All That is and Will Be: consciousness suffuses all reality — mind as well as matter

‘The problem for physics is, a universe that has consciousness in it is a conscious universe. Everything that isn’t conscious is incipiently conscious.’

Richard Grossinger admits he’s bluffing with the title of his new book, Bottoming out the Universe. This is just as well when potential readers might well be perplexed by such an inverted trope. After all, the universe surely has no top or bottom, only infinitude.

‘I was proposing the impossible in order to say that our possibility, meaning “us”, was already and only bottomless,’ he says. ‘I know that doesn’t do it, but nothing will.’

An apt remark, when ‘Why there is something rather than nothing’ is the tantalising sub-title of the book (Park Street Press, US $19.99 / UK £16, April 2020). Early on, Grossinger states he is using the phrase ‘bottoming out’ in the sense of ‘getting to the bottom of things’ in understanding the fundamental nature of existence.

In this exercise, crucially, anthropologist Grossinger stands opposed to reductive materialism, and on two main counts: that the universe doesn’t bottom out as matter, and that consciousness fails to fit any unified field theory of physics. He prioritises models of the universe that include mind, and examines non-local and…