Humans can build machines to re-create conditions seconds after the Big Bang and send a probe to the surface of a one of Saturn's moons. But no one can explain how experience happens — how we smell garlic, for example, or see colors.
Those small things and every other sensory event that we toss under the heading of "consciousness" mark the edge of a scientific frontier that four professors in Southern California plan to chart, using the latest techniques from mathematics and quantum theory.
They begin their expedition with an elemental question: What is real?
Don Hoffman
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W Stewart Roberts Jr, 2007-08-06 11:36:14 -- Flag for review
What's real? The taste and smell of garlic, the color and smell of flowers all come from "the big bang."
Peggy Brewer, 2007-09-14 18:49:17 -- Flag for review
Once you figure out what is real, please work on defining what is unreal. It should be equally engaging. Good luck!
viv, 2008-04-02 15:28:27 -- Flag for review
the science of consciousness has been around with the ancients, allbeit in their language/metaphor and then recently interpretations of these theories and experiences have been made by Harvard based physicists. Didnt Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (a physicist), and later, working with him, Harvard scientists, begin to look and and explain this using quantum principles and (excuse my ignorance, and spelling)..the theory of everything - the logrongian equation etc.
Do you guys look at this stuff, are you aware of it or are you already aware but looking along a different track. Would really like your views...as a scientist ..I hate to feel things are not linked up when insights can be gained from other perspectives (if these are OTHER perspectives)...???