The Universe in your Head

Very interesting blog post I found. I just figured I'd share it. Enjoy.

Biomedical researcher Robert Lanza has been on the frontier of cloning and stem cell studies for more than a decade, so he's well-acclimated to controversy. But his book "Biocentrism" is generating controversy on a different plane by arguing that our consciousness plays a central role in creating the cosmos.

"By treating space and time as physical things, science picks a completely wrong starting point for understanding the world," Lanza declares.

Any claim that space and time aren't cold, hard, physical things has to raise an eyebrow. Some of the reactions to Lanza's ideas, first set forth two years ago in an essay for The American Scholar, brand them as "pseudo-scientific philosophical claptrap" or "no better than any religion."

Lanza admits that the reviews haven't all been glowing, particularly among some physicists. "Their response has been much how you'd expect priests to respond to stem cell research," he told me Monday.

Other physicists, however, point out that Lanza's view is fully in line with the perspective from quantum mechanics that the observer plays a huge role in how reality is observed.

"So what Lanza says in this book is not new," Richard Conn Henry, a physics and astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins University, said in a book review. "Then why does Robert have to say it at all? It is because we, the physicists, do not say it - or if we do say it, we only whisper it, and in private - furiously blushing as we mouth the words. True, yes; politically correct, hell no!"

The weird twists in our view of the cosmos are hinted at in the scientific speculation over quantum teleportation, experiments in reverse-time causation, the idea that time has no independent existence, and physicist Stephen Hawkings' suggestion that the universe as we know it is generated through quantum interference involving all possible universes.

Lanza and his co-author, astronomer/columnist Bob Berman, try to assemble all those weird little twists into a larger theory. Rather than laying out the big picture here, I'll let them do it in an exclusive online abridgment:

The authors contend that their view of the cosmos can help resolve all the head-scratching over unifying the fundamental forces, or coming up with a "theory of everything" that covers the submicroscopic world of quantum effects as well as the grand workings of gravity.

There are potential pitfalls, of course. If you merely accept that reality works the way it does because that's how our senses and neurons are structured to perceive it, you could run the risk of shrugging off the search for deeper, truer descriptions of that reality.

One route would be to write off the still-mysterious aspects of our universe (e.g., what dark energy is, or how consciousness arises) as an expression of the anthropic principle. In effect, you're saying, "It's that way just because if it weren't, we wouldn't be here to observe it." Another route would be embracing intelligent design ("God did it").

Neither of those routes can be navigated very well using the scientific method, and Lanza and Berman point that out in their book. However, they don't lay out a detailed road map showing how a "biocentric" view of the universe might affect the course of science - other than to say that neuroscience needs more attention and string theory needs less.

Theoretically, one avenue might be to study how our brain organizes the incoming electrical impulses to create the matrix beyond - and tweak that circuitry in different ways. "With a little genetic engineering, you could probably make anything that's red move, or make a noise instead, or even make you feel hungry or want to have sex," Lanza said.

Lanza acknowledges that the step-by-step, objective approach to solving scientific puzzlers is still the way to go when you're focusing on a specific research project, such as turning the medical promise of embryonic stem cells into reality. He knows he's not making all this up.

"Day to day, yes, I can put x number of ml [milliliters] in a Petri dish, and I can predict exactly what the behavior is going to be," he told me.

But Lanza said quantum effects as basic as the two-slit experiment tell us that there's more to life, the universe and everything than milliliters of solution in a dish. "We have this way that we think of space and time on the street. It's day to day, paying your bills," Lanza said. "But when you look at these experiments, that's not what they're telling us. In fact, they're telling us quite the reverse."

SOURCE:cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com...
You can also find a sample of the book there. I think I may pick up the book.
Oh, and the comments I emphised hints at a certain bias that I believe holds us back.

[edit on 19-7-2009 by Watcher-In-The-Shadows]

Its not so much that the universe is inside your head but they are both constructs of the same thing IE your MIND..

Now i know that sounds strange but lets look at 2 simple reasons for why and how this is possible..

Does your mind have a shape?

Does the Universe have a shape?

interesting do you think?

do not need some twit with a PHD to work that little cracker out now do we?

that is why we have pattens its a self replicating system.. we are one of the same thing

only that our body is the thing that holds our mind and the universe is just a question

if you can understand that.. you do not know how you formulate a question you only predict its outcome by giving the answer correct?

The universe is a question

I wouldn't want to know what's in most peoples heads. It's not the universe, trust me. What exactly is your belief concerning this blog?

reply to post by djr33222


I think you are taking the name of the thread a little too literally. But, it is in line with what implications of Quantum Mechanics is telling us. Just that the scientific community currently has a problem in that atheism has been trying to declare science exclusively atheistic and will viciously attack and exile anyone that dares utter even a sylable that sounds anything like spirituality. After all they are perfectly fine with theorizing that we are nothing more than a computer simulation yet well, you can guess the rest.

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows


I appreciated their work, but I don't know why most of them have to be a-holes about it..!

It all seems to be pointing to a consciousness generated matrix, by the mind of God - that's where it's all pointing to, so they may as well start getting used to the idea, and who care where it leads..

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows


I understand. I didn't read your entire post as you know, sorry. Yes, science has become a bit militant to go along with their religious counterparts. Possibly I'll have more thoughts later. Someone please propel this discussion.

reply to post by djr33222


Science is not synonomous with atheism as you just state in your post. If true science had any position it would be agnostic, not atheist. But of course, it is to the benefit of New Atheists *Dawkins, etc* to make it seem to be so. Thusly they do and shove their beliefs where they do not belong.

reply to post by OmegaPoint


One word, agenda. Like I think I said, they want people to believe science is synonomous with atheism as if the question as to the existance or lack there of, of a higher power/prime mover/god was not ultimately a nonfalsifiable question *thusly not under the auspex of science*. Which at current and possibly forever, it is. And that is just a drop in the bucket as far as their dishonesty goes.

But my point is things like this, you use double negatives and ambiguity in your response when I asked a straight forward question of what the core belief is. True science cannot be seperated from religion, I know this from Einstein in the same way that true psychology cannot be seperated from religion ala Dosotevsky. Where is your basis my friend?

From a humble minimum wage worker residing in the states.

reply to post by djr33222


Yet you admit you did not read the entire post that was a response to yours, heck, the first couple of lines say it. Remember where I said it was in line with the implications of Quantum Mechanics?

And secondly, there is always ambiguity in any answer to any question. It's the nature of the mind and how easily it can be tricked. Even by itself.

[edit on 19-7-2009 by Watcher-In-The-Shadows]

The implications of "new" science isn't worth sh"t to me. This debate goes back alot further than quantum mechanics and the history is violent.

Have to prove your worth to me, even if over the internet, if you claim the "new shizzle" is so great to begin with.

This fundamental shift is from a materialist realism (matter is primary) to a monistic idealism (consciousness is primary).

Once that shift is made, and you add in non-locality and the holographic mind and holographic universe theories and evidence, then it's just one step away from a mind of God hypothesis, which is inevitable, and some brave scientist is going to tackle it soon, if not in this generation then in the next.

And then cosmology will get ahold of it, and someone somewhere at some time will come up with a new theory for a bounded boundless universe who's only boundary is once again God or God as a self aware universal consciousness upholding and maintaining the universal probability wave.

Stephen Hawking has posed the notion that the universe is a quantum interference between all possible universes. There is only one reason for this view, because he's an atheist, but the multi-worlds theory is surely absurd.

I think that as they go to any lengths within the framework of quantum mechanics to avoid God, God will show up for them, and at some point, they'll just roll with it, and the Theology and Science will become two sides of the same coin, probably like it has on other worlds with advanced technology and scientific understanding.

reply to post by djr33222


Actually, I don't have to prove anything to you as "proving" anything to you is virtually impossible *impossible if you're unreceptive*. Especially over the internet. I put the information out there, I state my case, you do with it as you will. And as for proving Quantum Mechanics to you, there are people vastly smarter than me that came up with it *hell the only reason Einstein could come up for disagreeing with it was because of his predisposition that he was a determinist and was quoted as saying it bothered him more than a little because he was a determinist and couldn't find anything wrong with it other than it went against his preconcieved beliefs*

reply to post by OmegaPoint


I am not sure that is the case though I do respect your opinion. But, I would like to see bias of any kind removed from science. Because science when used to uphold bias is little more than propaganda as the current state of things show.

Incidentally, I found the principles of Biocentrism.

According to Robert Lanza biocentrism has seven principles.[9]

A First Principle of Biocentrism: What we perceive as reality is a process that involves our consciousness. An "external" reality, if it existed, would by definition have to exist in space. But this is meaningless, because space and time are not absolute realities but rather tools of the human and animal mind.
A Second Principle of Biocentrism: Our external and internal perceptions are inextricably intertwined. They are different sides of the same coin and cannot be divorced from one another.
Third Principle of Biocentrism: The behavior of subatomic particles, indeed all particles and objects, is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer. Without the presence of a conscious observer, they at best exist in an undetermined state of probability waves.
Fourth Principle of Biocentrism: Without consciousness, "matter" dwells in an undetermined state of probability. Any universe that could have preceded consciousness only existed in a probability state.
Fifth Principle of Biocentrism: The structure of the universe is explainable only through biocentrism. The universe is fine-tuned for life, which makes perfect sense as life creates the universe, not the other way around. The "universe" is simply the complete spatio-temporal logic of the self.
Sixth Principle of Biocentrism: Time does not have a real existence outside of animal-sense perception. It is the process by which we perceive changes in the universe.
Seventh Principle of Biocentrism: Space, like time, is not an object or a thing. Space is another form of our animal understanding and does not have an independent reality. We carry space and time around with us like turtles with shells. Thus, there is no absolute self-existing matrix in which physical events occur independent of life.

SOURCE:[email protected]

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows


You have a lot to learn my friend. My general feeling toward your original post is that it had no purpose. Because if this, we need not argue.

reply to post by djr33222


Then your feeling is wrong sir or ma'am. And you are allowed to be wrong. But please do so in silence especially when it's just because you want me to, apparently, speak my impressions in a form easier for you to understand as I have explained a little bit at the very least.

So anymore contrarian babble to sling at me?

[edit on 20-7-2009 by Watcher-In-The-Shadows]

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows


No.

reply to post by djr33222


Thank you. Fair thee well.

Originally posted by symmetricAvenger
Its not so much that the universe is inside your head but they are both constructs of the same thing IE your MIND..

Now i know that sounds strange but lets look at 2 simple reasons for why and how this is possible..

Does your mind have a shape?

Does the Universe have a shape?

interesting do you think?

do not need some twit with a PHD to work that little cracker out now do we?

that is why we have pattens its a self replicating system.. we are one of the same thing

only that our body is the thing that holds our mind and the universe is just a question

if you can understand that.. you do not know how you formulate a question you only predict its outcome by giving the answer correct?

The universe is a question

Don't mind if I save this post for future reference, I have been thinking very similarly and made a thread trying to explain this. Language is a huge barrier, I admit that now..

Star for you