Wow!

The author undertakes an audacious project to answer many of the most important questions of our age. He succeeds brilliantly. Combining reliable scientific research with well-accepted theories he describes the conditions that cause life to emerge. Although the book is well-researched, well written, and rigorously scientific, few of the hypothesis presented are readily falsifiable. The book is an integrated sequence of entirely plausible yet somewhat speculative narratives.

In this captivating book he boldly asks and then plausibly answers the questions: How did life emerge? Why did life emerge? What is consciousness? Free Will? Self? Knowledge? Information? Is the universe evolving toward an omega point? How do all these concepts fit together?

His overarching thesis, blandly stated as “we live in a computational universe that is continuously evolving into an increasingly complex, functional, and sentient state” becomes a compelling adventure as the implications of that thesis are explored in depth.

The book is organized into three sections. Part one of the book is about the emergence of life on Earth. Here we learn basics of complexity science, self-organization, phase transitions, emergence, attractors, and feedback loops. He often relies on these concepts, especially emergent phenomenon, to remain scientifically rigorous while filling the gaps left by scientific reductionism as he explains the complex world we live in.

The book connects the dots among well-accepted scientific theories. We learn that gradients often form in nature wherever free energy is available to do work. Dissipative structures commonly form to convert the available free energy into thermodynamic entropy. Many examples of this exist in nature, including hurricanes that form to dissipate the temperature gradient existing between a warm ocean and cooler atmosphere.

According to his narrative, abiogenesis—the beginning of life on Earth—emerged as a self-organized dissipative system, driven into existence by the thermal and chemical gradients produced in hydrothermal vents, or some geologically similar location where rock, water, and intense heat intersect. Abiogenesis is reconceptualized as an inevitable thermodynamic event that opened up new energy flow channels on Earth to facilitate entropy production.

After reminding us that information—anything that reduces uncertainty—is physically manifest, and that problems create knowledge, he describes the trial and error of natural selection as an on-gong process of forming, and testing hypothesis. Successful hypotheses are embedded as knowledge in living organisms. For example, a dolphin’s streamlined design, which is a product of the information stored in its genome, contains a knowledge of hydrodynamics. Furthermore, living systems include some internal model, or mental model, of its surroundings. As evolutionary learning occurs, life is effectively updating its model’s representations of the world around it to be more accurate and comprehensive.

Part Two, “Evolution,” presents a generalized concept of evolution that explains the emergence and evolution of intelligent life in the cosmos. We learn that evolution is an epistemology, a way of knowing, because survival requires learning about the environment. “Evolutionary epistemology emphasizes that the evolutionary process is a problem-solving procedure that creates knowledge”.

Learning by trial and error is ubiquitous. Because what works—what is proven to be successful—persists, and failures are short lived, Darwinism is universal. “Universal Darwinism emphasizes that the universe is evolving at every scale through both competitive evolution and through self-organization”.

An emerging paradigm called universal Bayesianism recognizes that we evaluate evidence to create knowledge and inform actions. Combining these ideas merge the concepts from Part One into a unified theory of systems.

Part Three, “Transcendence” becomes increasingly grand and abstract when presenting speculation on consciousness, free will, and the ultimate fate of life in the universe.

Using the liar’s paradox, “This statement is false” to introduce Douglas Hofstadter’s concept of a strange loop, the mechanisms of consciousness are easily explained. Because intelligent organisms include mental models of the environment, these mental models also include models of the self. Self-referential strange loops allow the self to emerge as an observer of that mental model.

The author decisively argues in favor of the existence of free will. After demonstrating that “information is physical,” he argues a big chunk of the dilemma of dualism dissolves away. The mind can influence the physical world through downward causation without paradox because thoughts are just instances of information in action. “In the model of reality proposed by poetic meta-naturalism, there is room for destiny and free will. Because the future is not determined in the strict sense imagined by Laplace, there is no paradox.”

The book provides optimistic speculations on the ultimate fate of the universe. “Because knowledge accumulates, life learns to control the cosmos for its own benefit.” “At this point, we can only speculate about which ultimate scenario is correct—or most likely. But we can say for sure that the cosmos is gradually waking up through life, it does so inexorably, and it is not clear whether this process ever has to end.” “The universe has a goal in much the same way an oak seed does, as it will inevitably develop into a tree, or an embryo into an adult.”

In the final section he speculates on a road to omega, the future event theorized by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in which the entirety of the universe spirals toward a final point of unification.

He briefly acknowledges spirituality when he states, “Spirituality simply refers to a sense of connection to something larger than oneself, and it has nothing to do with the supernatural”.

He then encourages us “By becoming aware of our emergent purpose, we can live more meaningful lives, in harmony with one another and with the aspirations of nature. You are not a cosmic accident. You are a cosmic imperative.”

This important book is brilliantly conceived, well researched, well written, very informative, encouraging, and a joy to read. ( )