Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False - Hardcover

Mind and Cosmos is ... extraordinarily ambitious. Nagel proposes not merely a new explanation for the origin of life and consciousness, but a new type of explanation: 'natural teleology.' (George Scialabba, Inference: International Review of Science)

Nagels book is provocative, interesting and important (Simon Oliver, Studies in Christian Ethics)

Nagels arguments are forceful, and his proposals are bold, intriguing, and original. This, though short and clear, is philosophy in the grand manner, and it is worthy of much philosophical discussion. (Keith Ward, The Philosophical Quarterly)

This is a challenging text that should provoke much further reflection. I recommend it to anyone interested in trying to understand the nature of our existence. (W. Richard Bowen, ESSSAT News & Reviews 23:1)

[This] troublemaking book has sparked the most exciting disputation in many years... I like Nagel's mind and I like Nagel's cosmos. He thinks strictly but not imperiously, and in grateful view of the full tremendousness of existence. (Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic)

A sharp, lucidly argued challenge to today's scientific worldview. (Jim Holt, The Wall Street Journal)

Nagel's arguments against reductionism should give those who are in search of a reductionist physical 'theory of everything' pause for thought... The book serves as a challenging invitation to ponder the limits of science and as a reminder of the astonishing puzzle of consciousness. (Science)

Mind and Cosmos, weighing in at 128 closely argued pages, is hardly a barn-burning polemic. But in his cool style Mr. Nagel extends his ideas about consciousness into a sweeping critique of the modern scientific worldview. (The New York Times)

[This] short, tightly argued, exacting new book is a work of considerable courage and importance. (National Review)

Provocative... Reflects the efforts of a fiercely independent mind. (H. Allen Orr, The New York Review of Books)

In Mind and Cosmos Thomas Nagel argues that the widely accepted world view of materialist naturalism is untenable. The mind-body problem cannot be confined to the relation between animal minds and animal bodies. If materialism cannot accommodate consciousness and other mind-related aspects of reality, then we must abandon a purely materialist understanding of nature in general, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. No such explanation is available, and the physical sciences, including molecular biology, cannot be expected to provide one. The book explores these problems through a general treatment of the obstacles to reductionism, with more specific application to the phenomena of consciousness, cognition, and value. The conclusion is that physics cannot be the theory of everything.