Table of Contents
Prologue 1
Part 1 Cosmos
1 The Fundamental Nature of Reality 9
2 Poetic Naturalism 15
3 The World Moves by Itself 23
4 What Determines What Will Happen? 30
5 Reasons Why 38
6 Our Universe 47
7 Time's Arrow 54
8 Memories and Causes 60
Part 2 Understanding
9 Learning about the World 69
10 Updating Our Knowledge 75
11 Is It Okay to Doubt Everything? 84
12 Reality Emerges 93
13 What Exists, and What Is Illusion? 105
14 Planets of Belief 115
15 Accepting Uncertainty 123
16 What Can We Know about the World without Actually Looking at It? 130
17 Who Am I? 139
18 Abducting God 144
Part 3 Essence
19 How Much We Know 153
20 The Quantum Realm 159
21 Interpreting Quantum Mechanics 166
22 The Core Theory 172
23 The Stuff of Which We Are Made 178
24 The Effective Theory of the Everyday World 186
25 Why Does the Universe Exist? 195
26 Body and Soul 205
27 Death is the End 215
Part 4 Complexity
28 The Universe in a Cup of Coffee 225
29 Light and Life 237
30 Funneling Energy 244
31 Spontaneous Organization 250
32 The Origin and Purpose of Life 260
33 Evolution's Bootstraps 273
34 Searching through the Landscape 279
35 Emergent Purpose 291
36 Are We the Point? 302
Part 5 Thinking
37 Crawling into Consciousness 317
38 The Babbling Brain 327
39 What Thinks? 336
40 The Hard Problem 348
41 Zombies and Stories 355
42 Are Photons Conscious? 363
43 What Acts on What? 372
44 Freedom to Choose 378
Part 6 Caring
45 Three Billion Heartbeats 387
46 What Is and What Ought to Be 394
47 Rules and Consequences 403
48 Constructing Goodness 412
49 Listening to the World 419
50 Existential Therapy 428
Appendix: The Equation Underlying You and Me 435
References 443
Further Reading 451
Acknowledgments 455
Index 456