Michael Pollan. Penguin Press, 2026. 320 pages.
Reviewed by George W. Stickel
For most of his life, celebrated author Michael Pollan has been concerned with food, farming, and related topics. As his website notes, Pollan has “written books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds” (https://michaelpollan.com/about/). Six of his eight books were New York Times bestsellers, including perhaps his most well-known publication, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. This review is of Pollan’s most recent book. – Editor
I jumped at the chance to read this book after hearing its author, Michael Pollan, interviewed on Stephen Colbert’s show. Throughout my career, my academic interest has been what happens at that moment of learning and how we change as we learn. The classical American pragmatists have argued that the process of learning or habit formation begins with a provocation or a problem that awakens a consciousness within us. So, Pollan’s search for that consciousness was apropos. From my studies, that provocation stimulates a special awareness within the organism of its surroundings, as well as an internal awareness of the organism itself—e.g., fear, hunger, excitement. Those awarenesses begin a mapping of the surroundings and the self, called exteroceptive and interoceptive mappings, respectively. Only those details that are relevant to the provocation or the problem are part of the mapping. So, a shepherd missing a lamb or a student confronted with an algebra problem will not be aware of extraneous information, like their grandmother’s maiden name. Thus, consciousness becomes specific to the situation.
George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, and Charles Sanders Peirce (founder of American pragmatism) all systematically detailed the stages of the processes of learning and consciousness in their books The Philosophy of the Act, How We Think, and Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, respectively. I have found that current neuroscience studies, by numerous authors, confirm the details of these processes—but that’s for another time. So, I wanted to expand my understanding of that moment of consciousness.
In fact, Pollan’s research includes several of the neuroscientists I have studied and used in courses over the years, e.g., Antonio Damasio, Marcus Raichle, and Patricia Churchland. Because Pollan has asked a variety of questions in his search, he has sought interviews and laboratory visits to a plethora of other neuroscientists, philosophers, religious leaders, and others, to comprehend that moment of consciousness. So, I found the book quite edifying—it’s all about how you ask the questions.
The contents of the book begin with a discussion of “The Wager,” the 1998 bet made by Christof Koch with David Chalmers over drinks in Bremen, Germany. Koch, a young protégé of Francis Crick, was researching the brain, and Chalmers was a philosopher of the mind. Chalmers had famously divided the issue of consciousness into two parts: the easy question and the hard question. The easy question was understanding the neuronal patterns that sequenced certain human responses. The hard problem, though, was not the connectedness, but rather how that connectedness produced the magic of the awakened mind, conscious of the surrounding world. The wager, then, which Koch brashly made, was that within twenty-five years neuroscientists would “find the physical footprint of consciousness in the brain” (xvi). Spoiler alert, Koch paid off his bet in 2023.
Concerning the mapping of the connectedness of consciousness, while not surprising in some respects, Pollan does not detail the work of Stanislas Dehaene, only mentioning him (xxviii). Dehaene and his group have worked to map that moment of consciousness they call Global Ignition, in what is referred to as Global Network Theory (GNWT). Pollan lists this theory as the second leading theory of consciousness, after Koch and other’s work on the Integrated Information Theory (xxi). While details of the network are understood, the “how” of the awareness of consciousness is not understood—more on this later.
Pollan addresses the major philosophical and neurological issues with the flair of a journalist’s quality writing and storytelling, as he hits key topics in his quest. What is sentience and who or what is sentient are the opening chapter’s subjects. Chapter 2 focuses on feelings and their role in consciousness. Chapters 3 and 4, “Thought” and “Self,” concern the question of thought and a search for “self” that interacts with and processes thought. His conclusions rest with his meditations in a cave, under the tutelage of “Roshi Joan” Halifax, abbot at Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe.
Pollan’s book is filled with profound quotes from numerous sources. For example, ethnobiologist Timothy Plowman’s response to the question, are plants conscious? “They can eat light, isn’t that enough?” (31). Or Mark Solms definition, “Consciousness is felt uncertainty,” based on problems of survival (52, 81). And profound ideas—including Integrated Information Theory, Damasio’s centrality of feelings, Christof Koch’s search for consciousness from neuroscience, and Idealistic philosophy—all contribute to this stew of comprehending consciousness, because neuroscience alone is not cracking the hard problem.
And this book attempts to understand the hard problem, how the world magically appears when we open our eyes after a night’s sleep. The question is how the biochemical world of the brain can convert that electrochemical connectivity into the visions that allow us to write poetry, paint panoramas, and compose symphonies that reflect the magical, mystical dynamics that are otherworldly from ions, proteins, neurons, and the strange folds of gray matter.
From my perspective, all precocial animals (i.e., those that, at hatching or birth, are capable of a high level of independent activity) are born with the ability to map the world before them, with the limits or complexities of their senses. A new earthworm maps moisture, organic material, and toxins in the centimeters around its body. At birth, crocodiles have greater sensorial capacity for mapping and function quickly to survive. Even guinea pigs have advanced brain and sensorial capacity at birth—their biochemical sensorial world yields a wonder of an environment open to their survival.
In contrast, altricial animals (i.e., animals born or hatched in a very helpless and immature state), such as many birds, mammals, and certainly humans, need to learn how to use their senses, both internal and external, to map their worlds. Humans require long months and years to learn how to use complex senses to map our worlds. At the age of 76, I am still learning the nuances of sensorial comprehension of my world.
Two important groups of people that Pollan does not consult in his quest are child developmental psychologists and educators. Had he done so, they could explicate the long years of learning the world that surrounds a newborn and child. And, they would note, the human mapping still does not define what that “real” world looks like. Compared with other animals, we have limited olfaction and hearing abilities, and we do not see in the UV range that bees can, or in the IR (infrared) range of pit vipers, or in X-ray formats like Superman. The wonderous world that appears to us, requires all kinds of instrumentations to provide a clearer vision of that world. Still, our world is amazing and mystifying.
How does the world appear? William James rightly suggests that it begins as a “great blooming, buzzing, confusion … which came to our notice at once” (James, The Principles of Psychology, 1950, 488). Subsequently, it is learned very slowly through parental nurturing, family interaction, play, and initiation rites in aboriginal societies, which we call schools, in more civilized social groups. Horizons of that world move from mother’s skin, to home settings, schools, communities, and beyond, teaching what to discern in the images before our senses.
Our world is amazing and mystifying
The book is a good read on the topic from scientific, philosophical, and religious perspectives, and insights from psychedelics—even discussing brain imaging of meditation—all addressing the issues around understanding that moment of consciousness. It is a must read for a comprehensive perspective on consciousness. The world does not appear—it is learned. It is not a hard question, it just is a long, many years long, activity of learning to use our senses to comprehend that world.
