Roger Penrose

Roger Penrose aged 91, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020, is famous for his theory of Black Holes and singularities. Einstein didn’t like the idea. But black holes that Penrose predicted were later found to exist in great numbers. Indeed black holes are thought to inhabit nearly all galaxies.  I remember reading his popular exposition, The Emperor’s New Mind in the early 1990s, this physicist’s preoccupation with consciousness, product of biological life. Many a hard scientist argues that consciousness is poorly defined and not a proper subject of scientific inquiry at all, yet there was Penrose striving to explain consciousness on the basis of physical laws. Penrose worked for a time with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff on the hunch that microtubules, transporters of nutrients in neurons, made awareness possible through quantum behaviors. Accumulation of microtubule associated proteins is implicated in degenerative and dementing neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s, but Penrose couldn’t prove the positive case, that consciousness was a positive product of microtubule quantum behavior. Penrose admits that consciousness is still a mystery. In an interview in this month’s New Scientist with Michael Brooks, Penrose contends science hasn’t reached the point where consciousness can fully be described scientifically. Yet he has not lost confidence science will master consciousness in the future. He hasn’t given up on the ancient idea that the universe has a purpose which might just be the conscious ability to experience and reflect on itself. The student of science of a certain age, will confidently pass the baton to others for their own excited revelation. The essence of wisdom, is the infinite continuity and oneness of thought.