One of the most important open questions in science is how our consciousness is established. In the 1990s, long before winning the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his prediction of black holes, physicist Roger Penrose teamed up with anaesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff to propose an ambitious answer.
The ancient Greeks dove into this question. But what do modern scientists think?
Scientists think that quantum physics and human psychology belong hand in hand to explain human behavior.
One morning you opened your eyes, confused and thinking about a very good or bad dream but you can’t recall it detail by detail. You just know it happened and it felt good or really scary.
The proverbial Holy Grail of human discovery, human curiosity, the history of human consciousness, which has taken many forms, transcending primitive myth, spirituality, religion, philosophy, and modern science, is, has always been, and always will be, Why is there something, rather than nothing? Is there a reason for it all? A cause? Where, when, how, and why did it all begin, and where, when, how, and why will it all end, if ever? What is this stuff we call Reality, Existence; what is the origin of the Universe; who or what is God? I think of it often, and it always, literally, blows my mind.
