speak, and builds
them into molecules,
the biologist takes that
and builds it into cells,
you go further, and of
course, the psychologists
and neuroscientists
understands or works toward
an understanding of how
the cells come together
inside a human brain.
And once the human brain has
conscious self reflection,
then we need to tell
stories in that language,
the language that allows us
to understand why we think
and feel why we have certain
reactions to the world.
And why it is that we engage
in certain kinds of behaviors,
given that ultimately, we
are just bags of particles
governed by physical law.
And that story is one that
I have found affects people
affects students in a very different way
from solving Schrodinger equation.
- Does that mean that
in this type of a class
there are more hands in the air,
there's more of a ratio of
hearing your students speak
or ask questions than there
is of their, you know,
truly listening to you?
- Sometimes yes sometimes no,
that's an interesting
sociological question
about dynamics in a classroom.
If you have some students
that are really willing
to break the ice and ask those questions,
then it can change the dynamic completely.
But I view that more as a
function of the students
that happen to be there in a given term.
Rather, the different reaction that I find
is not so much the number of
hands that go into the air,
but rather, I've never
had students when I teach
quantum mechanics come into
my office and break down.
I've never had students
come into my office
when I teach quantum mechanics and say,
you're kind of shaking my
world a little bit here.
And that reaction where
students are willing
to rethink things that
they have been living
say for 20 years since
they were young kids,
their philosophical
outward, their theological,
their religious outlook,
the question of what really matters,
those kinds of issues come to the fore
when you're trying to probe
deeply into why things
are the way they are,
and how things got to be
the way they currently are,
and what things would be like,
in the far, far future.
And when you recognize and
perhaps we'll talk about here,
that everything ultimately disintegrates,
everything falls apart,
all life, all mine,
everything is gone, if
it goes sufficiently far
in the future that can affect
your sense of what matters.
- Is that I mean, it's astonishing to hear
that this course elicits
such emotional reactions
from your students.
I mean, it elicited emotional
reactions from me as a reader.
And I wonder if, I
mean, you just gave away
the big headline, right,
the good news, bad news.
The bad news is, as you say,
you know everything in time,
how do you say it?
You said it in its fullness will die,
right life in its fullness will die.
Good news is, essentially you're saying,
well, we're here now let's embrace that.
Is that what you wanted
people to come away from?
When they finished this book,
what did you want to
effect in your readers?
- Well, I wanted people to
have the grandest possible
perspective on reality
by telling the largest possible story,
which is the universe from
our best understanding
of how it began to our best understanding
of how it will conclude.
And I think seeing your life within
that grand cosmological unfolding,
changes the nature of
your view of yourself
and your view of the world.
And I would say that your
summary is a pretty good one.
It's not meant to be
an original statement.
We've been hearing from
philosophers and sages
mindfulness teachers across the ages
that you need to live in the moment
is the language that's used,
you need to focus on the
here and now that's the stuff
that really matters, right.
And, so many people have
come to this conclusion,
the way I get to this
conclusion in this book
is by a very different route.
It's by telling this cosmological story,
which when you take it fully to heart,
I think is very convincing
in that looking outward
to the universe, and
looking to leaving a legacy
and looking toward things
that will last all of
those things that drive
the human spirit, are ultimately baseless.
And when you recognize
that it focuses your brain
and focus your attention
in a different way,
rather than looking out to the universe
to find meaning and purpose,
rather than looking to the future,
to leave legacy and then that way,
have some sort of impact on how reality
will be, you recognize
that what really matters
is the here and now.
It's just getting there
from a very different route.
- I feel like you should
be the guest lecturer
in the French lit department
for their existentialism course, right.
- Well--
- That's Sartre.
- Well, it is, and those
are the deep influences
on me throughout my life.
I mean, not in this book,
but in a book called Fabric of the Cosmos
that I wrote some years ago.
I tell a story in the very first page
of grabbing off my dad's bookshelf,
The Myth of Sisyphus and reading
what Camus says in there,
and the very first line of
that book is on something like
the only true philosophical
question is that of suicide,
right, is it worth
carrying on in this life?
And certainly the existential perspective,
which I encountered by
chance as a young kid
reading that book and have
immersed myself in ever since,
is a deep part of my thinking.
I however, like Camus in that book,
he says something to the effect
of whether the world has six
or nine dimensions.
I'm not getting exactly right.
Whether the brain has 12 components
doesn't matter only thing that
matters is life worth living.
And my view is quite different from that.
Whether the world has
six or nine dimensions,
whether the brain has 12 categories,
whether the structure of
reality is what we think it is,
or whether it is not what
we think it is, does matter.
How can you judge the value of life
if you are placing that life in reality
you don't understand?
Right when a fish is trying to think
about the nature of life,
a very limited perspective,
because the fish never leaves the water.
Maybe they maybe the fish look at us
and say look at those silly humans,
right they think that
we don't know anything
about but you know, putting
that possibly to the side.
If you don't know the
full nature of reality,
I don't think you can
answer Camus question.
So part of why I do
physics is to try to gain
the deepest understanding
of what reality is.
And questions of the number
of dimensions of space
does come into that story.
Even though Camus sort
of put that to the side
as a secondary issue that
ultimately needs to be subservient
to the question of the value of life,
I think they're on par.
- You mentioned Sisyphus
and Sisyphean is a word
we use a lot in my house
because I've two little kids.
And every time we're cleaning out,
we just say the Sisyphean or lately,
a lot of times we've been saying entropic
and there's a lot of entropy in your book.
And it's I mean, that is
part of the hard science
that you kind of use to lay the foundation
to then in your book talk
about language and belief
and religion and our brains.
And I wonna talk about what you call
the entropic two step
because you say that these two things
entropy and evolution
are great dance partners.
And while entropy, you know,
degrades and creates disorder
and evolution creates order and builds,
they still somehow push us forward.
Can you explain that?
- Yeah, so you're right,
the idea of entropy
and the second law of
thermodynamics is this notion
that physical systems have
an overwhelming tendency
to go from an ordered
state to a disordered state
from a structured state to a state
in which this structure has disintegrated,
that kind of withering away.
We understand well as the natural tendency
of matter that's made up of particles
that are randomly jiggling about.
And so we're that to be
the only dominant force
guiding the patterns of reality,
then you would think
that we would just head
toward oblivion pretty quickly,
right, disintegration is
the tendency of all matter,
and therefore it all will fall apart.
But what fights against that,
at least for a period
of time is evolution.
And by evolution, I don't
just mean the version
that many of us learn and say,
high school biology class,
which kicks in once there's life.
The idea of evolution by natural selection
is a much more general phenomenon.
People have known this for a long time.
Even individual molecules
that learn the trick of replication,
making copies of themselves,
they are subject to natural selection,
those molecules that are
better able at having children
better able and making
copies of themselves
will grab more resources
from the natural environment,
and therefore those
molecules will dominate
the molecular demographics.
And when those molecules replicate,
and there's a little error
or change, they mutate.
If the mutation is even better
at making copies of itself,
it will dominate there's
a kind of chemical combat
that takes place.
At the level of molecules, not
the level of living systems,
the level of molecules that
tends to refine their structure,
so they become better able to survive,
to grab material from the environment
within which they are immersed.
So that tendency is toward
building up organization,
building up order.
So you've got evolution
going in one direction,
building ever more refined structures,
you've got entropy going
the other direction,
tending to degrade those structures.
And what we are, we are systems that exist
for a brief period of time,
in which we are able
to stave off the drive
toward ever greater
disorder, the entropic drive
and maintain our orderly state
for the duration of our lives
and when we are no
longer able to stave off
entropic decay that is when we end
and indeed that process is mirrored right
throughout the cosmos.
Sun stars galaxies--
- When entropy will win?
- Entropy will always win.
- Why entropy, why is there entropy?
Why do things always have
to eventually degrade?
- Well, it's actually a very simple idea
that can be made mathematically rigorous.
The mathematical rigor is what makes
it more complicated to understand.
But when you realize
that entropy is nothing
but the number of rearrangements
of the ingredients
in a system that leave it
pretty much looking the same,
then you realize that the tendency
to go toward systems in which
there ever more rearrangements
is a dominant force in the world.
I mean, an example in fact,
i just gave this to my class.
If you're walking along a beach
and you pick up a handful of sand,
you throw it in the air,
it lands on the beach.
Do you think that the beach looks
any different because of that?
Of course not, it was
disordered collection of sand.
You threw it up in the air
and it was still a
disordered collection of sand
high entropy ordinary situation.
But to get non high entropy,
ordered situations, that's hard.
You have to have the
ingredients come together
in a manner that's so
precise and so organized
in its structure that it
requires a delicate balance
of forces to emerge for that
system to come into existence.
So if you're, for instance,
talking about any orderly
system, like a crystal,
all parts of the crystal are arranged
in a nice repeating pattern and I said,
repeating pattern that is difficult
or more unusual to happen in
a world in which particles
are just randomly moving about.
- It's so rare and you make
so many allusions to the arts
in your book that as you
were describing that,
I keep thinking about,
that's why we go see ballet.
That's why we go see bodies
moving precisely together,
for a moment in time
and we leave to our feet
and applaud it because it is so rare.
- Yeah, and then that's right.
So the organized nature of creations
that we value is certainly
part of the reason
why we're drawn toward them.
There are other reasons too,
that we are drawn I mean
it's a controversial subject,
why we create art.
And if you think about
our ancient forebears,
and there's evidence
that artistic pursuits
were undertaken way back
in the ancestral past,
why would one of our ancestors
spend time energy resources
on an activity that doesn't
seem to have any survival
value associated with it?
And you know, there are
different views on this.
Steven Pinker famously
described the arts in some sense
as cheesecake of the
mind, you know, our minds,
are well suited to take in certain kinds
of stimuli in the natural world,
and that does help us to survive
and with the art to do
it sort of preys upon
our natural sensitivities
and overwhelms them
with like a cheesecake,
like experience that just,
you know, gets us all zipped up and wild
for this kind of stimulation--
- Yeah.
- Exactly, I mean, those of our forebears
who learned to eat nuts
and ripened fruits,
they're the ones that had enough calories
to survive when times turned lean.
But now that tendency of
ours to like sweets and fats,
well, you know, you go eat some,
Haagen, dazs, pistachio,
or we don't consider
that to be a health promoter
in the current environment.
Rather, it's preying upon
that earlier sensitivity
that did help us and maybe the arts
are like that this is action
is but some, you know,
my view, which I'm convinced
by a number of people
who talk about these
ideas, my view is look,
the arts, that's a playground of the mind.
That's a place where we
develop the most exquisite
ingenuity and innovation that's
where the creative juices
are given their free rein,
and it's those creative
juices that ultimately
have allowed us to survive.
It's our ability to
problem solve in unusual,
spectacularly unusual ways,
which is why we are here.
I mean, I like to think
if there were two races,
you know, human beings and
let's say a Spock, like race,
you know, very logical, don't do anything
that isn't sort of logically justifiable.
I think we would win out.
I think we went out because
the logical approach
won't go on those wild flights of fancy
that yield unexpected insights
into the nature of the world.
- And yet, science it's not binary, right
It's not that science is
not creative or imaginative
in the arts are you're not
saying science is not creative,
even though it's logical, right.
- Absolutely not I mean,
the greatest breakthroughs
in the book, I sort of describe Einstein
as that clinical example, you know,
Einstein had this capacity
to just look out in the world
and undertake the most
unexpected rearrangements
of the concepts that we had
to understand that world.
You know, this wonderful
quote of Glenn Gould,
when he talks about why the music of Bach
is so moving to him and
of course to others,
and he describes how in a
Bach few have the ability
to rearrange the harmonic progressions
in a whole spectacular range
of ways that are still deeply
appealing and deeply moving.
It's that rearrangement of
the patterns of the music
that gives those works their grand year
and Einstein did the same
thing, rearranging not notes
he was rearranging the
concepts of space and time
and speed and light, and he
rearranged them in a manner
that ultimately reflected reality better
than anything that came before
and that kind of rearrangement,
it's an artistic rearrangement.
It's a flight of creative
energy that you can't
I don't think you can
be well, look, you could
but I don't really see the way
that you'd be logically
lead to that answer.
I mean, obviously, you
ultimately you could,
but Einstein just had
this capacity to look out
and rearrange and say,
there's the right pattern,
there's the pattern that feels right.
He works out the mathematics behind it.
And in that way, makes predictions I mean,
Einstein was able to come up with ideas
pictorially put the math to them later
and then they're tested in the right.
- You have, I mean, while
we're sort of talking
about the arts and humanities,
you have this chapter
called language and story
and you examine how we use
stories to you say explode
the limits of are narrow experiences
and you quote Charlotte's web, you say,
and we can marvel at how a
carefully arranged collection
of grunts and glides
and fricatives and stops
can convey insight into the
nature of space and time
or provide an effective
portrait of love and death.
And this is quote, Wilbur
never forgot Charlotte,
although he loved her children
and grandchildren dearly.
None of the new spiders ever quite
took her place in his heart.
And the last time I read those
words, Brian was a year ago
to my little kids, one of them on my lap,
and I started sobbing,
not just like this kind
of middle aged mom weeping,
but like sobbing so that
they were clinging to me
and trying to comfort me.
And it made me wonder,
you know, you talk about
the elegance and the romance
of mathematics and you talk with passion
bout Einstein creativity has
something in math or physics
or theory ever elicited that kind
of emotional response in you?
- Yeah, without a doubt, you know
well, first I'll say By the way,
the Charlotte's web quote,
like I have to hold back every
time I hear those words too.
I mean, there's certain kinds
of descriptions of the world
that are so simple and so beautiful,
that they just reach you
in a very deep place.
And for me, and obviously,
for you, that is one,
but from the math and
physics side of things
I had this deep urge to
learn the general theory
of relativity when I got to college,
and I didn't have the preparation for it.
So I just went to the
bookstore and bought a textbook
on the general theory of relativity.
And this is true.
I mean, I would walk around
with that book with me
all the time, and sometimes
I'd sort of caress the surface.
You know, I so wanted
to understand that book.
It was the Weinberg's book
principles and applications
of the general theory of relativity,
and it was some years later, finally,
that I could understand what was in there.
And when I finally got to
the Einstein field equations
that I'd sort of seen for a long period,
I didn't know what it meant,
when I finally understood what it meant,
yeah, it affected me, in the same way.
This brilliant simple equation
Rmu minus a half Gmu R equals
eight pie Gmu c four Tvmu
that simple little mathematical formula
describing the evolution of the universe,
the Big Bang, the
formation of black holes,
why, starlight goes on a clear trajectory
as it goes near the sun.
I mean, these kinds of insights
in that simple collection
of symbols, you know,
- I love that it's simple to you.
But when you did have that moment
where it made sense for you.
It was very emotional?
- Yeah, for sure.
You know, because you
feel like you have finally
seen a deep truth that's out
there, but was inaccessible.
And of course, that was
a truth that Einstein
revealed to the world.
But you know, there have been moments
and they're very few, unfortunately.
But that's the fact of life
of being immortal in a world
that every so often has
a giant like an Einstein.
But, you know, in my
own world on occasion,
when I've come upon a result
that no one has seen before
no one anticipated before
yeah, there can be an emotional
sense of that as well.
Because even though the
insight is nowhere near
the kind of impact of Einstein's equation,
the general theory of relativity
when you come upon something new,
that nobody knows before,
and you feel as though you
and the universe are embracing
for a moment that you're seeing something
that nobody else has yet seen.
Yeah, there's a deep
emotional sense of connection
that's hard to achieve in any other way.
- Do you think we're
missing a general sense
of all these days as a culture?
- It's always hard to generalize
because there are many great teachers
who able to inspire that
sense of awe and students.
There are many students around the world
and many researchers around the world
who regularly feel that sense of awe
and they value that sense
of awe but of course,
if we move away from that to
the the general sense of say,
where America is at the moment
where some other countries
are at the moment,
yeah, there's been this turn
away from the deep insights
that expertise can reveal and
a kind of flattening of things
to a general consensus
where every opinion matters
and some things, every opinion matters.
But on some other things,
every opinion does not matter.
On other things, the truth matters,
and the truth is so deep and
so moving, and so spectacular
if you're willing to put a
little effort in to seeing
what that truth is, I mean,
I've spoken about ideas
of cosmology and black holes to kids,
for instance, who thought
they hated science.
And then to see them have their eyes open
in a very different way.
And to recognize the look in
their eyes where they say,
wow, that's cool.
There's the awe that you're referring to.
Yeah, there's, something
quite special about that,
and overall, I would agree
that there's nowhere near
enough of that happening.
- There is something
especially in these days
of what you suggest everyone thinking
his or her opinion matters
or there is something awesome
about some always being true.
Always, this is always true.
This is I mean for you, this is math
like this is the language.
This is the beauty,
this is the romance that you describe.
I am curious, though, about
how much of this big picture
stuff that scientists are still debating.
I mean, what are the big
unknowns that still drive
and motivate physics and cosmology today?
- Well, many of the big unknown
are the ones that have been
at the forefront of
motivation for a long time,
but we've long known they were
out of reach and would likely
be out of reach for some time,
we still do not know
how the universe began.
We have insight into
how the universe evolved
from a split second after the beginning.
- Wait, so Big Bang is not
something everyone agrees on?
- Well, you see, Big Bang is
a theory not of cosmic origin.
It's a theory of cosmic evolution
is a theory of how the cosmos changed
from a split second after
it came into existence.
That's really what the Big Bang tells us.
It doesn't actually tell us
why there is something
rather than nothing.
It doesn't tell us why there
were the conditions necessary
for the rapid swelling of space,
which is what the Big Bang is,
that rapid swelling of space,
why did it happen?
And we've gone further back,
and there's the inflationary theory
that at least goes some
sense of what force
pushed everything apart.
But why were the conditions
right for that force
to be there?
Why were space and time in existence?
So these kinds
of very deep questions--
- Wait
what think hold on?
What do you think?
- I don't have any I don't
know if I'd be writing
the paper right now.
I mean, these are ideas
that we struggle with,
and people try to make headway
with ever more sophisticated
approaches like string theory
and approach that tries
to put gravity and quantum
mechanics together.
For years, I was beating on
string theory to try to gain
deeper insight into cosmology,
the evolution of the universe
and sure we had some
results and some progress,
but question is as unresolved today,
as it has always been, and it
may be one of those questions
that resists solution for a long time,
maybe till the end, I don't know.
- So, if there isn't an
agreement about how it all began,
does everyone agree that
there is an end to time
is that scientifically,
something that's agreed upon,
it's all gonna go?
- Well, it all depends on precisely
what one means by the end of time.
So in the book, you may know
toward the later chapters,
I describe how structures
that we are familiar with,
will come to an end I
describe how life how planets,
how stars will come to an end,
I even describe how
consciousness as a phenomenon
will likely come to an
end because going back
to our discussion of entropy
thought itself as a physical process,
that physical process generally entropy
generates heat generates this order.
And in about 10 to the 50 years,
the universe will be unable
to absorb the disorder associated
with even a single fault.
So if a think--
- How far away is this?
- About 10 to the 50 years,
and so it's a long time for
that, but what will happen
there is any thinking
being that still exists
when they think one more thought
they will fry they will burn they will die
in the heat generated by the
very process of thought itself.
So these are ends of familiar things,
but whether time itself comes to an end,
whether the overarching
structure space and time
is such that it only has a finite duration
that's highly controversial.
And in the book, I describe
a number of scenarios
that maybe space continues
to expand forever
and maybe space expands and comes back
and the universe undergoes
a cyclical process
of birth, death and rebirth.
So there's a lot of
discussion and argument
about what will happen in the far future
but as far as the structures
in the universe are concerned,
most everyone agrees that they
will have a finite duration
that they will die.
- The structure as well,
but the universe will not?
- Yeah, that's right.
So it's conceivable that it could restart
in the very far future.
Quantum mechanics is a very
interesting way of describing
the world because within
quantum mechanics,
anything that has a nonzero
probability of taking place,
not forbidden by the laws,
but even if it's highly unlikely,
if you wait long enough,
even the most unlikely things will happen.
So if there is a nonzero
chance of the universe,
restarting in some sense,
and there is according
to our best understanding,
then if you wait long enough,
if space and time themselves persist,
then the universe could restart.
- You know, in your book
when you discuss the Big Bang
and the theory I was surprised
to know that it was conceived
articulated by a Jesuit priest
at named George Lemaitre, right?
- Yes you've said that much better
than I could so thank you.
- Massey so I was struck by
the fact that he was presumably
a spiritual man and man of religion,
working with this arcane science.
And you talk about there's
a fact I love the chapter
in your book called brains and belief.
And I wonder about your
relationship with religion
and can one like George Lemaitre
have like fully understand
and believe a physicists
view of the universe
and have some kind of belief
in a higher being of any kind.
Does that happen?
Do you know without Lemaitre?
- It does happen and in fact, years ago,
I was invited to seminar,
I think was called science
in the spiritual quest.
And it was described to me as a number
of high level scientists that
in a closed door setting,
were going to be open and free
about their religious beliefs.
And I was like, yeah, that'd
be interesting to go to,
I assumed that all of us would
have the same perspective.
Right, my perspective is sure,
it's possible that
there is a higher being,
my perspective is there can be value
to having a belief in a higher being.
But my view is that the
world is not governed
by a higher being.
My view is that it's
ultimately the laws of physics
acting on the particles.
I have a very straightforward scientific
physicists perspective
when it comes to the object
of workings of the world.
But at this meeting, I was shocked.
There were Nobel laureates
there colleagues of mine,
and their view was completely different.
They many of them had a deeply
religious outlook on the world.
And I remember speaking with one of them
at the conclusion of the seminar.
And I said to him, when you look at me,
like what do you think?
Am I like misguided or, and very nice man,
he kind of put his arm around
me sort of avuncular way
and he said, you're smart guy,
you're going to get there,
you know, and it was basically you know,
and so, yes is the
answer to your question.
There are many, many
different perspectives.
Now, I should say, in whatever
I've been a professional
physicist, I don't know
how you define that.
But since I got my PhD,
it's been what it's been like 35 years
since I got my PhD 34 to 35 years,
the number of conversations
I've had with physics colleagues
that venture into any of these questions
of religion or spirituality, next to none.
It's not like as we're
pondering the equations
of the universe, we're
like, so what we've got,
you know, the spiritual
and religious qualities
that these equations brush up against
are generally not part of the
common discourse in the field.
But you know, Lemaitre is great example
of someone who is trained in
religion trained in science,
had a PhD from MIT,
and was willing to look
at the kinds of questions
of relevance to each way
of looking at the world.
- I mean, I've always
been struck by Einstein's
choice of words right,
he said, never lose a holy curiosity.
And he talks that famous
line about there are two ways
of living your life, right,
one is if everything's a miracle,
one is if well, I think he
sets up the negative first
ones is if nothing is in
miracle, and one says,
if everything is and I from
what I know about Einstein,
he wasn't really he would
have called himself religious,
but that is a kind of
mystical spiritual lexicon.
- Totally and i think Einstein might
have called himself spiritual.
I don't know if he
actually use those words,
but he was enamored and moved
by the harmonies of the universe.
And if you take us sort of Spinoza,
in view of what God is that
there's sort of pantheistic view
that God is the harmonies of the world.
If you define God in that way,
then it's compatible with
everything that we're doing,
it becomes more difficult
to take that perspective,
when you have a literal interpretation
of say, the dominant
religions in the world,
it is very difficult to square
those with scientific understanding.
But if you move away from that literalism,
which of course Einstein did,
and it's my perspective too,
I consider myself to be deeply spiritual
in the sense that I am deeply interested
in not just understanding
the objective qualities
of the world, I love those things.
That's what I spent my
life trying to figure out.
But I'm as interested and
as moved by the question
of the inner world of
conscious self reflection,
and if understanding oneself better
is part of a spiritual journey,
then it's a journey
that I'm happy to be on.
- But that inner world which you do
you always strike me as
someone who has this really
healthy balance of
reverence and irreverence,
but that inner world, Brian,
it's something you always
refer to as bags of particles.
So I can never sort of negotiate
how there is this kind of
reverence for bags of particles.
- Yeah, well, let me try to
give you a that sense a bit.
I'll feel like I've achieved something
if by the end of the next
small phrase, you say I got it.
- Okay--
- My golly so look,
here's my view.
So we are in this way of
thinking about things,
as you say bags of particles
governed by physical law.
Now, when you hear that, that
sounds pretty mechanistic.
It sounds pretty much wiping out
everything that matters to us.
But the point that I make is
how spectacular that particles
in these bags governed by
the ironclad laws of physics,
when they're arranged in the right way,
they can think, they can feel
they can write the Ninth Symphony.
They can sculpt the burghers of Calais,
they can build the pyramids--
- They can write
Charlotte's web
- Yes exactly so how amazing is that?
That you that if there is nothing else,
and all we are collections
of particles governed
by these insensate laws of physics
that yet by evolution,
our structure so exquisite
that we can do these things.
It makes it get more spectacular.
Not less that were just bags of particles.
- No, I do understand that
and I do think that's part
what drives people like
you is that discovering
the why and the how never
diminishes the awesomeness
enhance it, do it.
- No yeah go ahead.
- Just touching religion, I
was struck by this personal
story you share in your book,
and I'll ask you to share it briefly
about when your dad took you
for a walk through Central Park
when you're about 10 and what did you see?
- Well, yeah it was just
a nice sunny day my dad
took me took my sister for
this walk in Central Park
and we came upon a large
gathering of Hari Krishna devotees
who were a member by the bandshell.
You know, that is obviously Central Park.
And they're all with the drums
and chanting and the bells
and tone and I look over and my brother,
why thought was at college
was there in this group.
And so--
right Christmas
- Was my dad's way of sort of introducing
this wasn't by chance, my dad knew
that he was gonna be there.
And so this is my dad's way of
sort of, I don't know gently
letting us know that our
brother's life had taken a rather
unexpected turn into
a different direction.
And it was a powerful moment.
And look, my brother and I,
we are interested in almost
exactly the same questions.
We've had a lifetime of
conversations that have focused
upon cosmology and the
origin of the universe
and the meaning of life.
And what is it to be a conscious being,
we just approach these questions
from radically different perspectives.
And sometimes those
conversations have been rich,
sometimes frustrating, but in the end,
it's sort of remarkable to
see two siblings approach
the same kinds of questions
just from these radically
different pathways toward truth.
- Yeah before we go to
questions from the audience,
I wanted to say among the many things
that i love about your latest book
is how how personal it is.
Considering you're talking,
you've written about everything,
and then nothing.
You reveal a lot about yourself
without making the book about
you, you know, you talk about,
there's this gutting story
about watching a dog die
right next to you and
how that affected you.
And I love this story about
when you're on a solo camping
expedition and you comforted yourself
by drawing a face on
the inside of the tent.
Yeah, would you say that this
is your most personal book?
- Without a doubt, you
know, my earlier books
were all about trying to be
in some sense a translator,
from the arcane language of mathematics,
to the more familiar language
of everyday experience
so that people would understand
whatever string theory
or quantum mechanics or
relativity and so forth,
but there wasn't a
whole lot of opportunity
or even a reason for anything
personal to play a role
in that kind of description.
In this book my point,
as I mentioned before,
is to develop these
necessary stories of reality
and basically trying
to convince the reader
that the kinds of questions
you ask determine the language,
the vocabulary, the lexicon,
within which the most
insightful answers can be found.
If you're interested
in the fundamental laws
and particles short use quantum mechanics
and quantum field theory,
if you're interested in
how we humans respond
to a beautiful sunset
or a tragic encounter,
then you need to use the
language of the poet.
And so how strange and odd in some sense,
would it have been that
in a book developing
these different layers
is different stories
for me not to tell the one
human story that I know
intimately which is my own.
So you're right it did not
wonna make this book about me
but I felt that injecting moments here
and there that made clear that
there's a human level story
in embedded in twined,
with nested with all
of the other accounts,
from the origin of the
universe, origin of language
and story and myth and
religion and credit expression
that within that there is
a human story that threads
its way through it felt to me
that it would be a real loss
to not include that story
as part of the account.
- Thank you for all the stories
they really it relative
to other science reading,
they make everything so resonant.
So thank you for them.
A lot of them are also
funny like your mother,
who is very fastidious about what she eats
saluting cheesecake
- Yes.
A family who ordered
cheesecake at the next table.
- Exactly right.
Alright we have a question from Jennifer,
I hope I say your last name
right Jennifer Goats, Gates,
she may be one of your students.
What is the greatest challenge
you are trying to resolve
now in your field?
- Well, the biggest
challenge I'd say right now
is to really understand
what space and time are.
For many centuries, we've
assumed that space and time exist
and then we've understood how things
behave within that environment.
Einstein came along and said,
we got to change that
description a little bit,
because space and time actually
respond to the environment.
They're not an inert backdrop
and not just this stage
that's fixed, the changes.
But still we have been at a loss to say,
well, a space is time
made of something else.
Are there atoms of
space and atoms of time,
the weather atoms of oxygen, and hydrogen,
could it be that there's
some realm of reality
in which the ingredients
of space and time exists,
but they haven't coalesced
in the right manner
to feel familiar space and
time as we experienced them?.
Could there be a spaceless
and timeless kind of reality out there?
And remarkably, there
have been developments
in the last 510 years that
have started to provide tools
for answering questions like that.
I never thought this would happen.
Not in my lifetime, then.
It's very exciting to see how these tools
may allow us to give not the full answer.
But perhaps partial answers
to those deep questions.
- But when you use words like
that, see how these tools
develop is that all math
are those tools, equations?
- It's totally math.
Because we're talking
about parts of reality
that we don't have access to.
I mean, if we could probe to arbitrarily
small distance scales, maybe we would see
if there are atoms of space or time.
But even our most powerful microscope,
which is the Large Hadron
Collider in Geneva, Switzerland,
it can only probe down
to whatever, you know,
10 to the minus whatever,
15 16,17 meters or something
we're talking about many,
many, many orders of magnitude
smaller than that, to even have a chance
of literally seeing the kinds of qualities
of the world that we're talking about.
We can't do that.
So its all math.
- When you're discussing this,
is there when you're
articulating into words for me
or even for your colleagues.
Is there is a part of your
brain that can conceptualize
that a spaceless timeless dimension?
- Not really, if you ask
me can I conceptualize
it as a real visual image,
I'm as bound to the
mental language of space
and time as anybody else.
We grew up as a species in an environment
that has space and time to survive,
we needed to negotiate
processes within space and time.
So our brains were under
no evolutionary pressure
to have the flexibility to imagine
a realm absent space and time.
That doesn't mean that nobody can do it.
There are people who
claim that they can do it.
I don't know if I really believe
I like to think that they're exaggerating.
But what I can do is I can
write down the equations.
And so when you are fluent in
the language of mathematics,
the question begin to provide a different
kind of mental imagery,
it's not the same kind of pictures
that really give you a deep intuition.
But you feel like you understand
what you're talking about,
because you've got the mathematical tools
for articulating the ideas precisely.
- Alright, we have a question
from a prospective student.
I don't know if that means
that he will become a student
depending on the way you
answer this question.
I'm not sure.
His name is Edward Montoya.
And Edward wants to know
has recent video footage
of military pilots, observing
unexplained flying aircraft
influenced your theory of
intelligent life in the universe?
- No, it hasn't.
And the reason for that is
there's such a long history
of claims of this sort.
And, number one, they're odd to me.
It's hard for me to imagine
an advanced civilization
being able to travel all the way here
and not being able to hide
themselves if that's their goal.
They're like, oh my god,
there's an aircraft.
Let's get out of here after traveling,
you know, light years.
- That's really good point.
- So but the other side of it
is, there are so many other
kinds of explanations
that are much more prosaic
and therefore much less
interesting that ultimately,
in each case that I know
about have been able
to explain the phenomenon at hand.
So is it impossible,
no, it's not impossible.
I have an open mind and allow things
but I think Carl Sagan is
dictum is an important one here,
which is extraordinary claims
require extraordinary evidence.
And we're nowhere near
extraordinary evidence
for the kinds of claims
that I hear people make.
- So you know, a few of us,
perhaps, sadly, can really use cosmology
in our day to day lives.
I mean, we all exist in the
laws of physics, but you know,
succumbing to the forces
of gravity is involuntary.
Why do you think that
the ideas in your book
are useful and important
to ordinary, you know,
non scientists, people,
What do you think they offer
to the public discourse?
- Well, I think they offer a
different context for thinking
about one's life and a different context
for thinking about what
one values and in the end,
those are the most
important considerations
that each and every individual has,
what to do with their life,
what to do with their time,
what do they consider to be important
and what do they consider to be a value.
And, so by placing ordinary life
within its proper location,
in the cosmological unfolding,
we are not separate from the cosmos.
I mean, you know, again,
Carl Sagan said poetically,
that the cosmos is within us
because we're made of starstuff.
Right, it's become hackneyed,
but it's still deeply true.
And we are as I described in the book,
the natural progression,
the natural outcome
of a universe that
started in a certain way,
and then went on this drive
toward ever greater disorder,
and we are a resting place along the way,
we're for a brief moment
in cosmological history we can exist.
And when you think about your
life as part of that story,
that grant is of all stories,
it cannot help but change your view
of what matters in your life.
And so I'm not after a universal reaction.
My own reaction to this
recognition was to spend my life
trying to understand
the physical universe.
And that's no surprise, if
you recognize where you fit
in the cosmological unfolding,
then that tends to focus your attention
if you have the mindset that
I do on the big questions.
Well, how did it really start?
And how would it really end?
And what is this thing
that we call time anyway?
So that's where it drove me,
for my life, and I'm
not looking for others
to have that same response,
but I can't help but think
that seeing where you fit
in to that cosmological tapestry
will have an impact on the
things that matter to you.
- The way I would put
it from my experience
reading the book is this
vivid, powerful acceptance
of how or recognition of how small we are,
actually makes you feel as a
bag of particles miraculous.
- Yes.
- Make you feel lucky.
- That is the point.
And again, you can even quantify
that the odds against
our existing astounding,
right I mean, we are the
result of quantum processes
that threats back to the
Big Bang until today.
And each and every one of
those quantum processes
could have turned out
that way instead of this,
yielding a universe in
which we would not be here
and yet against those astounding odds
we are here and then adding to it.
What we discussed before is
it's not just that we're here,
we can do things.
And so putting that all together,
yes, it is a sense of how miraculous
it is to be alive and to be human.
- That's kind of the perfect place to end,
especially in a pandemic,
when we're very lucky to be sitting here
talking about all this.
- Yeah, sure.
- Okay, this is very low hanging fruit way
to end this, but I mean,
I do feel like I could talk
to you till the end of time.
Thank you, thank you for this.
You have very lucky students this summer.
And, we're so grateful
to the Columbia community
who joined us on this
lovely early summer evening.
Please be sure to tune in
for our next ideas exchange.
It's next week June 3 at
7:00pm Professor of religion
and African American
Studies Joseph Surette
speaks with award winning
author Darnell Morris
about religion and hip
hop, and Brian Greene.
It is always always
enlightening and a pleasure
to talk with you, thank you so much.
- Well, thank you Faith, this is great.
- Be well.
(upbeat music)
