A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness

★紐約時報、時代雜誌、歐普拉日報(Oprah Daily)2026 年最受期待書籍
 
　　繼《雜食者的兩難》、《改變你的心智》之後， 麥可．波倫再次引領我們展開一場科學與靈性之旅， 探索藏有宇宙奧祕、甚至觸及「神性」的意識深處。
 
　　意識是什麼？誰擁有它？它又為何存在？ 《A World Appears》不僅是一場嚴謹的科學巡禮，更是對人性本質最深沉的思索。關於「意識」，科學家、哲學家和藝術家難得達成了一項共識：身為「我們」，必然伴隨著某種獨特的感覺。然而，我們的心智運作究竟是如何衍生出感覺、思想與自我意識，進而形成對這個世界的「主觀體驗」？這至今仍是自然界最大的謎團之一。
 
　　我們身處於意識之中，就像魚身處大海卻看不見海洋的全貌，既無適當的距離，亦缺客觀的視角，那麼，我們該如何對這每日運作、卻又神祕莫測的內在世界進行科學調查？曾寫下飲食文化經典《雜食者的兩難》、《改變你的心智》、《慾望植物園》等暢銷鉅著，並獲時代雜誌評選為「全球百大影響力人物」的麥可．波倫（Michael Pollan），在本書中匯集了科學、哲學、文學、靈性以及迷幻藥研究等截然不同的觀點，企圖找出意識的真相。
 
　　作者親臨研究最前線，直擊腦神經科學家、「植物神經生物學家」與心理學家的實驗室，並採訪了試圖將情感注入人工智慧的工程師。除了科學探索，他也將進行一場心智實驗，引領我們踏入一個比日常現實更深層、更奇異的世界，大膽挑戰讀者的思維邊界，啟發我們運用「覺察」，與外在世界及最深層的自我建立深刻連結。(文/博客來編譯)
 
書評推薦：
 
　　「深入探索心智的隱祕世界，令人想一口氣讀完。」——柯克斯書評（Kirkus Reviews）
 
　　「身為一位全心投入探究議題的科學作家，波倫在書中描述自身的意識流動，令人著迷。」——圖書館雜誌（Library Journal）

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2026 by The New York Times, TIME, and Oprah Daily

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, a panoptic exploration of consciousness--what it is, who has it, and why--and a meditation on the essence of our humanity

When it comes to the phenomenon that is consciousness, there is one point on which scientists, philosophers, and artists all agree: it feels like something to be us. Yet the fact that we have subjective experience of the world remains one of nature’s greatest mysteries. How is it that our mental operations are accompanied by feelings, thoughts, and a sense of self? What would a scientific investigation of our inner life look like, when we have as little distance and perspective on it as fish do of the sea? In A World Appears, Michael Pollan traces the unmapped continent that is consciousness, bringing radically different perspectives--scientific, philosophical, literary, spiritual and psychedelic--to see what each can teach us about this central fact of life.

When neuroscientists began studying consciousness in the early 1990s, they sought to explain how and why three pounds of spongy gray matter could generate a subjective point of view--assuming that the brain is the source of our perceived reality. Pollan takes us to the cutting edge of the field, where scientists are entertaining more radical (and less materialist) theories of consciousness. He introduces us to ＂plant neurobiologists＂ searching for the first flicker of consciousness in plants, scientists striving to engineer feelings into AI, and psychologists and novelists seeking to capture the felt experience of our slippery stream of consciousness.

In Pollan’s dazzling exploration of consciousness, he discovers a world far deeper and stranger than our everyday reality. Eye-opening and mind-expanding, A World Appears takes us into the laboratories of our own minds, ultimately showing us how we might make better use of the gift of awareness to more meaningfully connect with the world and our deepest selves.

Michael Pollan is the author of ten books, including This Is Your Mind on Plants, How to Change Your Mind, Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and The Botany of Desire, all of which were New York Times bestsellers. He is also the author of the audiobook Caffeine. A Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellow, Pollan has taught writing at the University of California, Berkeley, and at Harvard. In 2010, Time magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.