New Scientist Asks: Is Consciousness MORE Fundamental Than Physics Itself? (And why it’s keeping me up at 3 AM)
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I’m staring at a ceiling fan while a three-month-old finally passes out, and I just finished reading that New Scientist piece on panpsychism. Honestly, it hit different tonight. When they ask whether awareness might be more fundamental than physics itself, it’s not just academic anymore for me. I’m trying to figure out how to raise this little human without jamming religious dogma down their throat, and the whole “consciousness-first” angle keeps pulling at me.
I’ve been reading Philip Goff’s writing on this lately. He argues that if we treat consciousness as just an emergent property of dead matter, we’re basically hiding from the hard problem of consciousness that David Chalmers laid out. I don’t know if I fully buy into panpsychism, but the idea that awareness might be woven into the fabric of reality instead of accidentally booting up in wet brains? It resonates. Especially when you’re running on two hours of sleep and suddenly every creak in the house feels like it’s breathing.
From a Jungian lens, this mirrors Carl Jung’s concept of psychic causality—the idea that inner states and outer events aren’t strictly separate. Jung didn’t claim it was empirical science, he called it a heuristic, but it’s a useful way to hold the mystery without forcing it into a reductionist box. I keep looking at the Star tarot card when I feel this kind of existential whiplash. It’s not about prediction; it’s about that quiet moment of surrender, trusting the pattern even when you can’t see the threads. Raising a kid feels exactly like that. You want to give them a framework that honors wonder, not just rigid facts.
I’m not saying mainstream science has solved anything. Peer-reviewed journals are still heavily materialist, and that’s fair—replicability matters. But I think we’re hitting a wall with purely mechanistic models. If consciousness turns out to be primary, it doesn’t mean we abandon physics. It just means we stop assuming the map is the territory.
Has anyone else here been wrestling with consciousness-first cosmology lately? I’d love to hear how you’re balancing the science with the spiritual stuff, especially if you’re navigating early parenthood too. I’m just trying to keep my head above water and figure out what kind of world I’m actually bringing them into.
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