Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation: Why Physicists Are Studying Human Consciousness and AI to Unravel the Mysteries of the Universe

George Musser

Nov 2023 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About this ebook

“This is a delightful account of one of the deepest and most fascinating explorations going on today at the frontier of our knowledge.” —Carlo Rovelli, bestselling author of The Order of Time and Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

“Musser knows that the point of popular science is [. . .] to get a sense of what’s at stake, what kinds of answers are being offered to difficult questions, and why it all matters. One could not ask more of Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation—on all three counts it delivers.” —Julian Baggini, The Wall Street Journal

A revelatory exploration of how a “theory of everything” depends upon our understanding of the human mind.

The whole goal of physics is to explain what we observe. For centuries, physicists believed that observations yielded faithful representations of what is out there. But when they began to study the subatomic realm, they found that observation often interferes with what is being observed—that the act of seeing changes what we see. The same is true of cosmology: our view of the universe is inevitably distorted by observation bias. And so whether they’re studying subatomic particles or galaxies, physicists must first explain consciousness—and for that they must turn to neuroscientists and philosophers of mind.

Neuroscientists have painstakingly built up an understanding of the structure of the brain. Could this help physicists understand the levels of self-organization they observe in other systems? These same physicists, meanwhile, are trying to explain how particles organize themselves into the objects around us. Could their discoveries help explain how neurons produce our conscious experience?

Exploring these questions and more, George Musser tackles the extraordinary interconnections between quantum mechanics, cosmology, human consciousness, and artificial intelligence. Combining vivid descriptive writing with portraits of scientists working on the cutting edge, Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation shows how theories of everything depend on theories of mind—and how they might be one and the same.

Ratings and reviews

Fascinating, well researched review of the state of scientific research in the intersection between consciousness, neural networks, and physics. The author has an engaging style, making this far more readable than the topic list he's contending with would suggest. I really liked it, and found myself stopping several times in the book so I could really engage with the depth of some of the ideas presented. Definitely recommended to anyone with a passion for or any form of curiosity to understand where the current edge is in these areas of inquiry.

This fascinating and entertaining book explores the potential link between the "theory of everything" in physics and the "theory of mind" in neuroscience. It raises interesting questions and suggests new ways of looking at the universe. The style is engaging and readable. The audiobook narration was well done. Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

About the author

George Musser is an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor at Scientific American, a contributing writer at Quanta Magazine, and the author of Spooky Action at a Distance. He is the recipient of a Jonathan Eberhart Planetary Sciences Journalism Award from the American Astronomical Society and of a Science Communication Award for Science Writing from the American Institute of Physics. He was a Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT and has appeared on Today, CNN, NPR, the BBC, and other outlets. He lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his wife, daughter, and schnauzer.