Biocentrism - How life creates the universe

Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the UniverseHere is the authors point in a MSNBC article. Biocentrism: How life Creates the universe The article summarizes the authors point accurately. I read the book and found it engaging and makes a similar point as the book Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness. I read this book as well, and although the books approach the subject from a somewhat different angles the basic point is that consciousness is fundamental to everything and that nothing exists without it. If these ideas represent reality then it will mean a major change in how we view science and biology.Edited by GDR, : typo

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

The idea is similar to Kant but he doesn't claim that this necessarily tells us anything about any god. I assume by his writing that he himself is agnostic.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

Science assumes that life grew as a result of atoms combining in a manner that created life from a pre-existing universe. This theory assumes that the universe only exists because it is perceived by a pre-existing consciousness. If this theory is correct scientists are going to have to consider an entirely different set of parameters in looking for a GUT if nothing else.

This is an excerpt from this link that expresses the idea far better than I can. Discover Mind&Brain/Cosmology

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For centuries, scientists regarded Berkeley’s argument as a philosophical sideshow and continued to build physical models based on the assumption of a separate universe out there into which we have each individually arrived. These models presume the existence of one essential reality that prevails with us or without us. Yet since the 1920s, quantum physics experiments have routinely shown the opposite: Results do depend on whether anyone is observing. This is perhaps most vividly illustrated by the famous two-slit experiment. When someone watches a subatomic particle or a bit of light pass through the slits, the particle behaves like a bullet, passing through one hole or the other. But if no one observes the particle, it exhibits the behavior of a wave that can inhabit all possibilitiesincluding somehow passing through both holes at the same time.

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Some of the greatest physicists have described these results as so confounding they are impossible to comprehend fully, beyond the reach of metaphor, visualization, and language itself. But there is another interpretation that makes them sensible. Instead of assuming a reality that predates life and even creates it, we propose a biocentric picture of reality. From this point of view, lifeparticularly consciousnesscreates the universe, and the universe could not exist without us

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I don't pretend to have the knowledge to debate this myself so I have to rely on what I read. Here is a porton of an interview given by Roger Penrose some time ago.

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Roger Penrose : Yes I think physicists would agree that the feeling of time passing is simply an illusion, something that is not real. It has something to do with our perceptions.

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Narrator : Illusion or not, our perceptions emerge somewhere between the cosmic scale of Relativity where the flow of time is frozen and the quantum scale, where flow descends to uncertainty.Our world is on a scale governed by a mixture of chance and necessity.

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Roger Penrose : My view is that there is some large scale quantum activity going on in the brain.Physics does not say that Quantum Mechanics takes place in small areas, but also take place over larger areas. I think this has to do with the consciousness. I think we need a new way to look at time, not either Quantum Mechanics or Relativity.

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Narrator : If Quantum Mechanics is taking place in the brain then the same randomness of outcome and unpredictability might explain our ability to make sometime random choices. Opening up the future to the possibility of change would provide the first step of restoring to physics the flow of time it currently denies.

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Physicist : I don't think time flows, I feel that time flows, but I feel we can only understand this if we have a better understanding of how consciousness works. I think human consciousness probably has the secrets as to how and why we think of time as going by.

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Roger Penrose : I don't think we have the tools, I don't think we have the physical picture to accommodate these things yet. We're not very close to it.

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Here is a web site devoted to the theory. Biocentricity

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

The following is a link to an article to an article on John Wheeler's views. Does the Universe Exist if We're Not Looking?This quote referes to Andrei Linde's views from this article.

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Stanford University physicist Andrei Linde believes this quantum paradox gets to the heart of Wheeler's idea about the nature of the universe: The principles of quantum mechanics dictate severe limits on the certainty of our knowledge.

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"You may ask whether the universe really existed before you start looking at it," he says. "That's the same Schrdinger cat question. And my answer would be that the universe looks as if it existed before I started looking at it. When you open the cat's box after a week, you're going to find either a live cat or a smelly piece of meat. You can say that the cat looks as if it were dead or as if it were alive during the whole week. Likewise, when we look at the universe, the best we can say is that it looks as if it were there 10 billion years ago."

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Linde believes that Wheeler's intuition of the participatory nature of reality is probably right. But he differs with Wheeler on one crucial point. Linde believes that conscious "The universe and the observer exist as a pair," Linde says. "You can say that the universe is there only when there is an observer who can say, Yes, I see the universe there. These small words it looks like it was here for practical purposes it may not matter much, but for me as a human being, I do not know any sense in which I could claim that the universe is here in the absence of observers. We are together, the universe and us. The moment you say that the universe exists without any observers, I cannot make any sense out of that. I cannot imagine a consistent theory of everything that ignores consciousness. A recording device cannot play the role of an observer, because who will read what is written on this recording device? In order for us to see that something happens, and say to one another that something happens, you need to have a universe, you need to have a recording device, and you need to have us. It's not enough for the information to be stored somewhere, completely inaccessible to anybody. It's necessary for somebody to look at it. You need an observer who looks at the universe. In the absence of observers, our universe is dead."

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I am not going to pretend that I am qualified to argue this point one way or another. I have read a couple of books on the subject and think they make a good point.I think that Linde among others is at least qualified to comment with some authority on this and to just call it poppycock doesn't do much to refute his point.I don't think that anyone has said that it requires a human observer. I think that my golden retreiver would qualify.

I'll just repeat what Linde said in the quote I used above.

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"You may ask whether the universe really existed before you start looking at it," he says. "That's the same Schrdinger cat question. And my answer would be that the universe looks as if it existed before I started looking at it. When you open the cat's box after a week, you're going to find either a live cat or a smelly piece of meat. You can say that the cat looks as if it were dead or as if it were alive during the whole week. Likewise, when we look at the universe, the best we can say is that it looks as if it were there 10 billion years ago."

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Some do. Science is supposed to go where the evidence leads and it seems that some scientists think that this is where they are being led.

Here is an article called Space, Time and Consciousness by John Smythies. It provides another take on the issue. The following is the conclusion to this paper.

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Linde’s theory of consciousness suggests that, in a comprehensive physical
theory of the Universe, space-time, matter and consciousness will all become
ontologically equal partners in a single over-riding physical reality in a multidimensional
hyperspace. Linde himself does not discuss what the nature of consciousness
might be other than its independent ontology. Nor does he comment
on what might be the nature of the relations between a consciousness and its
brain. However, some of the details of this hypothesis have been filled in by the
people quoted such as Price, Broad, Russell and myself. My own contribution to
this theory is to present the case that a consciousness may have its own space—
time system and its own system of ontologically independent and spatiotemporally
organized events (sensations and images) that have as much right to be
called ‘material’ as do protons and electrons. Price (1953) and I also have suggested
that the relations between a consciousness and its brain are causal.
So the new formulation of reality might consist of the following ontologically
equal partners (A) physical space-time (10 or more dimensions) containing
physical matter (protons, electrons, etc.); (B) phenomenal space (3 more dimensions
of a parallel universe) containing mind stuff (sensations and images); and
(C) real time (time 2). A and B are in relative motion along the time 1 axis in
time 2. Their contents are in causal relations via the brain. The psychological
‘now’ of time marks the point of contact of the two systems.

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Thanks for the tip. It is difficult for someone with no background in physics to separate the wheat from the chaff. This was the book that got me started thinking about this. Quantum Enigma
Both authors are physics professors so hopefully they are somewhat on track.Thanks again.

Actually I think that this is a great point and I've wondered the same thing myself. (My wife tells me that I certainly exist in my own universe. )In a lot of ways I think that makes more sense of things considering what relativity tells us about time. Once again I don't have answers but that is certainly a good thought raising great questions.

I recently read a book by a Jewish physicist named Gerald Shroeder. The book is entitled . Obviously the book has religious overtones but I think that he raises interesting questions that are not part of the religiosity of the book. He does have 2 PHD’s from MIT, one in physics and one in earth sciences.He writes the following:

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The puzzle of the mind-brain interface is not in the recording and biochemical storage of the incoming sensory data. That is brain work. Specific regions of the brain are well known to be devoted to the processing of speech and vision. The paths of the incoming data have been largely identified. The puzzle is in the replay. There is no hint in the brain of how you hear or see what you have heard or seen. There is no sound in your brain. Put a stethoscope anywhere in the brain and all that is heard is the gurgling of the blood as it moves through the vessels. No voices. No music. But I hear voices and music. But where is unknown.

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The identical biochemical reactions that in one part of the brain store inputs related to the sounds we hear, in another location of the brain record the sights we see. But it is all chemistry and, even more perplexing, it’s all the same chemistry. And yet from this chemistry emerge the immeasurably different sensations of sound and sight. But what are they? The pat answer is that we perceive these chemical reactions as sound and sight. Obviously that is how we perceive the chemistry. The location of that perception is the puzzle.

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I found this very interesting and I think it plays into the relationship between consciousness and physicality but once again I’m not at all sure just how.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I understood that, but I was just suggesting that maybe you're wrong about being wrong. I agree however, it is just far out conjecture. I just found the thought interesting.

I guess the point would be that you hear the speech in your head but somebody with a stethoscope up to your head wouldn't hear it. You don't have a speaker somewhere in your head. As he says: where is the playback?