Meaning Book

I love the idea of scientists displacing "public intellectuals", though I think Brockman's idea is strained. What does language being an instinct (Steven Pinker) have to do with the earth being an integrated living system (Lynn Margulus) have to do with machine intelligence (Marvin Minsky)? The difficulty is having this constellation of edge-of-science ideas organized into a coherent theme, while saying something more than just "yay science!"

To me the most amazing (though thoroughly unsupported by scientific evidence) theory encountered in this book is that natural selection operates not just on life forms, but universes. If (if!!!) black holes generate universes which generate black holes which generate universes, perhaps there is selective pressure for universe to be born when produce the maximum number of black holes.

The the most schadenfreudely satisfying experience was seeing Roger Penrose's theory on consciousness followed by an avalanche of criticism. Penrose thinks the brain is non-computational because hey Godel, and because quantum mechanics. I was glad to see me sea-sicknesses echoed by others.