A world appears A journey into consciousness

Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Journalist Pollan (This Is Your Mind on Plants) delivers an enlightening exploration of what is and isn't known about consciousness. Noting that scientists have yet to arrive at a sturdy explanation of why "a world appears when you open your eyes," Pollan takes readers through leading theories, shedding light on sentience, feeling, thought, and selfness. He questions whether a brain is a prerequisite for consciousness and describes how a growing cadre of plant neurobiologists have found plants to be "highly intelligent beings, able to read their environment and solve novel problems." He probes the role of emotions in consciousness and interviews neurologist Antonio Damasio, who makes the case that "feelings are the body's way of getting the mind's attention in order to keep us alive." Turning to the contents of consciousness--thoughts--he cites studies that suggest thinking looks different for everyone; people can have an inner monologue or picture visual images, while a few "live in a world of pure perception" with few traces of an inner experience at all. Elsewhere, he explores how the brain stitches memories together to form a sense of self and how chemicals from caffeine to LSD alter that experience. Pollan's inquisitiveness makes him an accessible and entertaining guide through the "labyrinth" of consciousness. Readers will be captivated by this tour of the inner workings of the mind. (Feb.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

The science of consciousness is comparatively young, which Pollan (This Is Your Mind on Plants) dramatically illustrates with debates barely three decades ago that asked whether we can know what makes the interior world. The difficulties of measurement and not crossing a line into religious territory have left consciousness the purview of philosophers and poets throughout the recent centuries of modern scientific method. Pollan aims to unify these questions and explore what we can know and how we can think about consciousness without viewing humans as strictly utilitarian or magical. Questions include what constitutes sentience, how emotions arise and for what purpose, the nature of thought (with a fascinating examination of stream-of-consciousness literature), how the concept of a self is constructed, and--beyond art and science, following the turn Pollan's work has taken in recent years--what psychedelic drugs and experiences can teach humans about the mind and the ego. As a science writer who fully immerses himself in the questions of his work, Pollan's consciousness itself is on full display, and this is thoroughly compelling reading. VERDICT Pollan's accessible and wide-ranging study of the interior world elucidates complex ideas across science, art, and philosophy.--Margaret Heller

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A page-turner that explores the hidden world of the mind. Pollan's latest begins with a wager between a philosopher and a scientist back in 1998, one premised on the discovery of the brain's physical basis for consciousness, which the scientist predicted would "comprise a small set of specialized neurons responsible for subjective experience." The scientist, Christof Koch, didn't quite get there in the specified 25-year limit for the discovery, presenting the philosopher, David Chalmers, with a case of fine wine for winning the bet. We're still not there, but neuroscientists are making headway, with two competing models, global workspace theory and integrated information theory, leading the charge. (Koch favors the latter.) But along the way, scientists have also learned much more about the components of consciousness (sentience, feeling, thought, and awareness of self) in animal minds and, possibly, even in plants ("ancient, brainless, and largely immobile"), which some researchers hold can feel pain. Pollan, who has written about food, plants, and psychoactive drugs, combines all three topics in this survey of the many ways people think about thinking, with the insight that people who have experience with the last are more inclined than others to ascribe consciousness to nonhuman beings "both living and nonliving," possibly even to the level of viruses. Indeed, there is widespread agreement, psychedelics or not, that nonhuman animals have the same neurological substrates that enable consciousness in humans. The science in Pollan's book is heady and sometimes even headache-inducing, but he delivers plenty of ponderable insights, such as this: "Why do we cling to the idea of a self, placing great value onself-confidence andself-esteem, while simultaneously spending so much effort on self-transcendence, whether through meditation or psychedelics or experiences of art, awe, and flow?" A fluent survey of what we know--or think we know--about the mind. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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