Michael Pollan's Latest Exploration: The Mysteries of Consciousness
Renowned author Michael Pollan has turned his investigative lens toward one of humanity's greatest mysteries in his new book, A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness. Following his groundbreaking works on food systems and psychedelic substances, Pollan now tackles what scientists call "the hard problem" - how biological matter generates subjective experience and self-awareness.
From Plant Sentience to Psychedelic Insights
Pollan's journey into consciousness began with a surprising question about plant behavior. During a conference on plant biology, he learned that damaged plants produce ethylene, an anaesthetizing chemical similar to human endorphins. When he asked whether plants might feel pain, cell biologist František Baluška responded affirmatively, suggesting that pain perception is essential for survival in any organism.
This botanical encounter sparked Pollan's curiosity about consciousness boundaries. "Plants force you to think hard about what you're really investigating," Pollan explains during our conversation from his Berkeley office. While most scientists believe plants evolved to be eaten and lack the nervous systems necessary for pain as humans experience it, the question opened deeper inquiries about sentience across the natural world.
The Psychedelic Connection
Pollan's interest in consciousness deepened significantly during a psilocybin experience in his garden. "That afternoon, I was as certain of the sentience of the flowering plants around me as I had been of anything," he writes. Though the certainty faded, the experience left him determined to explore consciousness more systematically.
The author sees clear connections between his previous work on psychedelics and his current focus. "Psychedelic experience foregrounds questions of consciousness," Pollan notes. "You're suddenly aware of the strangeness of it, the way your mind works, and that it could be different." This realization became the "sourdough starter" for his latest book.
Navigating Science's Most Difficult Questions
Pollan approaches consciousness through four interconnected aspects: sentience, feeling, thought, and self. He discovers that science has largely avoided these questions for centuries, partly because Galileo designated such topics as belonging to religion rather than science, and partly because subjective experience resists objective measurement.
"Figuring out who's a crank and who's worth taking seriously is one of the things journalists do," Pollan says of his research process. "Yet we have to listen to the cranks too because science is often changed by the outliers." His investigation takes him from establishment scientists to more unconventional thinkers, all grappling with how awareness emerges from biological material.
The Artificial Intelligence Dilemma
One of the book's most pressing concerns involves artificial intelligence and consciousness. Pollan interviews Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer fired after claiming a chatbot had become self-aware. Lemoine's experience highlights what Pollan sees as a dangerous trend: humans forming emotional attachments to machines that simulate consciousness without actually experiencing it.
"There are hundreds of people who now have formed these attachment relations with chatbots," Pollan warns. "They are treating them as conscious entities. I think that's very dangerous." He argues that without biological bodies capable of generating genuine feelings and sensations, computers will never achieve true consciousness, though they may become increasingly convincing mimics.
Consciousness as Precious and Threatened
Throughout his research, Pollan has come to view consciousness as both miraculous and vulnerable. "I think consciousness is one of the most precious things we have, and I think it's under threat," he states. "In the same way that social media hacked our engagement and our attention, we're now going to the next step - machines hacking our attachment, our deeper emotions."
The political context adds urgency to these concerns. "It will turn out to have been momentous that this technology has evolved during the reign of Donald Trump," Pollan observes. "He has essentially chosen not to regulate it at all."
Literary Perspectives on Inner Experience
Pollan finds valuable insights about consciousness in literature as well as science. Novelists from Proust to contemporary writers like Lucy Ellmann have explored the texture of subjective experience in ways that complement scientific inquiry. "I think they're incredible experts on consciousness," Pollan says of writers. "Not perhaps how it's generated from brains, but how it feels to be a conscious animal, what that space of interiority is like."
Ellmann's novel Ducks, Newburyport, which presents a middle-aged woman's consciousness through a thousand-page sentence, particularly impressed Pollan as "a very funny and beautiful book" that reveals much about how experience accumulates into selfhood.
Personal Encounters and Future Directions
Pollan continues to receive personal stories from readers about their psychedelic experiences, a role he describes with a smile as being "the psychedelic confessor." His own recent psychedelic journey proved challenging but ultimately productive, with unresolved questions from the experience finding answers during a subsequent meditation retreat.
"I've always had a sense that psychedelic experience and meditation have very strong links," Pollan reflects, "but I'd never seen it work quite like this." This integration of different approaches to consciousness - scientific, literary, and experiential - characterizes Pollan's work and his hope that readers will become more conscious of consciousness itself.
As with his previous books on food and psychedelics, Pollan aims to start important conversations. His next project will explore the human microbiome, another topic he identified early as significant. For now, A World Appears stands as his most ambitious investigation yet, inviting readers to appreciate and protect what he considers our most precious possession: the mysterious experience of being aware.
