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

Written by George Musser

Narrated by Alan Peterson

"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

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 descriptions 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.

A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Audio
• Release date: Nov 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781250910875

George Musser

George Musser is an award-winning journalist, a contributing editor for Scientific American, and the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory. He is the recipient of a Jonathan Eberhart Planetary Sciences Journalism Award from the American Astronomical Society and the 2011 American Institute of Physics Science Communication Award for Science Writing. He was a Knight Science Journalism fellow at MIT from 2014 to 2015. He has appeared on Today, CNN, NPR, the BBC, Al Jazeera, and other outlets. He lives in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his wife and daughter.

Reviews for Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation

[Andrea Author · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This fascinating book explores the potential link between the "theory of everything" in physics and the "theory of mind" in neuroscience. In the quantum realm, the act of observation affects results. Is is possible for science to faithfully represent reality at that scale? Physicists, neuroscientists, and philosophers now collaborate to explore how the brain creates consciousness.

This entertaining book 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.