100 Books Like The River of Consciousness

This book helped me release shame after a colleague of mine told me my work wasn’t “science.”

Here’s the truth: to create a healing platform, I needed to tap into ways of thinking that academia sees as “woo woo” and “savage.” I looked to the stars. I meditated. I did rituals and read myths.

Dr. Kimmerer, trained as a traditional botanist, realized that the Indigenous myths and stories she was told as a child contained scientific knowledge passed down for generations by her tribe.

She realized there were scientific truths her community knew for millennia that traditional scientists only discovered within the last 100 years. This is the power of Ancestral Intelligence, disregarded by the same science that ultimately created AI.

What stories, fables, and myths have taught you valuable lessons about the world?

This is the classic personal account of the discovery of the structure of DNA. I read it as an early college assignment, but now find it rich in history, biology, and insight. Watson described himself as an ornithology undergraduate who avoided chemistry and physics courses in spite of a desire to do science—a common sentiment. He unfolds in frank detail how the world of science worked, and sometimes didn’t work, early post-WWII. We learn as much about bond angles and hydration as we do about laboratory politics and personality quirks beneath the effort to puzzle out the structure and function of DNA. The epilogue pays tribute to less well-known collaborators, especially Rosalind Franklin, sometimes dismissed as uncooperative, but recognized here for her essential contributions and competence as a scientist.

A Crack in Creation was the first mainstream book that conveyed the extraordinary potential and ethical peril of the new genome editing technology, CRISPR. And who better to write it than the scientist who co-developed the “genetic scissors”, Professor Jennifer Doudna (who won the Nobel Prize three years later).

The book is also notable for the candid manner in which Doudna discusses her own nightmares about the potential misuse of CRISPR – fears that erupted one year later in the ‘CRISPR babies’ scandal.

You will never look at an oak tree in the same way after reading The Nature of Oaks.

Tallamay shares so much fascinating info about a tree most of us take for granted. No other tree species supports so many different kinds of animals. From tiny wasps to white-tailed deer, everyone in the forest relies on oak trees.

Whenever I walk past a tall oak tree, I feel like I know so much more about its life and the hidden world it supports. I’m in on a huge secret that started with a tiny acorn.

When I moved to San Diego I began to get interested in time perception as well as the physics of time. My colleague Patrica Churchland kindly gave me this book to read. It’s a popular, accessible book on cognitive science and time perception. I couldn’t put it down. For sure it changed my academic path. I knew the mind plays all kinds of tricks on us, but the way it creates our inner sense of time experience still amazes me. 

This book by G. Edelman played an important role in the development of our mathematical MES theory for complex "living" systems. Our specific application of MES to neuro-cognitive systems, named MENS, represents a kind of mathematical translation of Edelman’s book into Category Theory. 

Specifically, leveraging the categorical concept of a 'colimit,' we expand upon Edelman's principle of the "degeneracy of the neural code" by introducing a form of non-isomorphic redundancy termed the Multiplicity Principle (MP), wherein the system admits multifaceted components. Subsequently, we establish a significant result: if an MES adheres to the MP, the system is reliant not on pure reductionism but rather on an "emergentist-reductionism" as defined by the philosopher and physicist Mario Bunge.

This book, by the co-discoverer of the molecular structure of DNA, helped kick off the modern research enterprise that seeks to track and identify the neuronal correlates of consciousness, that is the footprints of consciousness in the brain. Crick argues that for tactical reasons, scientists should focus on more accessible aspects of consciousness, such as visual awareness, and provides an easy-to-follow introduction into the mammalian brain.

We tend to picture an observer inside our heads experiencing consciousness as if watching a movie. But that just pushes explanation back a level: What’s inside that observer? The prolific philosopher Daniel Dennett dismantles many common intuitions about awareness, showing them to be illusions hiding the intricate and deceptive mechanics of the mind and brain. This was one of the first books on consciousness I read. I don’t agree with everything Dennett has to say on the matter, but he’s a great guide to think with.

John Lilly, a Caltech and University of Pennsylvania trained doctor who also probed the murkiest waters of the psychedelic experience, was the inspiration for Dade Harkenrider in my book, Ann Marie’s Asylum. Lilly was a genius, who crossed over the edge more than once.

This is a cognitive scientist and neurologist who stopped me in my tracks. The title felt like a whisper of a profound truth I’ve always sensed: each of us is not merely in the world, but a world unto ourselves. The book lives up to its promise.

Koch offers luminous reflections that bridge neuroscience with some of life’s most ungraspable questions. He explores consciousness not just through science, but also through psychedelic experiences, mystical states, near-death experiences, and even artificial intelligence.

What excites me most is the book’s courageous breadth, refusing to limit consciousness to mere circuitry or dogma. Koch straddles the line between materialism and mystery, between what can be measured and what must be felt. For anyone deeply interested in the soul’s terrain and the evolving relationships between mind, machine, and mortality, this book serves as a map—not one that gives answers, but better questions.

It affirms my… show more.