Antonio Machado Carrillo is a Canary Island biologist that one day left for Laos, where he set out to write for “fourteen days”. The outcome of that interview with himself is a mixture of travel book, philo¬¬so¬phical essay, popular science and intellectual leg¬acy. Readers will not remain indifferent to this difficult-to-label book, where the meaning of life (living matter) and mind (thinking matter) are explained as cosmic phenomena. It deals with the importance of information in both the evolu¬tion of the universe and of living beings; it tackles the instincts and cultural achievements of our species, viewed as a psycho-biological amalgam. The future of nature in a psychosphere, humanine, the risks of eco¬fascism, the evils of plenty, infoxication, beliefs, people’s reason for living or ikigai, and other things—as the title says—are also discus¬sed.
It is a gener¬ous book in which to learn, an invitation to reflect, or an imposition, perhaps…?