{"id":246426,"date":"2026-11-03T06:10:32","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T12:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/planck-and-the-consciousness-puzzle"},"modified":"2026-11-03T06:10:32","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T12:10:32","slug":"planck-and-the-consciousness-puzzle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/planck-and-the-consciousness-puzzle","title":{"rendered":"Planck and the consciousness puzzle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Most of us, scientists included, see physics as an attempt to provide an objective description of the world independent of human subjectivity and consciousness. Yet, Max Planck, one of major scientific figures of the twentieth century and the founder of quantum mechanics, stated as a result of his investigations and experiments: \u201cI regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness.\u201d Should we listen to Planck? Can we plausibly see matter as derivative of consciousness? Might doing so help solve the deep puzzles facing contemporary physics and overcome the \u2018hard problem of consciousness\u2019 itself? Or does this outlook, as Einstein argued, undermine the very success and objectivity of science and take us back to a world of superstition?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most of us, scientists included, see physics as an attempt to provide an objective description of the world independent of human subjectivity and consciousness. Yet, Max Planck, one of major scientific figures of the twentieth century and the founder of quantum mechanics, stated as a result of his investigations and experiments: \u201cI regard consciousness as [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,1617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neuroscience","category-quantum-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}