Is the Universe Biocentric?
A Radical Theory of the Origin of Space, Time and the Entire Cosmos
Jun 17, 2009
Science knows that sensations like color, temperature, pain, sound, and the like exist only as perceptions in the brain. A fact not lost on Irish empiricist George Berkeley who three hundred years ago declared that the only thing we can perceive are our perceptions. Berkeley advanced a theory he called immaterialism (later known as subjective idealism)
Berkeley’s theory contends that individuals can only directly know sensations and ideas of objects, not physical abstractions such as matter and energy. The theory also claims that ideas are dependent upon being perceived by minds for their very existence. In the broadest sense, no one can be sure of an outside universe at all.
Two Universes – The Physical Universe and the Quantum Universe
Berkeley’s ideas were relegated to philosophical musings by physicists who continued to construct mathematical models of a physical universe assumed to have existed prior to the arrival of humans into that universe. These models presume the existence of one essential reality that prevails with or without our existence.
In the early 20th century physicists came to realize there are two universes based on size and scale – the large physical universe of familiar matter (galaxies, stars, planets, and so on) and energy (light, sound, gravity, and so on) and the quantum universe of subatomic particles and bizarre occurrences. Current mathematical models explain the various aspects of the physical universe quite well. However, these models break down and are useless when applied to the quantum universe.
In an attempt to understand the quantum universe, physicists have developed and continue to refine quantum mechanics as the best model for describing the subatomic world. However, physicists' models and understanding of the quantum universe are woeful and pitifully inadequate. The results of many quantum physics experiments are so confounding and unexpected that the greatest minds in physics have deemed them impossible to fully comprehend let alone explain.
Quantum physics experiments do, however, make some of the most persuasive arguments that current models of the origin of the universe are wrong and that conscious perception is an integral part of the workings of the universe.
Strange Happenings in the Quantum Universe
Quantum physics experiments routinely demonstrate that results most definitely depend on whether anyone is observing those results. This is clearly illustrated by the famous two-slit experiment. If someone watches photons of light, they behave as particles and pass through only one of two available slits. However, if no one observes the photons, they behave as a wave and pass through both slits at the same time.
Werner Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle states that an unobserved object such as an electron or photon exists only in a shadowy state with no well-defined location or motion until the moment it is observed. Physicists describe this shadow state as a wave function. A wave function is a mathematical construct used to express the probability that a particle will appear in any given place at any given time. When a particle suddenly appears at a specific point and time, the wave function of that particle is said to have collapsed.
Wave functions can be collapsed by hitting the shadow particle with a beam of light or just observing it. In fact, experiments show that by merely thinking about it a researcher can collapse a wave function and convert possibility to reality.
The Goldilocks Principle
Particles popping into and out of existence in the quantum realm are not the only evidence for a biocentric universe. The matter and energy of the physical universe clump and interact in ways that seem tailor-made for life. This apparent custom-tailoring of the universe has been dubbed the Goldilocks principle because the universe seems “just right” for life.
How is a “universe fit for life” to be explained? There seem to be three possibilities. One is incredible coincidence. Another is to attribute it to divine creation and intervention. Even if true, neither of these explains anything.
The last option is biocentrism which holds that the universe, space, and time are created by life, particularly consciousness, and not the other way around.
In the May, 2009 edition of Discover magazine Robert Lanza and Bob Berman declare, “Biocentrism should unlock the cages in which Western science has unwittingly confined itself. Biocentrism should also provide stronger bases for solving problems associated with quantum physics and the Big Bang.”
As humans struggle to understand the true origin and nature of the universe, the words of evolutionary biologists and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane ring truer today than ever before:
“It is my supposition that the Universe is not only queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine.”
For Further Reading
Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe. Robert Lanza and Bob Berman. BenBella Books. May 2009
