A Natural History of Wising Up

You and I are some of the rarest things in the universe, beings who with language can try to make sense of the whole ball of wax and us stuck in it. It’s just us humans and probably a scattered smattering of intelligent beings peppered across the vast expanse. All evidence suggests we weren’t planted by some all-knowing god. The first living beings emerged from nothing but chemistry. They eventually evolved into us few folk sputtering guesses about what it all means. Most of us have to grab a path and get to work just to stay alive. My weird path has had me working with Harvard/Berkeley biologist/neuroscientist Terrence Deacon for 25 years, developing a physical science explanation for how we striving beings emerged from aimless chemistry in the first place. Living beings are neither magic nor machines. So what are we? DNA and evolution don’t explain us. DNA is an aimless chemical. Natural selection explains how we evolve, not how chemistry becomes beings struggling for their own existence. It no more explains us than the existence of a mountain explains beings trying to climb it. Audacious though it is to claim it, Deacon and we fellow researchers have a straight-up scientific explanation for how mattering emerged from matter, an explanation for the effort you make when the chemistry you’re made of makes no effort at all. Having an explanation is rare. Most researchers just assume and describe us beings and effort. We can explain them from the ground up. I take this nerdy research to heart andI pour it out in many mediums, scholarly and playful;, I translate it for everyday orientation, putting us and the clusterflux of life in intimate, ironic context. Thanks for taking a look!