A Conscious Universe?

Only 5% of the known universe is visible to us. The other 95% is called dark matter and dark energy, and it's making scientists rethink what we know about the cosmos. Jet Propulsion Lab’s Fundamental Physics Portfolio Manager John Callas explains what dark energy is, why it’s so hard to study, and what NASA is doing to unlock this big mystery.

The sciences are pointing toward a new sense of a living world. The cosmos is like a developing organism, and so is our planet, Gaia. The laws of Nature may be more like habits. Partly as a result of the ‘hard problem’ of finding space for human consciousness in the materialist worldview, there is a renewed interest in panpsychist philosophies, according to which some form of mind, experience or consciousness is associated with all self-organizing systems, including atoms, molecules and plants. Maybe the sun is conscious, and so are other stars, and entire galaxies. If so, what about the mind of the universe as a whole?

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author of more than 85 scientific papers, and was named among the top 100 Global Thought Leaders for 2013. He studied natural sciences at Cambridge University, where he was a Scholar of Clare College, took a double first class honours degree and was awarded the University Botany Prize in 1963. Dr Sheldrake then studied philosophy and the history of science at Harvard before returning to Cambridge, where he took a Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1967.

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