Who am I to unravel the mystery of consciousness?

"Who am I to unravel one of the three biggest mysteries in the universe? (The other two: Why is there something rather than nothing? And how did life arise from dead matter?) My main qualification is that I am a conscious human being who has become intensely curious about that fact. I also happen to be a science writer with a background in the humanities, which turned out to be more valuable than I would have expected. Literature, philosophy, and religion have been thinking longer and harder about consciousness than the sciences have, and I discovered that they have at least as much light to shed on the phenomenon. They can also help us defend the richness and complexity of consciousness from science's tendency to simplify whatever it is trying to explain."

— A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness by Michael Pollan