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Blink 3 of 8 - The 5 AM Club
by Robin Sharma
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A World Appears summary
Michael Pollan
Exploring the Labyrinth of Consciousness
23 mins
Brief summary
A World Appears by Michael Pollan delves into the transformative power of observing nature, emphasizing how heightened awareness and mindfulness can profoundly influence both personal perspectives and the broader connections with the environment around us.
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A World Appears
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The study of consciousness
The study of consciousness is relatively new. But why? People have been aware of consciousness, and thinking about conscious experience, for at least as long as we have literary records to prove it.
The answer lies with scientists like Galileo and Descartes. Hoping to avoid the ire of the Church, Galileo urged science to stay away from matters of the soul. Descartes did something similar, dividing the world into res extensa – “matter stuff” – and res cogitans, or “mind stuff,” limiting the latter to humans.
The results of this story are all too familiar. In the West, the bifurcation of nature has led to untold cruelty against the nonhuman world. Paradoxically, it also elevated consciousness into something resembling magic, unmoored from the “real world” of science.
But that’s finally changing, thanks largely to the groundwork laid by Christof Koch and Francis Crick, two of the first people to set out to use science to understand consciousness. Today, there are two leading theories as to how it all works. One is called integrated information theory, or IIT. IIT proposes any physical system configured to integrate information is theoretically conscious. According to IIT, brains may not be necessary to produce consciousness.
The other leading theory is called global workspace theory, or GWT. GWT proposes that the brain’s many modules process information unconsciously, with the most urgent material rising into a “global workspace.” From there, it can be acted on or not, allowing for flexible decision-making.
And there are stranger, less widely accepted theories. Take panpsychism, for instance – the notion that everything, even the tiniest of subatomic particles, is conscious to some degree. Then there’s idealism, the idea that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, like mass. All told, there are upwards of twenty different theories of consciousness.
Why has consciousness proven such a hard nut to crack? Perhaps the central reason is that there’s no way to study it without using consciousness itself – there’s no possible way to get an objective, scientific “view from nowhere.” Plus, scientists and philosophers don’t even agree on what they mean when they use the word “consciousness.” The simplest definition is “subjective or felt experience,” or just “experience.” “Awareness” is another equally valid definition. But perhaps the most famous one comes from philosopher Thomas Nagel, who defined a being as conscious if it is “like something” to be that being. So, under this definition, a bat is conscious, while a toaster isn’t.
If you’re already starting to feel unsettled, just wait. The longer you spend looking under the hood of consciousness, the stranger it gets.
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What is A World Appears about?
A World Appears (2026) is a heartfelt, wide-ranging inquiry into the nature of consciousness. It asks the simple yet almost unfathomably deep question: what is consciousness? What do we mean, exactly, when we use the word, what sorts of beings might we classify as having it, and could even nonliving things – that is, machines – be conscious, too? Through this deep dive into “what it’s like to be,” readers will be confronted with one of the most essential, mysterious, and profound questions at the heart of existence.
Who should read A World Appears?
- Lovers of life’s most profound and complex questions
- Science and philosophy buffs
- Anyone fascinated by life, the mind, and how things work at the deepest level
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