A World Appears argues that the scientific and philosophical modes of Western society have proven incapable of describing, explaining, or in some cases even identifying all the complex mysteries of existence. This includes the origins of life, the complex nature of cosmology, and the nature and origins of consciousness. Despite Pollan’s initial assumption that science can and has solved the mysteries of consciousness and he simply needs to do the research to understand it, he continually discovers throughout the book many examples of the limitations of Western modes of rational thought, including science and philosophy. He thus opens the book believing in the supremacy of Western rationality to explain the nature of the mind and closes the book with the conclusion that consciousness may be beyond all human understanding.

The core of this theme is in the “hard problem” of consciousness, “the puzzle of why any of these mental operations […] are accompanied by any conscious experience” (xv). Pollan uses the hard problem as a guide throughout the book to critique and question each consciousness theory he examines. Crucially, both Pollan and Chalmers find each theory inadequate to the task of solving the hard problem, leading each to conclude that Western modes that rely on rationality and objectivity may never answer the question of why mental processing does not “go on ‘in the dark,’ free of any inner feeling” (xv).

However, many scientists maintain that rational research and scientific inquiry will, eventually, unlock the mysteries of consciousness. Pollan speaks with many consciousness researchers who have not given up that task, including Antonio Damasio, Michael Levin, Karl Friston, and others. Psychologist Daniel Gilbert, for instance, acknowledges the current difficulty of solving the hard problem of consciousness but warns Pollan against “the desire for magic” (65), by which he suggests that consciousness will one day be accessible to rational thought because “everything in our world can ultimately be explained by the established laws of nature” (65) without the need to resort to magical thinking and mysticism.

Pollan takes this warning to heart and pushes back against his own impulses toward a desire for mystery and a bias built on a background in the humanities that respects “human consciousness as something exceptional that is worth defending” (100). However, by the end of Chapter 2, Pollan has already begun to question Gilbert’s insistence. When Kingson Man describes a psychedelic experience and his conclusion that there is “a spark of the divine in us” (118), Pollan wonders if this is an example of the magical thinking Gilbert warns against, or rather an acknowledgement of the truth that rational thought cannot access and explain everything.

As Pollan continues, he uncovers more examples that demonstrate the truth of this supposition. The most significant example is that of Christof Koch, the staunch materialist neuroscientist who made the bet with David Chalmers in 1994, and admits defeat in 2023. By the end of the book, he has concluded that physical science fails in the task and has begun to explore the more metaphysically-incline theory of idealism instead. By the Coda, Pollan argues that even Buddhism may not adequately solve the hard problem, suggesting that this is not merely a limitation of Western rationality but of all human effort. His conclusion is that consciousness cannot yet be explained, but it can be appreciated and lived by everyone, no matter what school of thought they support.