Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
Yes. His ideas are basically Quantum Mechanics disguised with a new name called Biocentrism.
The idea that life creates the Universe instead of the other way around is utterly ridiculous. And funny enough, it comes from an already solved mystery of Quantum Mechanics.
For a good time, the particle and wave problem gave many people who defended Quantum Mechanics the idea that the observer determines the known Universe.
Meaning the Universe was as it was because of how lifeforms saw it.
Which makes absolutely no sense! After all, the Universe has been around for way longer than the first lifeform, less alone the first lifeform that could observe the Universe.
So the solution to that problem came in the form of a very simple – but still complex to those not really into Quantum Mechanics – proposition that the Universe observes itself!
Thus not needing any lifeforms to observe it and determine what it is.
The idea of Biocentrism goes one mile further and says that life created the Universe and everything else. That is life; we are all linked and shaping the Universe.
It’s like a collective Matrix.
So yeah… Pseudoscience if I ever saw one.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
Sort of. Physics at the molecular to quark level has strange properties, as shown in the permutations of the “double slit” experiment (now performed with an examination of polarization or entangled particles with tied spin states). Not only does local causality get challenged, but so does the concept of time along with it, and our inability to know where particles are without jeopardizing our knowledge of their momentum has given rise to various ontological theories, including:
- Many worlds/universes.
- A multi-universal monism.
- The Copenhagen interpretation rejects anything not observable as outside our concern.
- That the famous “wave function’ collapse depends on an observer.
It is this last thing that has given rise to popularizers of the concept that things only come into existence if there is a consciousness. Realists, in contrast, think things really exist whether we have observed them or not (yet).
Science, in the modern definition, only involves falsifiable propositions that are natural and explain the natural world. In the Copenhagen interpretation, people would say that what we see may be strange, but that’s all there is and doesn’t require a philosophical explanation. That is why most physicists get on with their lives and don’t try to come up with explanations best left to philosophers.
If all the muti-verses are entangled into one big reality (monism), you don’t need a consciousness for things to exist. The “measurement problem” remains an open issue, however, and is not solvable by our peabrains: you and your apparatus are part of the entangled state during your measurement.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
Although Biocentrism is the closest theory I’ve seen to explain the true nature of reality… It doesn’t go far enough. Biocentrism, as I understand it, asserts that biological consciousness “creates” reality (the observable Universe), not the other way around. Dr. Lanza would suggest that prior to consciousness imposing form on our reality, nothing exists but random “noise.” Here’s where I believe Lanza misses the mark (although I may have misunderstood his position) – consciousness doesn’t create anything…our observable reality IS consciousness. To suggest that consciousness “creates” through the act of experience or observation (here, one might point to the “2 slit experiment”) would suggest that the observer exists prior to the observed reality…and I don’t believe that’s what we’re experiencing. Actually, I believe we (and the reality we observe) are a kind of biological “kaleidoscope.” We are not independent creators of reality…but reality is an extension of us…it IS us…we are that kaleidoscope.
Furthermore, every species on this planet has its own unique kaleidoscope of reality (from its perspective). To phrase it another way…we are a unique form of conscious pattern, under the illusion that we are consciousness observing pattern independent of ourselves. Therefore, as we observe a universe that appears to be created “just right” for our existence, it’s because it is an extension of us…much like your hand or heart seems to be tailored for your body. We exist as “Strange Attractors” within a chaotic continuum. As we observe pattern in the Universe, such observations may be telling us more about our conscious selves than it does about any perceived “outside” reality.
It’s another theory. I haven’t read the book, but from the explanations of it, I like that it brings the reader closer to the realization of a simple fact: whatever the world occurs to be is only known through our life and consciousness as a quality of living beings.
It’s nothing new, though. In Buddhism, the concept of the “Buddha-nature” shared by all living beings has been around for thousands of years.
To me, it is not important what came first, life or matter. They both came together – consciousness and forms in it are the same stuff. Live it, and don’t waste your time building empty explanations.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
Yes. Life is significant to those objects that have it. There’s no reason to think that it’s significant to the Universe as a whole. As far as we know, if all life were obliterated tonight, 99.9999999999% of the processes going on in the Universe would continue tomorrow exactly as they already do.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
Adapted from Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, by Robert Lanza with Bob Berman, published by BenBella Books in May 2009.
The farther we peer into space, the more we realize that the nature of the Universe cannot be understood fully by inspecting spiral galaxies or watching distant supernovas. It lies deeper. It involves our very selves.
This insight snapped into focus one day while one of us (Lanza) was walking through the woods. Looking up, he saw a huge golden orb web spider tethered to the overhead boughs. There, the creature sat on a single thread, reaching out across its web to detect the vibrations of a trapped insect struggling to escape. The spider surveyed its Universe, but everything beyond that gossamer pinwheel was incomprehensible. The human observer seemed as far-off to the spider as telescopic objects seem to us. Yet there was something kindred: We humans, too, lie at the heart of a great web of space and time whose threads are connected according to laws that dwell in our minds.
Is the web possible without the spider? Are space and time physical objects that would continue to exist even if living creatures were removed from the scene?
Figuring out the nature of the real world has obsessed scientists and philosophers for millennia. Three hundred years ago, the Irish empiricist George Berkeley contributed a particularly prescient observation: The only things we can perceive are our perceptions. In other words, consciousness is the matrix upon which the cosmos is apprehended. Colour, sound, temperature, and the like exist only as perceptions in our heads, not as absolute essences. In the broadest sense, we cannot be sure of an outside universe at all.
For centuries, scientists regarded Berkeley’s argument as a philosophical sideshow. They 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 behaviour of a wave that can inhabit all possibilities—including somehow passing through both holes at the same time.
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 another interpretation 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, life—particularly consciousness—creates the Universe, and the Universe could not exist without us.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
Well, first off, Robert Lanza is one of the most brilliant scientists on the planet. In fact, a few years back, it was Nature magazine that referred to him as one of the three most important scientists alive.
I recently read his book, and I found his ideas fascinating. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s right,
At the same time, I wonder if his ideas will be very well accepted and he will receive a lot of criticism . It’s not that they’re bad ideas. It’s just that they need to be more mainstream thinking.
It’s just that most people, including scientists and people in academia, are group thinkers; it’s just the way it is.
Someone once said that science proceeds from funerals. This means that people, including scientists, need help grasping new ideas if they’re too foreign.
Some of his ideas are familiar and have been proposed by philosophers in the past.
But at this point, I would keep an open mind
. Just my opinion.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
It’s basically junk science, whereby a very interesting aspect of philosophy, existentialism, is woven into a scientific theory, which is not very professorially laid out, and all the professors and doctors roll their eyes at his lack of academic demonstrations and facts.
Instead of time-space, he says we live in bio-space, whereby time is not linear any more, not reliable, and the distant galaxies are illusions, and were made after our galaxy made its life, and that the life also made our galaxy illusion too.
He specifically states that the universe exists because a life force originated first in some void, and the life force constructed a universe around it, and the life force also made a past and a future. Living creatures created a hologram illusion of reality that we cannot see beyond; our senses and equipment are also illusions, and we are also in a computer simulation with electrodes programmed by crafty microbe overlords and nannies.
Life invented stars; life invented elements. Life invented light; life invented a hologram surrounding itself with the specific intent of deceiving humans who look into time-space into thinking that life created distant galaxies, which are illusions so that the theory owner can magically prove all the other scientists on Earth wrong. Life has constructed a physical dream world whereby it sent out photons that appear 13 billion years old in every detail, but actually, they are only as old as life.
He meant that self-aware beings make their universe subject to question, which is what creates science and knowledge in the first place. Therefore, biology creates knowledge in a universe which is otherwise ignorant and unfeeling… that makes sense.
But a biocentric universe? I’m disappointed by the lack of depth; you should go to philosophy.stackexchange.com and ask the philosophers there. They will say he is playing mind games based on time-distortion holograms crafted as a deceptive illusion, which is not a useful type of study in today’s world, and so will the scientists.
It’s fun to see that kind of scientist get picked apart by other people who have time to study the word games he uses and reflect them on him in order to make him seem silly.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
I’m not a working physicist anymore, and my knowledge about this theory comes from this question on Quora and this webpage by the author himself: Biocentrism Wiki – Robert Lanza.
Reading the synopsis, this is a synthesis between solipsism and the Strong Anthropic Principle. Neither of these is particularly useful to the study or doing of physics (though they are, presumably, central to the philosophy of physics). It also appears to somewhat misunderstand the Uncertainty Principle by requiring an outside observer to “fix” the state of a system. In short, it’s something that doesn’t particularly interest me, personally, and may have several holes in its philosophical construction.
Some of the discussion on this question centres on Lanza’s credentials – he’s an accomplished biologist but not a physicist. He’s clearly a brilliant guy who understands the scientific method. But history provides several notes of caution here. Brian Josephson has dedicated the years since his Nobel to proving Transcendental Meditation, homoeopathy, and parapsychology. Schroedinger dedicated some of his later career to finding an “equation for life”. I suspect Lanza’s philosophical work may produce similar results.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
That is kind of a rather elaborate and detailed explanation of a ‘crazy’ (although, in my case, more solipsistic) thought and notion I had when I was in my teens. It basically is a sort of new, scientific version of creationism, removing (at least at first glance) the idea of a God and certainly of “reality” from it and elevating our consciousnesses to a creational force. I am sceptic, but then again, I am no physicist (so I’m not that sure why I was requested to answer on this; maybe because I still need to put up credentials). I’ll share my thoughts, anyway.
Note: I did not read his work; I instead watched a talk he gave at a conference, so that is what my thoughts are based on (and thus, I might lack further, more clarifying information):
Lanza’s hypothesis basically revolves around consciousness as the instant creator of the universe and “everything” and that all this only “exists” in our minds and is “there” only while being observed. However, he fails to pin down a) the origin of consciousness and b) if there are as many individual consciousnesses as conscious creatures exist at a given time, thus different “universes”, and how they all exist when not observed (by whom?), or if there is one, collective consciousness what would explain why things, once “materialized” in our minds, can be measured, but still not why other individuals partaking in the creating collective consciousness exist while not being observed (or if their – homes? – consciousnesses are just “there” during the times they don’t exist through observation).
That’s where we land (again?) at another “mysterious” external force as the ‘central consciousness that “materializes” and “dematerializes” everything and everyone in its self-envisioned mind. God? Lanza doesn’t quite answer this question. And I remain sceptic.
Also, there are some contradictions, as he describes (referring here to the logic-defying two-hole / double-slit experiment), how something behaves (e.g. particles) when observed and how it behaves differently when not observed. That, however, raises the question of a) how something behaves in any way if it hypothetically does not exist when not being observed, or b) what “creates” those somehow behaving particles during the absence of observation?
However, this hypothesis is not uninteresting, and I would not discard it as nonsensical. There might be contradictions and questions that his hypothesis cannot (yet?) answer or explain. Still, the same is true for, e.g. physics (as a series of other interesting scientific experiments he cites show).
The problem here is that his hypothesis, by its very nature, can hardly be proven through scientific methods; it can be further backed by incongruities and unsolved questions in the current theories, which his hypothesis can explain congruently. But on the other hand, neither can his hypothesis be proven false, and he’s certainly not being nonsensical.
Thus, my stance on this is similar to the stance I have regarding God and creationism (I’m an agnostic atheist), although among these two, considerably more tilt towards Lanza’s hypothesis. But it also moves my stance on currently accepted theories towards the stance I have on both (but still with preference among those 3).
What do physicists think about Robert Lanza’s “Biocentrism” theory of the Universe? Is it considered fringe and radical? Is it considered a worthwhile theory?
Physicists? Not sure.. but Steven Lehar –
says many researchers find the idea too confronting…. here’s something from Douglas Harding which may help explain the reasoning behind the thesis: – “At its briefest and plainest, a scientist’s tale of how I see you run something like this: Light leaves the sun, and eight minutes later gets to your body, which absorbs a part of it. The rest bounces off in all directions, and some of it reaches my eye, passing through the lens and forming an inverted picture of you on the screen at the back of my eyeball. This picture sets up chemical changes in a light-sensitive substance there, and these changes disturb the cells on which the screen is built. They pass on their agitation to other very elongated cells, and these, in turn, to cells in a certain region of my brain. It is only when this terminus is reached, and the molecules and atoms and particles of these brain cells are affected, that I can see you or anything else. The same is true for other senses; I neither see nor hear nor smell nor taste nor feel anything at all until the converging stimuli actually arrive, after the most drastic changes and delays, at this centre. It is only at this terminus, this moment and place of all sensory arrivals at the Grand Central Station of my Here-Now, that the whole Universe springs into existence. For me, this is the time and place of all creation.
“There are many odd things about this plain tale of science. The oddest of them is that the tale’s conclusion cancels out the rest of it. For it says that all I can know is what is going on here and now, at this brain terminal, where my world is miraculously created. I have no way of finding out what is going on elsewhere – in the other regions of my head, in my eyes, in the outside world – if, indeed, there is an outside world at all. The sober truth is that my body, and your body, and everything else on Earth, and the Universe itself – as they might exist out there in themselves and their own space, independently of me – are mere figments of imagination, not worth a second thought. There neither is nor can be any evidence for two parallel worlds (an unknown outer or physical world out there, plus a known inner or mental world here which mysteriously duplicates it) but only for this one world which is always before me and in which I can find no division into mind and matter, inside and outside, soul and body. It is what it’s observed to be, no more and no less, and it’s the explosion of this centre – this terminal spot where “I” or “my consciousness” is supposed to be located – an explosion powerful enough to fill out and become the boundless scene that’s now before me, that is me.
“…. The commonsense or un-paradoxical view of myself as an ‘ordinary man with a head’ doesn’t work at all; as soon as I examine it with any care, it turns out to be nonsense.”
How valid or well-accepted is the Biocentric Universe Theory?
Well, first off, Robert Lanza is one of the most brilliant scientists on the planet. In fact, a few years back, I think it was Nature magazine that referred to him as one of the three most important scientists alive.
I recently read his book, and I found his ideas fascinating. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s right,
At the same time, I doubt if his ideas will be very well accepted and he will receive a lot of criticism . It’s not that they’re bad ideas. It’s just that they need to be more mainstream thinking.
It’s just that most people, including scientists and people in academia, are group thinkers; it’s just the way it is.
Someone once said that science proceeds from funerals. This means that people, including scientists, need help grasping new ideas if they’re too foreign.
Some of his ideas are familiar and have been proposed by philosophers in the past.
But at this point, I would keep an open mind
. Just my opinion.
How valid or well-accepted is the Biocentric Universe Theory?
An expert concludes that “idealism” may have the best probability of being true.
Which is biocentrism.
The traditional underlying assumption that matter came before consciousness and consciousness evolved from matter cannot be true.
This is the worldly fairy tale that is becoming outdated.
Our experience tells us that we are made of awareness, and there is nothing but awareness. Space matter and time are products of how the mind unfolds in awareness.
The laws of physics are upgraded to laws of mind.
You are aware of being aware, you are aware of being conscious, and you are aware when unconscious, like deep sleep or under anaesthetic, etc., but no memories are recorded then, so you assume you are not aware. That’s where you are being fooled.
Many entries point to non-dualism, but if you honestly examine your experience, you will see.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
How do biocentrism theory supporters respond to Venod Wadhawan debunking Robert Lanza?
Adapted from Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, by Robert Lanza with Bob Berman, published by BenBella Books in May 2009.
The farther we peer into space, the more we realize that the nature of the Universe cannot be understood fully by inspecting spiral galaxies or watching distant supernovas. It lies deeper. It involves our very selves.
This insight snapped into focus one day while one of us (Lanza) was walking through the woods. Looking up, he saw a huge golden orb web spider tethered to the overhead boughs. There, the creature sat on a single thread, reaching out across its web to detect the vibrations of a trapped insect struggling to escape. The spider surveyed its Universe, but everything beyond that gossamer pinwheel was incomprehensible. The human observer seemed as far-off to the spider as telescopic objects seem to us. Yet there was something kindred: We humans, too, lie at the heart of a great web of space and time whose threads are connected according to laws that dwell in our minds.
Is the web possible without the spider? Are space and time physical objects that would continue to exist even if living creatures were removed from the scene?
Figuring out the nature of the real world has obsessed scientists and philosophers for millennia. Three hundred years ago, the Irish empiricist George Berkeley contributed a particularly prescient observation: The only things we can perceive are our perceptions. In other words, consciousness is the matrix upon which the cosmos is apprehended. Colour, sound, temperature, and the like exist only as perceptions in our heads, not as absolute essences. In the broadest sense, we cannot be sure of an outside universe at all.
For centuries, scientists regarded Berkeley’s argument as a philosophical sideshow. They 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 behaviour of a wave that can inhabit all possibilities—including somehow passing through both holes at the same time.
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 another interpretation 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, life—particularly consciousness—creates the Universe, and the Universe could not exist without us.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
Is Biocentrism by Bob Lanza a legitimate scientific read, or is it pop-science nonsense?
It’s indeed interesting. Lanza is both a Boston-born homeboy and a truly brilliant scientist. His list of accomplishments is the stuff scientific legends are made of.
I think that after being dismissed for so long as a “soft” science by physicists and mathematicians, it’s only fair that “the Empire strikes back,” But is he right? Even he admits that his postulate (it’s improper to dignify it as a theory as of yet) still needs to be falsifiable. As we further explore quantum superposition, we may be able to test the truth of Biocentrism. Till then, it’s an interesting idea, but just that. It has not been tested and so can’t be called a theory or the undoing of the importance of maths.
Is Biocentrism by Bob Lanza a legitimate scientific read, or is it pop-science nonsense?
Sagan’s book was “review literature”. That is, it recapitulated the consensus view of science at the time and did not propose radical new theories. It also had Sagan’s rare ability to make science understandable to the layperson.
By contrast, Biocentrism is a non-peer-reviewed monograph which attempts to define a new science. It could have been more well-received in the scientific or philosophical communities. I think it fair to invoke the Sagan Standard of “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” to any such grand endeavour.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
What are your opinions on Biocentrism?
Although Biocentrism is the closest theory I’ve seen to explain the true nature of reality… It doesn’t go far enough. Biocentrism, as I understand it, asserts that biological consciousness “creates” reality (the observable Universe), not the other way around. Dr. Lanza would suggest that prior to consciousness imposing form on our reality, nothing exists but random “noise.” Here’s where I believe Lanza misses the mark (although I may have misunderstood his position) – consciousness doesn’t create anything…our observable reality IS consciousness. To suggest that consciousness “creates” through the act of experience or observation (here, one might point to the “2 slit experiment”) would suggest that the observer exists prior to the observed reality…and I don’t believe that’s what we’re experiencing. Actually, I believe we (and the reality we observe) are a kind of biological “kaleidoscope.” We are not independent creators of reality…but reality is an extension of us…it IS us…we are that kaleidoscope.
Furthermore, every species on this planet has its own unique kaleidoscope of reality (from its perspective). To phrase it another way…we are a unique form of conscious pattern, under the illusion that we are consciousness observing pattern independent of ourselves. Therefore, as we observe a universe that appears to be created “just right” for our existence, it’s because it is an extension of us…much like your hand or heart seems to be tailored for your body. We exist as “Strange Attractors” within a chaotic continuum. As we observe pattern in the Universe, such observations may be telling us more about our conscious selves than it does about any perceived “outside” reality.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
What is the criticism of Biocentrism?
That is a very interesting question. I had to google biocentricism. Wikipedia has a thorough description. Here is the first paragraph:
Biocentrism (from Greek: βίος, bios, “life”; and κέντρον, kentron, “centre”) — also known as the biocentric Universe — is a theory proposed in 2007 by American scientist Robert Lanza, which sees biology as the central driving science in the Universe, and an understanding of the other sciences as reliant on a deeper understanding of biology. Lanza believes that life and biology are central to being, reality, and the cosmos—consciousness creates the Universe rather than the other way around. While physics is considered fundamental to the study of the Universe and chemistry fundamental to the study of life, Lanza claims that scientists will need to place biology before the other sciences to produce a “theory of everything.”
So! Can this proposition be criticized? Yes. Of course. And with little difficulty. To be concise, it is nonsense! With a caveat coming from Buddhism.
Science involves analysis at different levels. Beneath biology lies chemistry, next classical physics, atomic physics, and then quantum mechanics. Above biology are psychology, sociology, and objective morality/ethics. Biology lies in the apparent middle of this sequence of levels.
It is important to understand that the methods of analysis change from level to level. So, the science of chemistry uses different methods than biology. Biology, for example, can accept more anecdotal evidence and is not subject to the same statistical rules as chemistry. Animal behaviour (perhaps appropriately called macro-biology) might vary from animal to animal within the same species. This is not true of chemical reactions, which, under identical conditions, will remain the same as measured within statistical norms.
It is very clear, however, that while phenomena within each level of analysis differ, these phenomena depend upon those of the lower underlying level. For example, cell biology depends upon the chemistry of its constituents. How, then, could biology, which falls in the middle of the sequence of levels, be predictive of lower levels? This would be like saying that I can direct the movement of electrons around the atomic nuclei in the water that I drink.
So, biocentricism seems more like religion than science. Robert Lanza may propose it because of his immersion in medical research.
Now, the caveat that I mentioned. Madyamica Buddhist cosmology proposes that everything that exists must be available to the perception of a conscious mind. This is like asking if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it fall, does it fall? Except from the Buddhist point of view, no one has to hear the tree fall. Only have the possibility of hearing it fall. So, physical phenomena exist according to the laws of natural science and the laws of mind science. Well, that’s what the Madyamica Buddhists believe.
It is not biology that is the basis of a theory of everything, as Robert Lanza proposes, but rather the mind at the root of all phenomena.
Is Dr. Bob Lanza’s biocentrism theory just another pseudoscience?
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