A World Appears
A Journey into Consciousness
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Narrated by:
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Michael Pollan
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Written by:
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Michael Pollan
About this listen
"Pollan’s real genius—the word is not too strong—remains intact. That is his uncanny ability to scent the direction in which the culture is headed. He did it with food and psychedelics, and now, though A World Appears focuses on AI only intermittently, he has done it again." —Charles Finch, The Atlantic
From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, a panoptic exploration of consciousness—what it is, who has it, and why—and a meditation on the essence of our humanity
When it comes to the phenomenon that is consciousness, there is one point on which scientists, philosophers, and artists all agree: it feels like something to be us. Yet the fact that we have subjective experience of the world remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries. How is it that our mental operations are accompanied by feelings, thoughts, and a sense of self? What would a scientific investigation of our inner life look like, when we have as little distance and perspective on it as fish do of the sea? In A World Appears, Michael Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives—scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic—to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life.
When neuroscientists began studying consciousness in the early 1990s, they sought to explain how and why three pounds of spongy gray matter could generate a subjective point of view—assuming that the brain is the source of our perceived reality. Pollan takes us to the cutting edge of the field, where scientists are entertaining more radical (and less materialist) theories of consciousness. He introduces us to “plant neurobiologists” searching for the first flicker of consciousness in plants, scientists striving to engineer feelings into AI, and psychologists and novelists seeking to capture the felt experience of our slippery stream of consciousness.
In Pollan’s dazzling exploration of consciousness, he discovers a world far deeper and stranger than our everyday reality. Eye-opening and mind-expanding, A World Appears takes us into the laboratories of our own minds, ultimately showing us how we might make better use of the gift of awareness to more meaningfully connect with the world and our deepest selves.
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Editorial Review
Unlike many science books I’ve read, the experiments discussed are generally reproducible by the reader in real time, your own mind is the subject and object of the book’s investigations. I think as an audio book it works especially well for me.
I appreciated the self awareness of the author to avoid the ‘professor consciousness’ reductionist tone which strips away so much wonder and direct observation like other consciousness books I’ve read.
Maybe some will find it frustrating that it is surveying many (many) ideas without a conclusion, but for me it was perfect journey. I feel i could read it again immediately. It brought me peace, and wonder at the same time. What a beautiful world we live in. Thank you for this very memorable book.
A thrilling meditation on what can’t be seen.
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