Written by Robert Pepperell, PhD, ‘What Matter Feels’ explores groundbreaking theories on how energy patterns within the brain could fundamentally alter our understanding of consciousness. This book challenges conventional scientific paradigms and offers a novel framework that integrates physics, psychology, and neuroscience.
In his compelling new book, ‘What Matter Feels’, Robert Pepperell embarks on a profound exploration into the very fabric of consciousness, highlighted by his latest study published in the Brain Sciences journal.
This paper posits that understanding consciousness may hinge on how patterns of energy are organised in the brain, a theory that Pepperell elaborates on throughout his book.
With his extensive background in neuroscience, perceptual psychology, and the arts, Pepperell crafts a narrative that questions whether all matter, not merely the biological, possesses the capacity to feel.
This radical perspective suggests that energy not only influences but fundamentally constitutes our conscious experience, echoing ideas once supported by Albert Einstein and other scientific pioneers.
As Pepperell explores in ‘What Matter Feels,’ traditional physics of studying the world ‘from the outside in’ falls short when it comes to explaining consciousness, which is inherently an ‘inside out’ experience, felt subjectively. This book argues for a revolutionary update to the scientific framework, integrating subjective feelings into the very structure of reality’s study.
Synopsis:
Does matter feel? Do flowers enjoy blooming? Do springs dislike being stretched? Modern science denies that matter feels anything at all, let alone pleasure or pain. But modern science is yet to explain how anything can feel—even us.
In What Matter Feels, Robert Pepperell presents an innovative scientific framework that explores how consciousness might emerge from material systems. By rethinking foundational principles of physics, Pepperell proposes that the psychological properties of matter can be measured with the same accuracy as its physical attributes.
The tools and methods offered in this treatise introduce a groundbreaking way of predicting and testing the psychological behaviour of both living and non-living systems, opening a new frontier in scientific inquiry.
At the heart of the book is a provocative idea: experience is a fundamental property of nature, deeply tied to the flow of energy within material systems. Building on this hypothesis, Pepperell proposes a scientific model that may not only explain the correlation between neural activity and mental states but also their causal relationship.
His approach offers testable predictions about, for example, how pleasure and pain are encoded in the brain and sheds light on the evolutionary forces that shape living organisms.
What Matter Feels invites readers to engage with a living scientific document, one that encourages interdisciplinary collaboration and experimental exploration. The author welcomes contributions and feedback, ensuring the ideas presented continue to evolve through debate and research. Additionally, a portion of the revenue from each copy sold will be dedicated to supporting pan-disciplinary research on consciousness.
“’What Matter Feels’ makes a unique contribution to contemporary debates about the nature of consciousness because it takes a holistic view of the problem by drawing from a wide spectrum of disciplines, from neuroscience and philosophy to physics and art,” says Pepperell.
Continuing, “At its core is a highly challenging idea — that all matter can experience pleasure and pain. This is a very old idea which goes back to Ancient Greek thinkers such as Empedocles and was supported by many leading scientists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
“In ‘What Matter Feels’, I revive these ideas and set them in a modern scientific context. By reconsidering some of the most basic assumptions in physics, I show precisely how these ideas could now be tested and—if experimentally validated—why they would lead to a radically different way of thinking about nature and our place in it.”
Bold and innovative, ‘What Matter Feels’ is released on 2nd December 2024 and is available directly through Amazon and other book retailers.
For a deeper dive into the scientific foundations behind the book, read Robert Pepperell’s recent paper in Brain Sciences on how energy dynamics within the brain could explain consciousness. Read the paper here.