The Romance of Reality
How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity
by Bobby Azarian
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Pub Date Jun 28 2022 | Archive Date Jun 06 2022
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Description
According to the prevailing scientific paradigm, the universe tends toward randomness; it functions according to laws without purpose, and the emergence of life is an accident devoid of meaning.
But this bleak interpretation of nature is currently being challenged by cutting-edge findings at the intersection of physics, biology, neuroscience, and information theory—generally referred to as “complexity science.” Thanks to a new understanding of evolution, as well as recent advances in our understanding of the phenomenon known as emergence, a new cosmic narrative is taking shape: Nature’s simplest “parts” come together to form ever-greater “wholes” in a process that has no end in sight.
In The Romance of Reality, cognitive neuroscientist Bobby Azarian explains the science behind this new view of reality and explores what it means for all of us. In engaging, accessible prose, Azarian outlines the fundamental misunderstanding of thermodynamics at the heart of the old assumptions about the universe’s evolution, and shows us the evidence that suggests that the universe is a “self-organizing” system, one that is moving toward increasing complexity and awareness.
Cosmologist and science communicator Carl Sagan once said of humanity that “we are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” The Romance of Reality shows that this poetic statement in fact rests on a scientific foundation and gives us a new way to know the cosmos, along with a riveting vision of life that imbues existence with meaning—nothing supernatural required.
Advance Praise
“This is truly a book for the twenty-first century—the ‘century of complexity.’ It is a quite remarkable synthesis of all my favorite things!”
–Karl Friston, neuroscientist at University College London, fellow of the Royal Society, and recipient of the Minerva Golden Brain Award
“What is the origin of life and consciousness? Theists answer with God. Atheists say it is all a cosmic accident. But what if, as Bobby Azarian argues in this magisterial account of cosmic evolution, the universe has built into its laws of nature principles of emergence that generate complex adaptive systems that include life and consciousness? What if our cosmic purpose is to create our own cosmic purpose? This book will blow your mind.”
–Michael Shermer, publisher, Skeptic magazine; Presidential Fellow, Chapman University; and author of Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design and The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People
“The Romance of Reality is a signpost to a richer, deeper understanding of life. It explores the entwining of concepts that are coming to be seen as central to that understanding: thermodynamics, information, self-organization, computation, causation, and agency. Azarian outlines a program that is already occupying some of the finest minds, and which may eventually lead us to better know ourselves and our place in the universe.”
–Philip Ball, recipient of the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books and author of Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew about Quantum Physics Is Different
“Bobby Azarian’s The Romance Of Reality is an audacious state-of-the-art examination of the unfolding of our universe and our place in it using a complexity lens. He wrestles with the big questions: the arrow of time and the second law, the nature of life, evolution with emergence, the nature of consciousness, causality and free will, Chalmer’s hard problem, integrated information theory, and much more. Bobby’s startling new synthesis is well researched and provides a profoundly hopeful path forward for humanity.”
–Jim Rutt, former chairman of the Santa Fe Institute and host of the podcast The Jim Rutt Show
“Bobby Azarian’s new book is an impressive tour de force on the scientific territory of the origin of life. It starts with mechanics and thermodynamics, and brings us to statistical mechanics and the new language of disorder, complexity, and information. On the horizon is ‘life’ throughout the universe, at all scales. The main takeaway is the oneness of it all, as in the hand in glove of animal and niche. In sum, this is a comprehensive book that will nourish the science hungry and will offer guidance for the young and aspiring scientist.”
–Adrian Bejan, J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor at Duke University and author of The Physics of Life: The Evolution of Everything
“What would happen if you tried answering every fundamental question about our existence? Why did life emerge? What is consciousness? Free will? Self? Knowledge? Information? How do all these concepts fit together? Bobby Azarian’s new book is the answer to life, consciousness, cosmic complexity, and everything.”
–Roman Yampolskiy, director of the CyberSecurity Lab and professor of computer science at the University of Louisville, author of Artificial Superintelligence
“The Romance of Reality is a scientific book with epic psychological implications: How thrilling to realize that the existential bleakness of our reductionist worldview is finally being superseded by the realization that we are in fact nested within rapturously self-organizing systems within systems, in a grand ballet of emergent complexity . . . Indeed, we are causal agents at the footsteps of a singularity of mind and meaning, an intelligence explosion, with a meaningful role to play in evolution!”
–Jason Silva, philosopher and former host of National Geographic’s Brain Games and Origins
“The Romance of Reality maps out a mind-expanding path from reductionism to emergence, offering ‘a radical new cosmic narrative’ that revels in the sublime beauty of evolution and our plausible collective participation in it. With his compelling and oftimes contentious synthesis that takes turns both poetical and polemical, Azarian offers a tour de force thought experiment in self-reference and recursion he calls ‘poetic meta-naturalism.’ Take his heady Gedankenexperiment seriously, and you just might find ‘some slack in the cosmic chain of cause and effect due to intrinsic randomness,’ and become ‘an adaptive agent with cybernetic control . . . by initiating causal chains that influence the trajectory of cosmic evolution.’ Only one way to find out!”
–Richard Doyle, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Penn State and author of Darwin’s Pharmacy: Sex, Plants, and the Evolution of the Noosphere
“This book achieves what many assume to be impossible. It takes some of the most difficult and profound concepts there are—What is life? What is consciousness? In what ways is free will real? What is reality?—and provides accessible and enjoyable explanations, while always respecting the depth of these topics. And that’s precisely why this book is so needed in an era where people are increasingly feeling crises of meaning. These explorations show how the scientific worldview need not threaten our meanings, but can deepen them. Others have attempted this before, but this book is extraordinary in following through on this ambition.”
–Adam Safron, postdoctoral research fellow, Johns Hopkins Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research
“Some of the most powerful moments in life are the sudden realizations of new insights, where concepts and ideas simply fall into place and answer fundamental questions. The Romance of Reality delivers several such epiphanies in a highly engaging style. As a neuroscientist and tech journalist, Bobby Azarian had an early understanding of how blockchain enables the emergence of collaborative, self-organizing systems. We are now closer than ever to realizing this vision with decentralized autonomous organizations and Web3. The Romance of Reality provides a preview of the new ways of human connection and consciousness promised by these and other developments.”
–Dominik Schiener, cofounder and chairman of the board of directors, The IOTA Foundation
“This book begins to solve the mysteries of the universe. What are you going to do—not read it? This is Game of Thrones for the battle between order and chaos. Is life random and devolving or complex and evolving? We’re at a pivotal moment in our quest to find out. As Azarian brilliantly explains, the universe is waking up through us. This book will help you do likewise.”
–Cenk Uygur, creator of The Young Turks
“Bobby Azarian has pulled off the impossible. He has woven together entropy, information theory, and complex adaptive systems to put the life of this cosmos into a single big picture. Despite our disagreements about entropy and information theory, The Romance of Reality is stunning.”
–Howard Bloom, author of The Lucifer Principle and The God Problem
“Azarian’s The Romance of Reality is an exhaustive and thorough exploration of many of the biggest theories about life and its place in the universe.”
–Johnjoe McFadden, professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey and author of Life on the Edge: The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology
“The Romance of Reality makes accessible the essence of a little-known scientific revolution currently sweeping the research community. This revolution makes clear our relatedness to the universe and is destined to provide further answers to all our big questions. Einstein proclaimed that the purpose of science is to awaken our cosmic religiosity—this book does just that.”
–John Campbell, author of Universal Darwinism: The Path of Knowledge
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781637740446 |
| PRICE | $26.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 320 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Bernie G, Reviewer
This book presents a metaphysics based on the relatively new (but increasingly mainstream) sciences of complexity, chaos, and information. It boldly explores some of the major questions that consume both philosophers and scientists, such as: how life came to be, what life’s purpose is (to the degree it has one,) what consciousness is and does, and how are we to explain the fact that we live in a universe finely-tuned to generate and support life? (Particularly, if one doesn’t like explanations that are audacious and unprovable like “god did it” or “there are infinite parallel universes.”)
The book starts out in territory that is fairly uncontroversial among physicists, arguing that life comes about (and does so with striking speed – i.e. fast abiogenesis) by a process through which nature moves the ordered / useful energy that Earth has in abundance into disordered / useless energy (e.g. waste heat,) a process that runs on rules not unlike Darwinian evolution (molecules have an informational existence that allow something like hereditability [passing down of “blueprints”] and mutation [distortion in copies, some of which will make the molecule or organism more efficient at using energy.]
The book then ventures into territory that is quite controversial, arguing that life has a purpose (beyond the tedious one of moving low entropy energy into a high entropy state,) and that purpose is to be an observer – i.e. to be the first stage in a self-aware world. I should point out a couple things. First, when I say this part is controversial, I mean that it couldn’t be called the consensus view, but that’s not to say that these ideas don’t have a following among some high-level intellects. Second, I think we need people to consider ideas that might seem a bit “out there” because there is a danger of not progressing because we’re trapped in morass of assumptions. Science has quite a few self-appointed guardians who mock as pseudo-science any idea that strays from scientific consensus or from a rigidly reductionist / materialist / Copernican worldview. The author doesn’t abandon a scientific point of view, even though it might seem he does to some because he abandons the nihilistic view that’s taken as a given by many in the scientific community (i.e. that life is a happy accident without purpose, significance, or influence on the universe – and that life consists of automata, playing out programs -- devoid of any kind of free will.)
I don’t know how much of Azarian’s metaphysics will prove true, but this book was superbly thought-provoking and opened up to me whole new vistas of possibility about the big questions of philosophy and science. I’d highly recommend it for readers interested in the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
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