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Our current scientific model claims that the universe was, until rather recently, a lifeless collection of particles bouncing against each other and obeying predetermined and mysterious rules. This view holds that life harbors consciousness -- a concept poorly understood by science -- but it is of little relevance in describing the universe.
There's a problem with this supposition. Consciousness is not just a pesky byproduct or irrelevant item, the way a buzzing mosquito might interfere with a biologist's concentration as she skims algae off a lake. No, consciousness is the very matrix upon which the cosmos is comprehended. It is the movie screen upon which our worldview is projected. If it is bent or distorted or contains some unsuspected color, then all our perceptions of the cosmos seem fundamentally erroneous.
Since May, 1926, when Nobel physicists Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr began to realize that the presence of an observer determined the results of experiments, it's become even clearer that attempts to explain the nature of the universe and its origins absolutely requires a worldview in which our presence plays a key role. After all, it is the biological creature that fashions the stories, that makes the observations, and that gives names to things. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in Experience: "We have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors." George Berkeley, the Irish philosopher for whom the university and city were named, came to a similar conclusion: "The only things we perceive," he famously said, "are our perceptions."
And this is one of the central themes of biocentrism: That the animal observer creates reality and not the other way around. This view of the world, in which life and consciousness are central to understanding the universe, hinges on how subjective experiences interact with physical realities.
Without perception, there can be no reality. Before applying this on a universal scale, consider your own kitchen. Its contents assume all of their familiar forms, shapes and colors, whether or not you are in it. Or do they? At night you click off the light and leave for the bedroom. Your kitchen stays the same all through the night. Right?
Wrong. The refrigerator, stove and everything else are composed of a shimmering swarm of matter/energy. Quantum theory tells us that not a single one of those subatomic particles actually exists in a definite place. Rather, they merely exist as a range of probabilities. In the presence of an observer--that is, when you go back in to get a drink of water -- each particle's wave function collapses and it assumes a position, a physical reality. Moreover, the shapes and colors known as your kitchen are seen as they are only because photons of light, which possess no inherent visual properties, bounce off objects and interact with your sensory system.
Biocentrism is no minor perceptual tweak. Our entire education system assumes that we perceive external pre-existing realities and play little or no role in their appearance. Scientists and non-scientists alike typically imagine an external world existing on its own; with an appearance that more or less resembles what we see. By this reasoning, the human eye and brain allow us to cognize the actual visual appearance of things, and to alter nothing. Not so, says biocentrism.
Another strong argument for biocentrism is that the universe has a long list of traits that make it appear as if everything from atoms to stars were tailor-made just for us. There are over 200 physical parameters so exact that it strains credulity to propose that they are random. These fundamental constants of the universe are not predicted by any theory--they all seem carefully chosen, often with great precision, to allow for existence of life. Tweak any of them and you never existed. Some scientists call this revelation the "Goldilocks Principle," because the cosmos is not "too this" or "too that," but rather "just right" for life. Eschewing teleological justifications, biocentrism posits that if the universe is created by life, then a universe that doesn't support life could not possibly exist.
Quantum experiments, showing that the results depend on whether anyone's watching, make no sense at all absent a biocentric basis for the cosmos. Oddly enough, so do space and time, which according to biocentrism, are forms of animal sense perception. When we speak of time, we inevitably describe it in terms of change. But change is not the same thing as time. Everything we perceive is actively being reconstructed inside our heads. Time in this sense can be defined as the summation of spatial states--much like in a film--occurring inside the mind. So what is real? If the next mental image is different from the last, then it is different, period. We can award that change with the word time but that doesn't mean there is an actual invisible matrix in which changes occur. That is just our own way of making sense of things.
There is a peculiar intangibility to space, as well. We cannot pick it up and bring it to the laboratory. Like time, space is not an external object. It is part of an animal's mental software that molds sensations into multidimensional objects. We have come to regard space as sort of a vast container that has no walls. But this notion is false. By treating space and time as fundamental and independent things, science picks a completely wrong starting point for understanding the world. By contrast, biocentrism offers a springboard to make sense of aspects of biological and physical science which are currently insensible.
This brief synopsis of biocentrism is just the iceberg's tip. To grasp its connotations is to abandon the shaky foundation underlying our historical understanding of the universe. The 21st century is predicted to be the Century of Biology, a shift from the previous century's focus on physics. It seems fitting then to begin the century by employing biology to unify all sciences. Let's stop leaning on the purely theoretical, such as imaginary strings, and instead start with a much simpler idea, the roots of which are buried in all of us.
Adapted from Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe by Robert Lanza with Bob Berman, BenBella Books, Dallas Texas, May 2009. 224 pp. ISBN: 978-1-933-77169-4. $17.47.
Robert Lanza, M.D. is currently chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology, and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Lanza has worked with some of the greatest thinkers of our time, including Jonas Salk, B.F. Skinner, Christiaan Barnard, and Nobel laureates Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter. He has authored over 20 books, including Principles of Tissue Engineering and Essentials of Stem Cell Biology, which are considered definitive references in the field.
Bob Berman is the most widely read astronomer in the world. Author of over 1,000 published articles in publications such as Discover and Astronomy magazine, where he is a monthly columnist, he is also astronomy editor of The Old Farmers Almanac. He is adjunct professor of astronomy at Marymount College, and writes and produces a weekly show on Northeast Public Radio, aired weekly during NPR's weekend edition.
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[Comment posted 2009-08-25 23:47:28]
One of the basic aphorism in Upanisads is: asadva idam agra asit, or brahman (and its symptom consciousness) existed even before the manifestation of the material world. This implies that life cannot be explained from matter as life is more fundamental than matter. However to develop a scientific conception of the real nature of life will require a very serious dialogue among the thoughtful scientists and scholars all over the world.
[Comment posted 2009-04-28 22:43:30]
Without onderstanding consciousness, we will be groping in the dark without knowing we are groping.Micro undersanding shall shall unravel the mysteries of macrocosm.
[Comment posted 2009-04-22 13:59:57]
[Comment posted 2009-04-20 17:23:39]
[Comment posted 2009-04-20 16:27:14]
But there was an even better summation in Wiki:
Over a century later Berkeley's thought experiment was summarized in a limerick by Ronald Knox and an anonymous reply:
There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To think that the tree
Should continue to be
When there's no one about in the quad."
"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad.
And that's why the tree
Will continue to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God."
[Comment posted 2009-04-20 16:21:01]
[Comment posted 2009-04-20 10:05:40]
[Comment posted 2009-04-20 08:44:31]
If we put our mental perceptions of space, time and external reality at the centre of our scientific understanding of the cosmos, it slaps more of egocentrism than any other centrism.
I think that humans, as but one conscious species existing for a flash of time in the known universe, really only perceive a sliver of what the universe holds.
My eye for example, only detects a modest range of light wavelengths. Instruments augment this faculty but hey - who trusts an instrument?
Biology is more interesting than physics - now that's a better argument.
There's no need to call this argument 'biocentrism'.
[Comment posted 2009-04-19 11:38:49]
The present article is relevant here as it suggests biology as the key to cosmology. It is interesting to speculate that this may be possible, if we understand how our senses including brain work, so that we shall understand the origin of the postulates of Quantum Mechanics and might be able to derive them mathematically.
[Comment posted 2009-04-18 18:45:02]
One view point I don't get, or why one would say it as if is needed to justify the pursuit of this view, is captured in statements such as:
"Our understanding of the universe as a whole has reached a dead-end. In our view, current physics-based theories of the material world do not work, and can never be made to work, until they fully account for life and consciousness."
Of course our current physics-based theories work. They in fact work to an amazing precision for predicting most of what we observe around us. But as we know they do not do a complete job of it, and we don't have a Theory of Everything (T.O.E) yet; biocentrism may get us there, lets see.
I also get nervous when I see statements suggesting that it is just to improbable that the universe is the way it is unless it was consciousness was involved, insomuch as it seems to invoke a God concept. I tend to prefer the anthropic principle, it makes sense to me, i.e., we can't experience a world we couldn't live in. Therefore the world we live in must support life.
But mostly I see a familiar position I am uncomfortable with, which is it has to this or that, the universe is physics determined or it is biological. My position is it is both and in fact they are one and the same thing. Just as E=MC^2 came as a great non-intuitive concept, and later proven reality, this argument may be missing a crucial perspective.
My thinking goes like this. Two familiar primary arguments regarding life and consciousness go like this. One saying we are "just" a series of chemical reactions thinking we are conscious. The other being consciousness is transcendental and is in fact attributed to a soul or some other non-chemical entity.
To me this is not helpful. In the first argument the word that gives me the greatest trouble is "just". In the second, it is the need to create some entity that we have absolutely no data to support its existence other than faith and uneasiness with the first argument.
I suggest a different view. We are, and our consciousness is, in fact an emergent quality of the physical and chemical arrangement we call a human beings brain and the corresponding sensory organs. But the point is this is not a "just" it is a profound realization. Think about it, it means that the chemistry and physics that surrounds us when arranged in a particular way form a consciousness we call human. Amazing! It simply is that way; it is not diminishing or deflating. It tells a profound reality of the universe, consciousness is inherent in the basic components, quarks, electrons, muons, photons, the forces and time, i.e., there is a quantum consciousness of the fundamental object of existence, or the fundamental object is indeed consciousness. I would suggest that our consciousness points strongly to this view. It is right out in front of us but we find it very hard to believe.
This lack of believing and moving with what is staring us in the face is akin to scientific concepts such as animals don't feel pain, emotions, don't reason or have consciousness or language. Anyone who spends anytime with say a dog, cat or cow clearly sees this is nonsense and it is only recently that science has proven such things "scientifically" in the case of other primates, dolphins etc. Not that I have a problem with the scientific proof of such things but it was obvious to anyone who just accepted what they saw.
So perhaps a new equation will emerge from biocentrism.
Perhaps something like Awareness= Consciousness x Chemistry squared, abbreviated to A=CCm^2. Where chemistry/physics is some measure of space-time arrangement leading to emergent consciousness such as our own.
[Comment posted 2009-04-18 06:07:06]
Other substance than my thought?
Lives it by my sense alone
Or by some essence of its own?
-Henry Hedge (I think - can someone confirm this?)
Bishop Berkeley famously concluded that, since things must be perceived in order to to exist, the universe can only exist if it is perceived in the mind of God, which he took to be a proof of the existence of God, which is a reasonable enough conclusion once you have decided to go down this road. Ironically, it is advances in biology, specifically our understanding of the mechanics of human perception, that undermine Berkeley's premise. His classic example was a tree falling in a forest. Does it make a sound if no one is there to hear it? We now know that the percept (sound) only exists in the mind of the listener, but a physical phenomenon (compression waves traveling though the air) can exist independently of the percept. This dichotomy dissipates Berkeley's argument, at least in this example. The process of validating our perception of the outside world by examining how another person perceives it (e.g. by the scientific study of perception) is known as intersubjectivity. Philosophically and psychologically it is fundamental to our grasp of the reality of the physical world around us. People in solitary confinement go quite mad without it. It works roughly like this: I can observe you in the process of perceiving the world outside of yourself, and I can clearly see that the objects you perceive exist separately from you, and I can see how objects external to you manifest themselves to you. You can do the same for me, and we can compare notes. All that remains is to assume that you and I are mentally basically similar -- i.e. that our relationship is basically symmetrical -- and we can thence conclude that the world we mutually perceive exists outside of ourselves. Reality is a social construct, to borrow the phrase of Peter Berger -- not in the sense that reality is merely a matter of social convention, but in the sense that verifying it is critically dependent on social interaction. Ignoring this simple truth has left philosophers chasing their own tails for millenia. To the extent that contemplative philosophy is solitary, it is incapable of grasping reality. Maybe this is why most scientists distrust it. (I am aware that the assumption of mental symmetry is unprovable, but it seems overwhelmingly plausible, and I for one am willing to go with it.)
[Comment posted 2009-04-18 02:57:08]
[Comment posted 2009-04-18 02:06:40]
In his joke we were asked to believe that a single pulse output of a Gieger tube could be held in a state of quantum indeterminancy until an "observer" came along to look at it.
Now we are asked to believe that turning on the lights in the bathroom and taking a look collapses "the wave function" of the bathroom!
Here is a nice project for Robert Lanza and Bob Berman to spend the rest of their lives on. Find out just how intelligent this observer has to be. Would a fly be OK or even a microbe. Maybe a few stupid atoms would be enough?
Another funny twist - Schrdinger was very influential in getting physicists to move into biochemistry. Reason was - he was convinced that there were new principles of physics to be discovered in biology. He seems to have been wrong so far.
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 22:04:56]
This statement assumes that our consciousness can define itself. But system of logic that "fully accounts for [human] consciousness" could only come from a superhuman consciousness (God, for example.) Yet the authors arrogantly presume to be able to think outside of their own minds.
These men (like many arrogant scientists) first establish that human consciousness is inadequate to explain itself, and then continue by trying to do it anyway. There is a word for this and it's "hypocrisy."
Of course, it makes sense to me that human consciousness has a limit, because I acknowledge the existence of a higher consciousness. Anyone humble enough to do the same--I ask you to read the Bible.
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 20:37:59]
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 17:15:48]
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 16:56:27]
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 15:17:00]
His point was this: A paradigm is a combination of a "scientific world view" I(which determines that type of entities that can exist within that "world view", and "exemplars" (which show how to approach the solutions of problems within that "world view", and which kind of solutions can be accepted within it). Although scientists rely on paradigm, they never accept a paradigm as the absolute truth, but are fully aware that an accepted paradigm may eventually be toppled by a scientific revolution, and be replaced by a new, incommensurate paradigm. We know that scientific revolutions had occurred in the past, and there is nothing to assure us that they will not occur in the future.
Kuhn stresses that the reason scientists have no choice but to rely on paradigms (with their "scientific world views"), is that ultimate reality, i.e. the absolutely true world view can never be known to us, and we, therefore, cannot compare it with any "scientific world view" we temporarily accept. If the absolutely true world view could be known to us, we would never, even temporarily, accept anything less than that, and scientific revolutions could, then, never occur.
Since ultimate reality is inaccessible to us, neither "biocentrism", nor any other "centrism", can ever alter that!
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 14:57:01]
The universe is right for life, of course!!! otherwise will not be here...But like Carl Sagan said once, we can not survive as a humans and still nature although it is working hard to make us survive, does not care about the final result because we are not the only experiment running at this moment.
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 14:55:55]
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 14:16:21]
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 14:12:13]
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 14:06:46]
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 13:55:00]
I prefer to think of consciousness as the result of the work of complex neural networks with the capability to sense the environment and respond to it. This is probably one of the most central principles in biology, at all levels of organization. Then, there should be different levels of consciousness. Humans, and mammals in general, seem to posses one of the highest levels of consciousness. Humans in particular seem to have better self perception. But consciousness is limited by our capability to perceive our environment, and it has evolved to respond to certain stimulus. Our senses detect colors, sounds, smells, etc., and our brains are best stimulated by food, sex and danger. No wonder our consciousness is so limited.
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 13:38:38]
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 13:13:20]
"This argument seems to me so manifestly false that I fear I must have misunderstood it."
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 12:35:42]
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 11:57:22]
The statement that awareness creates reality is the same thing as a little kid thinking that they are rendering themselves invisible by closing their eyes, or that a loud noise will go away if they plug their ears.
I don't think that there is any evidence that life and perception are anything other than complex (OK, very complex) physical and chemical phenomena. Just because we can not currently describe physical mechanisms for consciousness doesn't mean they don't exist. And there is no evidence that says such mechanisms can not or do not exist.
This is one more idea that falls, along with intelligent design, into to pool of ideas that are supported only by the argument of personal incredulity.
[Comment posted 2009-04-17 11:56:45]
Human vision seems to peer out into a physical world that is continuous and apparently seamless. Yet we know that our optic nerve creates a very large blind spot. All points in our field of view appear to be in full resolution, yet our fovea is constantly scanning around and sharpening up the model of the world that exists in our mind?s eye. We might think our vision to be like that of a video camera with a densely packed detector array rather than the sparsely populated retina that it is. We perceive a narrow range of colors that correspond to the solar peak, the ripeness of fruit, and sensitivity to wavelengths of use to us. If we were snakes our hardware would be different. Nature has nicely matched sensor arrays with the needs of creatures and has used remarkable software to create the perception of a seamless reality. But ultimately, we are not objective in our data acquisition or data processing. While this often serves us well, let us not get confused between objective and subjective realities.
There are limits to human certainty and what we know about the positions of atoms at any given time. But if we get up in the night and open our refrigerator the milk is probably where we left it. At any given instant, in a moment called now, all of the atoms are in a particular position and in the next moment they will be someplace else. But, the milk will be where we last left it unless someone else came and drank it.