The Sapient Cosmos: What a Modern-Day Synthesis of Science and Philosophy Teaches Us About the Emergence of Information, Consciousness and Meaning

Ever since the human mind awoke to its own existence, it has wondered about its cosmic significance. By dispelling myths and religious convictions, science entered the arena of explanatory templates. A tectonic shift in understanding began when the mind started decoding the universe‘s mathematical language. To this day, the technological prowess unleashed by scientific knowledge remains awe-inspiring. However, science excluded two crucial domains from its field of inquiry. Firstly, the formation of complex systems--especially metabolic structures--appears to defy the physics of cosmic disorder and decay. Then, the nature of consciousness itself was deemed unworthy of academic discourse until not too long ago. Furthermore, the adoption of physicalism as a metaphysical foundation for science was an enormously consequential choice, erroneously seen today as integral to science. This book chronicles an ongoing paradigm shift affecting physics and philosophy. Consciousness is rediscovered at the core of existence, expressing an intrinsic yearning for cosmic complexity, while the fabric of reality is woven from threads of information.

James B. Glattfelder is an author, academic, and quantitative researcher interested in the foundations of reality, the nature of consciousness, and the limits of knowledge. He has been invited as a speaker to various international academic and non-academic events, and multiple media outlets have featured his research. He holds an M.Sc. in theoretical physics and a Ph.D. in complexity science. For sixteen years, James worked in the traditional finance industry next to the distributed ledger ecosystem and was also a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich. James lives in Zurich, Switzerland.