Science is getting closer to the source of consciousness. Nick Lane’s Transformer

I’ve been learning from Professor Nick Lane’s amazing books for nearly two decades now. His latest one “***Transformer: The deep chemistry of life and death***” focuses on mitochondria, ATP, and the Krebs Cycle. Professor Lane’s descriptive abilities to explain and connect the dots makes this book downright thrilling for anyone who’s been following scientific developments for these past decades, because the past decade has been revolutionary.

My most thrilling moment was realizing that the Krebs cycle is where chemistry—by virtue of harnessing electricity, that is electron flow and proton gradients—invented biology—then together with Earth and the arrow of time, created Life, awareness, Evolution.

It takes a great professor to empower students like that — and Nick Lane PhD is about as good as they get! His epilogue is a superb exposition of the state of modern biology, and why it matters to us individual humans for getting a realistic grip on who we ourselves are.

Following this introduction I transcribed extensive quotes from Dr. Nick Lane’s recent book Transformer, specifically its epilogue, “Self” — which seems to me the best street level summary of current scientific understanding regarding our physical body & brain, as the ultimate source of our thoughts and feelings, in short our mind & soul.

Why do I believe this is important? Because, Evolution and biological realities receive way too much hollow lip service, and too little detailed attention.

Why? Who knows? Why do philosophers tend to keep it within the bubble of their thoughts? Valuing dialogue more than getting into the weeds of learning about evolutionary biology to find out what nature & evolution has to teach us about the source of our consciousness.

What follows is offered as food for thought. An invitation to explore Nick Lane’s report on the microscopic source. Towards a deeper understanding of how the interaction between body, brain, and life itself gives rise to our consciousness — and while all the details aren’t filled in, an internally consistent outline is becoming clear enough — backed by the consilience of scientific evidence. We should start taking it seriously.

As Dr. Solms points out elsewhere: ***the best way to understand consciousness is, as a reflection of our body/brain communicating with itself.***

This is my puny challenge to philosophy departments to take notice, and start formulating better, more relevant, questions regarding our human condition.

Professor Nick Lane PhD writes in his epilogue to the book “**Transformer**”

I claim fair use, to justify this reprinting and sharing

¶1 “ ‘I think therefore I am’ said Descartes, in one of the most celebrated lines ever written. But what am I, exactly? … What is a quantum of solace?”

¶2 “In this book, we’ve explored the dynamic side of biochemistry, the continuous flow of energy and matter that makes us alive. …”

*… to continue*

Since what follows are quotes from the text and me paraphrasing deleted sections, it seems inappropriate to post all of that over here at Medium.com. The full text can be found at:

A scientific approach to understanding your “Self” — Nick Lane PhD., text of Transformer’s epilogue, “Self.”

Nick Lane’s other books **https://nick-lane.net/**

Oxygen: The Molecule that made the World, 2002

Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life, 2005

Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, 2009

The Vital Question. Why is life the way it is?, 2015

Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death, 2022

To be clear, this budding understanding goes well beyond simply the work of one scientist:

Striving to Understand Consciousness. (with a little help from Nick Lane)

The “Cellular Basis of Consciousness” proposal — A Student’s Introduction to Dr. Arthur Reber’s CBC

Cellular Basis of Consciousness #2 Reber’s Q/A — Student’s Resource, transcript of highlights.

**Introducing a new perspective: Earth Centrism (1/2)**

**Earth Centrism — A Student’s Bibliographic Resource — (2/2)**