Incomplete nature
Subtitle: how mind emerged from matter
By: Terrence W. Deacon
Publisher: W.W. Norton
Published: 2013
Place of publication: New York; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 604
ISBN-13: 9780393343908
Subjects: Origin; Phenomenology; Life; Consciousness; Brain
Description: As physicists work toward completing a theory of the universe and biologists unravel the molecular complexity of life, a glaring incompleteness in this scientific vision becomes apparent. The "Theory of Everything" that appears to be emerging includes everything but us: the feelings, meanings, consciousness, and purposes that make us what we are. This is an unacceptable omission. We need a "theory of everything" that does not leave it absurd that we exist. Incomplete Nature begins by accepting what other theories try to deny: that, although mental contents do indeed lack the physical properties that are assumed to be necessary for something to phave physical consequences in the world, they are still entirely products of physical processes. And they have an unprecedented kind of causal power that is intrinsically incomplete and therefore unlike anything that physics and chemistry alone have so far explained. The book's radically challenging conclusion is that we are made of these specific absenses--such stuff as dreams are made on--and that what is not immediately present can be as physically potent as that which is. It offers a figure/background shift that shows how even meanings and values can be understood as legitimate components of the physical world.
Notes: Originally published: 2012.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Absence; title: (W)holes; title: Homunculi; title: Golems; title: Teleonomy; title: Emergence; title: Constraint; title: Homeodynamics; title: Morphodynamics; title: Teleodynamics; title: Autogenesis; title: Work; title: Information; title: Significance; title: Evolution; title: Self; title: Sentience; title: Consciousness.