By Marcelo Gleiser
Is this coherence an accident or the product of something deeper, perhaps some kind of proto-consciousness that permeates the universe and gives it purpose? This is the question many physicists, cognitive scientists and philosophers have been asking lately, leading to a sort of reawakening of panpsychism. Panpsychism is an ancient belief that has been an essential aspect of many religions, from the Old Testament’s omniscience and omnipresence God to the Brahman of Hinduism, “the single binding unity behind the diversity in all that exists in the universe”. In his book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Nagel suggests that the laws of physics are not enough. He argues that there is some kind of “teleological naturalism,” a sort of overarching purpose in the universe that the usual reductionist approach cannot capture.
Read more at https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2017/07/12/536752502/is-the-universe-conscious