Consciousness Science

If the history of the Earth were compressed down to a year, our species would arise in the last thirty minutes or so of the final hour. But life itself is not such a late arrival: It has existed on Earth for something like 3.7 billion years—most of our planet’s history and over a quarter of the age of the universe (as far as we can tell). What have these organisms—bacteria, animals, plants, and the rest—done in all this time? In Living on Earth, the philosopher Peter Godfrey-Smith proposes a new way of understanding how the actions of living beings have shaped our planet.

In trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics, the most successful theory in science and the basis of one-third of our economy. They found, to their embarrassment, that with their theory, physics encounters consciousness. Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all this in nontechnical terms with help from some fanciful stories and anecdotes about the theory's developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, emphasizing what is and what is not speculation.

Sam Harris—neuroscientist, philosopher, and bestselling author—has been exploring some of the most important questions about the human mind, society, and current events on his podcast, Making Sense. For Harris, honest conversation, no matter how difficult or controversial, represents the only path to moral and intellectual progress. This audiobook includes talks with Daniel Kahneman, Timothy Snyder, Nick Bostrom, and Glen Loury, on topics that range from the nature of consciousness and free will, to politics and extremism, to living ethically.

Best-selling historian and philosopher Will Durant devoted his entire life to studying the most significant eras, individuals, and achievements of human history. Here is a summation of Durant's work, as he presents the best of world history. Filled with Durant's renowned wit, knowledge, and unique ability to explain events in simple and exciting terms, it is a concise liberal arts education.

Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work. Fanon's masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of listeners. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world.

La tesis vertebral de la obra de Jacobo Grinberg, que desarrolla en su libro La teoría sintérgica,sostiene que la realidad perceptible resulta de la interacción de la activación cerebral y el espacio-tiempo (la lattice). Asentadas sus bases teóricas, Grinberg exploró dicha relacióna lo largo de varios libros, entre ellos La construcción de la realidad. En sus páginas explica que tanto el mundo externo y tangible como el interno conformado por los pensamientos y sueños son una descripción que depende de los individuos y sus historias de vida.

The Dawn Of New Science summarizes the state of today’s physics. It covers major topics from the Big Bang, dark energy, dark matter, and antimatter to quarks, gravitons, and the Higgs boson. Moreover, this book describes not only what is known but also what is still beyond the grasp of today’s physicists. The author has identified a striking parallel between the formation of elementary particles and the structure of the human mind. Such a comparison allowed him to recognize several inconsistencies within the currently accepted models of the physical matter and to discover how these ...

The transgender movement has hit breakneck speed. In the space of a year, it’s gone from something that most Americans had never heard of to a cause claiming the mantle of civil rights. But can a boy truly be “trapped” in a girl’s body? Can modern medicine really “reassign” sex? Is sex something “assigned” in the first place? What’s the loving response to a friend or child experiencing a gender-identity conflict? What should our law say on these issues? When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment provides thoughtful answers to all of these questions.

"Must I die?" asked Gilgamesh. Forty five centuries later, we're still asking the same question. Science writer Paul Bracken embarks on a lighthearted assessment of the human condition, to explore what it means to be mortal, and what our fate may be. This scientific reimagining of the ancient Gilgamesh quest delves into a multitude of topics including the origin of life, the workings of the human mind, and the possibilities for life prolongation. The ancient Gilgamesh was so distraught at the death of his friend Enkidu, and so sickened by the knowledge that he too would die, that he ...

The question of artificial intelligence and how far we, as a people, should take the technology is one of our society's biggest debates at the moment; as AI generated art, texts, and even communications have increased as the technology grows altogether. The insight which each chapter provides into the concept of human consciousness and the evolution of that consciousness was so beautifully explored in this book, and the way evolution plays into the idea of adapting consciousness into the development of AI is remarkable.

Jay Garfield, a leading expert on Buddhist philosophy, offers a brief and radically clear account of an idea that at first might seem frightening but that promises to liberate us and improve our lives, our relationships, and the world. Drawing on Indian and East Asian Buddhism, Daoism, Western philosophy, and cognitive neuroscience, Garfield shows why it is perfectly natural to think you have a self—and why it actually makes no sense at all and is even dangerous. Most importantly, he explains why shedding the illusion that you have a self can make you a better person.

The Eye of the I is a brilliant work that dissolves the barriers between the known and the unknown, between science and spirituality, and between the Newtonian linear paradigm of the ego and the nonlinear reality of Enlightenment. With the resolution of the self, the self shines forth and reveals one's true identity.

A longtime trauma worker, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky offers a deep and empathetic survey of the often-unrecognized toll on those working to make the world a better place. We may feel tired, cynical, numb, or like we can never do enough. These, and other symptoms, affect us individually and collectively, sapping the energy and effectiveness we so desperately need if we are to benefit humankind, other animals, and the planet itself. Through Trauma Stewardship, we are called to meet these challenges in an intentional way.

Drawing together many histories - of anatomical evolution and city design, of treadmills and labyrinths, of walking clubs and sexual mores - Rebecca Solnit creates a fascinating portrait of the range of possibilities presented by walking. Arguing that the history of walking includes walking for pleasure as well as for political, aesthetic, and social meaning, Solnit focuses on the walkers whose everyday and extreme acts have shaped our culture, from philosophers to poets to mountaineers.

We're used to thinking about the self as an independent entity, something that we either have or are. In The Ego Tunnel, philosopher Thomas Metzinger claims otherwise: No such thing as a self exists. The conscious self is the content of a model created by our brain - an internal image, but one we cannot experience as an image. Everything we experience is "a virtual self in a virtual reality." But if the self is not "real," why and how did it evolve? How does the brain construct it?

Emotional intelligence affects every aspect of the way we live, from romantic to professional relationships, from our inner resilience to our social success. It is arguably the single most important skill for surviving the twenty-first century. But what does it really mean? One decade ago, Alain de Botton founded The School of Life, an institute dedicated to understanding and improving our emotional intelligence. Now he presents the gathered wisdom of those ten years in a wide-ranging and innovative compendium of emotional intelligence that forms an introduction to The School of Life.

We spend vast amounts of time acquiring confidence in narrow technical fields: quadratic equations or bioengineering; economics or pole vaulting. But we overlook the primordial need to acquire a more free-ranging variety of confidence - one that can serve us across a range of tasks: speaking to strangers at parties, asking someone to marry us, suggesting a fellow passenger turn down their music, changing the world. This is a guidebook to confidence, why we lack it and how we can acquire more of it in our lives.

In this original and penetrating audiobook, Lewis R. Gordon, one of the leading scholars of Black existentialism and anti-Blackness, takes the listener on a journey through the historical development of racialized Blackness, the problems this kind of consciousness produces, and the many creative responses from Black and non-Black communities in contemporary struggles for dignity and freedom. Skillfully navigating a difficult and traumatic terrain, Gordon cuts through the mist of White narcissism and the versions of consciousness it perpetuates.

It has been proclaimed many times, but perhaps never more convincingly than now, when every news cycle seems to deliver further confirmation of a world gone mad. Is this the endgame? Author Spencer Klavan is a classicist, with a Ph.D. from Oxford, and a deep understanding of the West. His analysis: The situation is dire. But every crisis we face today, we have faced before. And we can surmount each one. Klavan brings to the West’s defense the insights of Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, and the Founding Fathers to show that in the wisdom of the past lies hope for the future.

Daniel C. Dennett—preeminent philosopher and cognitive scientist—has spent his career creating the basis for a naturalistic account of consciousness with acumen and elegance. I’ve Been Thinking traces the development of Dennett’s own intellect and instructs us how we too can become good thinkers. Dennett’s restless curiosity leads him from his childhood in Beirut to Harvard, and from Parisian jazz clubs to “tillosophy” on his tractor in Maine. Along the way, he reveals the breakthroughs and misjudgments that shaped his paradigm-shifting philosophies.