Completed second draft of this book

PDF version of this book

Connecting meaning to structure

The physical world is permeated with meaning through conscious experience. Making love or dying a painful death have intrinsic value. Every conscious moment of every sentient beings' existence has positive or negative intrinsic value.

Connecting physical structure with conscious experience is the starting point for integrating science and spirituality. In doing so we do not seek an explanation for consciousness. Science ultimately explains nothing. The fundamental laws of science are the simplest known description of a wide range of phenomena. Science makes no claims to explain why those descriptions are correct. The power of science comes from the ability to model and thus to manipulate a wide range of phenomena using relatively simple descriptive laws.

The nature of existence is a deep and profound mystery that cannot be solved. For any explanation depends on assumptions which themselves must be explained in an endless regress. At best on can develop the simplest possible assumptions consistent with what we know to be true as science has done with its assumptions about physical structure.

Completed second draft of this book

PDF version of this book