Origins of Consciousness: How the Search to Understand the Nature of Consciousness is Leading to a New View of Reality Paperback – July 4, 2015

For more than 7 decades I have had a passion for reading and learning. My passions have taken me to the traditional sciences to the mysterious esoteric. This is why when I saw this 210 page soft cover book (Origins of consciousness: How the search to understand the nature of consciousness is leading to a new view of realty by Adrian David Nelson) while browsing on Amazon I decided to purchase it.Even though I have read numerous books over the years on quantum physics and consciousness theories; nevertheless, I found this volume to be enlightening and fascinating read. There is also an extensive reference section.If you are seeking a thought-provoking objective evaluation of the possible role consciousness plays in our universe you may want to check out this book.Rating: 5 Stars. Joseph J. Truncale (Author: Never trust a politician: A critical essay on politics and politicians).

This book was a joy to read. Much like Brian Greene has brought theoretical physics and string theory to the layperson, Nelson has taken a very difficult topic and presented it in a way that can be easily understood by everyone. In fact, this will be the first book I recommend to anyone who wants to start exploring the science and philosophy of consciousness more deeply. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the different research efforts that have been conducted to explore mind-matter interaction. One can't help but feel a bit humbled by the staggering intellect and perseverance that so many great thinkers have put into the search for answers.Read this book, if anything because it is extremely well written, articulate, and insightful.

I have a problem with books like these. They create more confusion than clarity. I am sure the intentions of the author were good (hence the very generous three stars) and he did craft an interesting blend of stories, news and quotes. However with a subtle subject like this, one has to do a more thorough homework and never show an unjustified and strong bias towards any view. Here is my critique in a nutshell:The biggest fail of the author is when it comes clearly stating which are the "facts", "undisputed research findings", "disputed research findings", "research that no serious academic will ever believe, even under torture" and "musings of different famous and semi-famous figures". Sure, there are grey areas of consciousness (no pun) where we don't know what we don't know. But if we are to treat this book as a non-fiction piece (which was the intention, I hope) then we need to know clearly what is known to be true and what is known to be not true. This has not been done.Here is an example: the paranormal/psychic experiments, such as the ones carried out by Schmidt, Radin, Jahn and others are stated as if they are an undisputed scientific evidence. The critique is only mentioned in one or two places with remarks like "yeah, some people have criticized but, you know, they probably were not that open minded". Alas, this is far from truth. There are entire books and articles written on how flawed, careless, primitive and downright fraudulent the results were. Entire labs have been shut down and research done on paranormal/mind-matter has been called an embarrassment by majority of scientific establishment. And for some pretty solid reasons, mind you. A simple wikipedia check on those experiments does a better job in this regard, where you can find what people have claimed on the basis of their experiments, what is the basis of criticism and what is the view of majority of real scientists. I have learned that author has interned at one of the institutions caring out paranormal research (IONS). So that raises some red flags about the book being unbiased.. oh well. Another somewhat minor criticism is that quotes by famous people (Einstein, Turing, Wigner, etc) were used outside of context which appeared to be as if to legitimize the dubious claims. When you take Einstein's quote out of context and insert it in a controversial subject you are basically trying to influence a point by the force of authority. Maybe I am wrong on this but I do not like this practice.Overall, I think it is okay to read the book, since it is a cool subject, it tickles the imagination and it is fun and useful to entertain new and unorthodox views once in a while. However for the non-scientist and lay readers I would strongly advise to take the subject matter with a grain of salt, especially when it comes to presentation of this particular book. Let us keep the confusion at the minimum.

I recently read this book, interested in learning more about the topic of psi phenomenon and how they may relate to the consciousness debate. I very much enjoyed the book; it did a good job of condensing decades of research into a few hundred pages. The approach felt a bit similar to Thomas Nagel's paper "What is it Like to Be a Bat?" in that it sought to stay within a realm of skeptical but open-minded curiosity, not concluding too assuredly on any single non-reductionst theory of consciousness.