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Biocentrism - how life and consciousness are the keys to understanding the nature of the universe.
http://www.robertlanza.com/biocentrism-how-life-and-consciousness-a...
This appears to be WOO(caps are intentional) on first look, but the author does make some fairly sound arguments, at least in his synopsys. I guess I'll have to read the book with my woo meter fully charged. If his assertion is that the universe is recreated by human consciousness every moment, then he falls into a black hole of solipsism that I don't think he can escape. I have given a lot of thought on how perception may determine reality and how the observer is a variable of the quantum mechanics of reality. Stephen Hawking's thought has some convergence with this postulations lately.
Hawking is quoted in the July/August 2009 issue of Discover magazine as follows ("Return of the Invisible Man," pp. 50-51):
"Hawking's most recent work explores the implications of the notion that the universe is a giant quantum phenomenon. The problem with conventional attempts to understand the cosmos, he now believes, is that researchers have failed to appreciate the full, bizarre implications of quantum physics. These efforts to create a unique theory that would explain all the properties of the universe are therefore doomed to fail. Hawking refers to such attempts as `bottom-up' theories because they assume the universe had a unique beginning and that its subsequent history was the only possible one.
"Hawking is now pushing a different strategy, which he calls top-down cosmology. It is not the case, he says, that the past uniquely determines the present. Because the universe has many possible histories and just as many possible beginnings, the present state of the universe selects the past. `This means that the histories of the Universe depend on what is being measured,' Hawking wrote in a recent paper, `contrary to the usual idea that the Universe has an objective, observer-independent history.'"
Dr. Lanza insists that future theories of the universe will be biocentric in nature. That Dr. Hawking might agree, in a complete reversal from his past writing about this, certainly raises the most intriguing of possibilities, does it not?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Park Bierbower on -
Eh, I've always been a hard determinist, and while I understand the implications of Quantum Mechanics, I don't necessarily accept that they carry over when explaining the overall mechanics of the universe. Likely, instead of drawing from the micro for the macro, the universal explanation is another set of mechanics yet to be discovered.
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Permalink Reply by Lorryslorrys on -
Interesting. But perhaps your comment should be moved to the "arts-graduate science" category.
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Permalink Reply by Dan DuPree on -
I haven't seen that category here. Or perhaps this is just hubris since your intellect is so far above Hawking's that you can dismiss his speculations out of hand. And Heisenberg, who had the gaul to theorize that the act of observation and measurement change the result. The speculation here is that life force, not god or divine intellect is a natural, quantum force.
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Permalink Reply by Park Bierbower on
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I'm curious, what is the definition of "life force," specifically?
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Permalink Reply by Lorryslorrys on
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Zing!
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Permalink Reply by Vangelis Stamatopoulos on -
Oops, somebody should have told Robert Lanza that the Buddha was saying this over 2,500 years ago! Oh, and Stephen too. ;)
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Permalink Reply by Park Bierbower on
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In regards to heisenberg... I wonder if its been that the effect the observer has is merely corollary, not causal. Somewhat like the observation of time, the effect that "observing" may have may not necessarily be a determinant, but merely a measurement of the determinant. Quantum physics is much more a science of probability than cause and effect, yet I'm not sure that the measurements it yields would adhere to stochastistic probability... It seems from the closing line that if there were nothing to observe, than the universe might cease to exist, which does sound uncomfortably like solipsism slipping into theoretical mathematics. regardless, I'd like to discuss this more.
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Permalink Reply by Dan DuPree on
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Quite possibly. But while I'm a sceptic, I'm not fundamentalist believer. If science can show repeatable evidence that life is one of the forces that shape the universe(s) then I cannot disregard that. When scientist of Hawking's depth of intellect give it some credence, then I must examine those concepts without the prejudices of my anti-theism. We know like has power. In all of it's forms from protolife to the human intellect it has shaped this planet. Imagination, dreams and intellect have changed the world as much as natural forces and may destroy it if it does not fulfill it's biological emperitive of continuing life and improving it's chance for survival. Life force may be nothing more than it's drive to continue as an individual and a species, or it may be millions of years of evolved connected consciousness that acts as a natural organism influences nature to it's advantage. Look at the intelligent virus that with a few cells and no vestige of a brain to quickly mutate to give itself the advantage to overcome the human immune system, all manners of dissinfectants and medicinal suppressants and not just survive but find new ways to spread itself while mulitplying in the host without killing it and interrupting it's spread to other host. There may be no more intelligence than that, no loving god nor purposeful intellect, just the drive that makes it different than all other forms of matter, to continue self awareness and the genetic material that makes it capable of change and growth. It makes as much sense as gravity. It is because it is part of the laws of this universe, and as Hawkings is contemplating, may be one of the forces that guides the operation of the universe. We will have to wait for the science. Until then its WOO but if your atheism is more important than science then you may as well join a mosque.
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Smith on -
Ideas such as this are not complete woo, since at a quantum level the universe appears to behave in counter-intuitive ways and it has been shown experimentally that observation affects outcome. But I would say that this falls into the category of an "extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence", and the problem is that unless we can come up with a way to test the idea it isn't science, just a clever idea.
How would one go about testing the proposition that the very act of looking at the universe changes its history? Trying to flesh such an idea out suffers from the fact that if Hawkings is correct and that we have been funneled into the universe we observe by the fact of our observation from an essentially infinite set of possible starting points, the myriad of other possibilities have disappeared and left no evidence for us to detect.
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Permalink Reply by Jim DePaulo on -
If (a really big if) life and intellect determines the state and history of the universe by some yet to be discovered quantum phenomenon then it would be a local phenomenon only. Assuming human beings are not the only intellects in the universe then would not those other intellects be forming the universe from their perspective. I guess when we meet them we could ask – and if we did meet them would our universes be compatible?
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Permalink Reply by Dan DuPree on
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I wasn't really thinking in terms of 'intelligence' or consciousness. I was thinking of like as that 7 grams that goes away on most human deaths that science has been able to explain. Life is that thing that animates and allows growth and change of biologically based systems. Again, back to the 'intelligent' virus that finds ways to rapidly adjust to new threats and attack new host. Life may be accidental, but it seems determined to continue the existance of its 'self', genes, and species. That in itself indicates, at least to me, a force of nature as powerful as gravity and the forces that bind atoms and molecules. Particularly if it is accidental and not 'created' by some intelligence of thoughful 'creator' then that drive may be elemental to the universe and the reason it exist in a way that allows living changing things to exist, mutate and progress toward more dependable methods of existance, survival, intellect and concious awareness especially curiousity and drive to learn and create things that have nothing to do with survival.
Regardless of the form it takes, life, at least in this universe, is probably all of one fabric, and that fabric may be what Hawkings and the other author are perceiving as having a causitive nature on the way the universe operates to make it successful.
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Permalink Reply by Dan DuPree on
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Now I really get WOO on ya ass and this should probably be in the religion section or have my atheist nexus account expunged but:
If there is or every will be a 'GOD' it is probably creating itself now in this universe as the seeds of life growing into consciousness spread and evolve across space/time.
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