Title: A World Appears A Journey into Consciousness
Author: Michael Pollan
My Rating: 👍👍👍👍👍
My Review: I am a huge fan of Michael Pollan and have read many of his books. Michael Pollan is a genius. I enjoyed this book but it was a little more esoteric than his others and it may take me a little more time to absorb. The book discusses conciousness and what that means. Michael speculates that maybe plants and other living things have consciousness but on a different level than humans. He also discusses the possiblity that through AI (Artificial Intellegence), computers could achieve a level of simulated conciousness. Michael has spent alot time experimenting with psychedelics and how they affect our reality. Through the use of psychedelics, he has experienced a reality that helped him see how plants and other living things have a level of conciousness that's hard for humans to see. I've never experimented with psychedelics and don't really plan on it. So, I probably will never know that reality. I do feel though that all living creatures have some level of conciousness and no matter how good AI becomes, computers will only have a simulation of conciousness.
Michael Pollan speech: A World Appears: A Journey Into Conciousness
Description (Audible): 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.
Description (ChatGPT): In A World Appears, Michael Pollan takes readers on a wide-ranging exploration of one of humanity’s deepest mysteries: consciousness. Blending neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and personal experience, Pollan investigates how subjective awareness arises and whether it might exist beyond humans—in animals, plants, or even machines. (Publishers Weekly)
Pollan’s strength lies in his curiosity and storytelling. Rather than presenting definitive answers, he interviews scientists, philosophers, and spiritual practitioners while reflecting on meditation and psychedelic experiences that shape his own thinking about the mind. The result is an engaging, accessible journey through competing theories about sentience, emotion, the self, and the limits of scientific explanations. (Library Journal)
The book is less about solving the “hard problem” of consciousness than about expanding the reader’s sense of wonder about it. Thought-provoking and readable, A World Appears invites us to reconsider what it means to be aware—and how precious that awareness might be.
