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USC Off the Beaten Path: The Search for Spirituality

Consciousness as Reality

Where do galaxies, ants and quarks really come from? Four scientists search for the truth behind being and sensation
By Jessica Roberts, Nick Street, July 18, 2007

Where do galaxies, ants and quarks really come from? Four scientists search for the truth behind being and sensation.

Humans can build machines to re-create conditions seconds after the Big Bang and send a probe to the surface of a one of Saturn's moons. But no one can explain how experience happens — how we smell garlic, for example, or see colors.

Those small things and every other sensory event that we toss under the heading of "consciousness" mark the edge of a scientific frontier that four professors in Southern California plan to chart, using the latest techniques from mathematics and quantum theory.

They begin their expedition with an elemental question: What is real?

The minds behind Conscious Realism

Click photos for extended interviews:

Don Hoffman
Professor of Cognitive Science, UC Irvine
Chetan Prakash
Professor of Mathematics, Cal State San Bernardino
Jon Merzel
Professor of Mathematics, Soka University
Phat Vu
Professor of Physics, Soka University

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