Nilesh Jasani's Reviews > The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself

The Big Picture is a highly ambitious project and whether you agree with all the conclusions or not, you will walk away with many new understandings and marvel at its own internal consistency.

In this book finally, we have a natural science professor trying to give his unapologetic, no holds barred, rationalists' view on the nature or purpose of existence. Unlike many other scientists (at least in public domain), he does not shrug off what is unexplained by sciences to the realm of supernatural. And unlike many other rationalist philosophers, the author can and does use exhaustive his scientific knowledge well to make genuinely interesting points.

The author's overall construct is novel and impressive although it might be incomplete for an academic philosopher and good enough only for a popular science book. May be, it is not original either but it is for a book of this genre in the readings of this reviewer.

The main conclusion, in my words, is that any consistent and falsifiable theory that tries to explain what is going on around in our world is a part of a naturalist's bag of things to understand the world. The following are the main provisos:

- Such a theory should be valid in some ways to explain (past or present or future) a part of the world around us
- It should be falsifiable with more evidences (explained through Bayesian priors)
- It will only be valid in its domain of applicability. Bosons and fermions cannot explain how a cell functions or a theory of cells cannot explain how Facebook evolves - for instance Try explaining water pressure or properties through Hydrogen and Oxygen!
- No model can explain all the emergent or manifested facets of reality. New characteristics emerge when one changes the scale (or context of things). This is clearly true when one is dealing with chemicals where compound products have wholly different properties compared to the underlying.The author talks about this being true across realms (from quarks to protons to elements etc all the way to galaxies or from atoms to cells all the way to life, consciousness and history).
- And all such theories should be internally consistent.

The book goes on to explain some of these island theories that explain existence. Through the usual bag of theories, including relativity, quantum mechanics, biochemistry and evolution, the author describes emergence of ever rising complexity amid perpetually increasing overall chaos (entropy).

The author loses his way somewhat when he tries to apply systematic knowledge to human subjects like consciousness, morality, politics and other social/personal issues that have dogged philosophers from time immemorial. If consciousness, for instance, is an emerging phenomenon from physical brain states (like society from a group of individuals), is it totally wrong to talk about it in Cartesian dualistic way (for example once again, is water more than hydrogen and oxygen)? This is where many of the conclusions smack of dogma borne out of pre-conceived biases rather than a result of scientific inquiry. Many overall conclusions on the meaning and the purpose or the way to behave etc will likely warm all rationalist readers but for some conclusions at least, their foundations are as far away from a rational inquiry as in many other fields.