The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity by Bobby Azarian (review)
World literature today July 1, 2023 F. Haas
A critical review of Bobby Azarian's book The Romance of Reality, which attempts to present a 'theory of everything' called the Integrated Evolutionary Synthesis (IES), bridging quantum physics, cosmology, and evolutionary biology while addressing consciousness and free will. The reviewer argues that Azarian's synthesis relies on results that are not established science, such as semantic information measures and dissipative adaptation, and fails to clearly distinguish between established theory and early-stage hypotheses. The book's discussion of free will is criticized for lacking a clear definition and for not engaging with philosophical arguments like the causal exclusion principle.