Biocentrism by Robert Lanza & Bob Berman Item of the Day
Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.
Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day the book Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, by Robert Lanza and Bob Berman. Okay that’s a mouthful, let’s just call it Biocentrism from this point forward.
So what is biocentrism, it is a new paradigm in the way we look at the universe, postulating, hold onto your hat, that observation of the universe by consciousness itself is what creates the universe as we know it. For those that are of a religious persuasion, let me say in many ways this is actually a scientific argument for God, though the author does not approach it that way.
The authors are highly respected in their fields. Robert Lanza is one of the most respected scientists in the world—a US News & World Report cover story called him a “genius” and a “renegade thinker,” even likening him to Einstein. In this book Lanza has teamed with Bob Berman, the most widely read astronomer in the world, to produce Biocentrism, a revolutionary new view of the universe.
I am going to provide a video at the bottom where Lanza discussed this concept because it it too deep to provide in a short review here. I am actually reading this book now with a great deal of skepticism for a reason that may seem counter intuitive. Because it actually validates my very long held core beliefs.
You seen in 10th grade I was forced in government school to write a “term paper” in phyical science. I decided to go rouge, use nothing but my instincts and wrote a paper I called, “Religious Misconceptions and Scientific Jokes”. Note that I was a bible believing catholic at the time, this was not a shot a religion in and of itself. Just the application of “God did it” as a full answer to how did the universe and life get here. Additionally it was a shot at the “it just happened” explanation for the big bang and a perfectly balanced universe.
In this paper I postulated things like the non existence of space and time, that both were simply human constructs to explain that which we had no explanation for. That there was no “big bang” of if there was it was not a beginning only a change of the relationship of matter and energy, which always existed. It also got a bit metaphysical, but you get the gist.
I actually received an F on this paper, yea really. Because I had no sources, no proof and just “made up a story in my head”. Covered in Lanza’s book are 3 things I learned in following years about quantum physics. They are…
- The Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty
- The Two Hole Experiment
- Quantum Entanglement
Those alone have been very validating, and if you want to hear about them I will discuss them briefly in today’s closing segment. The key is there are some things Lanza proposes that I still have issue with, and I refuse to accept them without critical analysis precisely because in my heart I want to believe them.
It is that which we want to believe that we must most critically question. That said this book is challenging my own concepts to a higher level, and that is valuable to me. Challenging your mind to new levels is what helps us to grow our intellects and thinking.
I will say if you enjoyed the fiction books by Richard Bach, namely Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Illusions this view is actually quite consistent with much of Bach’s imagined worlds.
In any event if you have ever questioned by main stream creationism and equally questioned the supposed scientific explanation of “its all an accident”, then you will want to consider reading Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, by Robert Lanza and Bob Berman.
Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com
Listening to this video I realize I’ve found a kindred spirit. I go over these topics so regularly with my wife that I’m sure she would say the exact same thing about him to me.
If all universes exist simultaneously then it would mean that god exists, doesn’t exist, the earth was created 10k years ago (thats what “they” say right?) AND 4.5 billion years ago, there is a living “mother gaia”, and/or everything is a physical chaotic collision. All being right, valid and equal.
I haven’t been able to listen to the video yet, and though I have a physics degree, I’ve grown a bit rusty in 30 years, but per the items mentioned in the podcast, your postulate that observation affects reality is plausible and has some support but not from any of the examples given. What you should point to is quantum mechanics (Schrödinger’s cat and quantum computing). This is where particles exist in two states at once and only collapse to a single state once observed. This is why quantum computers will be so fast as they actually exist in all states and thus can try all possibilities at once so solve complicated equations in a single processor cycle.
The Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle is simply an example of destructive testing. The act of “observing” anything is done by bouncing something off of it and then recording the later collisions. So when you observe a chair, what you really observe is light bouncing off the chair and hitting your eye. That light is not strong enough to move the chair. But if you were to observe a observe a rolling tin can by firing airsoft rounds blindly and recording objects that hit the back wall, you can see how your “observation” would change the “observed”.
The dual slit experiment is an example of wave particle duality. They are both a wave and a particle depending on how you observe it, but in no way does the observation change the results it just a different view of the same data, like “the five blind men and the elephant”.
Quantum Entanglement or what Einstein called “Spooky Motion at a Distance” is sadly way more complicated than you explained. What you explained would be an Ansible, a system capable of faster than light communication which no one has been able to do. What entangled particles do are more complicated and that can easily become dis-entangled.
Richard, you do need to listen to the video. He covers the wave-particle duality. What I wonder now that it is starting to get more popular that consciousness is inextricably linked with matter, where was Lanza when any scientist who believed this was considered to be “fringe?”
I think we owe a big apology to the titans upon whose shoulders this book has been raised – people like Rupert Sheldrake, Amit Goswami, Marilyn Schlitz, Bruce Lipton, and so many others. They suffered ridicule from the academic ivory towers for many years but guess what – they turned out to be right!
I think were a lot of people are loosing it with Lanza in his talks is the whole “if you don’t observe your refrigerator it isn’t there” mantra.
What he isn’t saying is well not just you but any and all consciousness. I guess he expects people to be smart enough to realize that. But I feel like Sam Kineson from this clip the entire time he is talking, SAY IT SAY IT!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbdnH0J6jw0
OK, I’m listening to the video, so here are some notes.
Electrons don’t actually orbit around the nucleus. The Bohr atom is taught in school because it makes it simpler to understand, but it isn’t a literal interpretation. If it did then the moving electron would create a magnetic field, but they don’t. So why is he using the idea of an electron orbit in his explanation?
The dials of the universe may or may not be set by “luck”. They may not be able to be changed. There is a postulate of a big bang followed by a big squeeze that supposes that those fundamental factors may change at the moment of the big bang. This would mean that many, many universes could have occurred and collapsed before our universe with the correct settings came into being. Now that we no longer believe in the big squeeze as the universe is expanding and accelerating, so the whole discussion is now less relevant.
The twin slit and much of the rest of this is conflation of different experiments. He says stuff like we didn’t observe which slit it went through but then later says that he knows which one it went through. How could he know because he just said he didn’t observe it.
He later said that he has talked to a scientist who thinks that Einstein is god and cannot be wrong, but Einstein himself knew he was wrong. Anyone who knows about both quantum mechanics and relativity knows Einstein did not have all the answers. He knew that quantum mechanics proved that relativity failed in that range of the small. And if something is ever wrong then it is wrong. It may be like the Bohr atom and Newtonian Physics which are useful, but still flawed. This is why he and many others have been looking for a unified theory that would encompass both worlds, but none have proven worthy. Even if they could find a theory of all known matter then they have only solved 4% of the problem as 96% of the universe is dark matter and dark energy. This may all sound like gobbledygook to regular people, and that is fine, but no present day physicist would make these statements to another physicist.
And the idea that there are ideas outside of science is just religious BS and has been for centuries. This statement alone makes me not want to read the book. If he has a postulate, that goes against present theory, great. If he imagines that it is so far out that no one will even listen, he is not paying attention. Read up on string theory, the multiverse or any of the others and sane people will always find them complete BS. If they sound like BS to you, you are with 99.999% of the people and that is fine. These are crazy ideas, yet scientists still take them seriously because that is what scientists do. They look at crazy ideas and say, OK, so if that were true, what would happen? Can we test that? I looked at a couple of reviews and no one is saying he actually has a theory. All he is saying is that present theory is incomplete, which is not really news.
So, I’m going to need more proof before I invest the time.