Biocentrism: book review
ASTRO, COND-MAT — By Dmitry Podolsky on June 5, 2009 at 3:36 pm
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I was asked to review the book by Dr. Robert Lanza called “Biocentrism: how life and consciousness are the keys to understand true nature of the Universe“.
If you are a scientist good enough in your area of expertise, at some point you start wondering whether you can explain everything around you, every single event, physical phenomenon, consciousness, human nature etc. etc. by using methods from your area of expertise.
For example, Robert Laughlin, condensed matter theorist and Nobel Prize winner, seems to be seriously thinking that the Theory of Everything is a theory of quantum Hall effect, while other condensed matter theorists are trying to find Universe in a helium droplet. On the other hand, some string theorists believe that Universe was created by a collision of two huge D-branes widely spread along extra dimensions, etc. etc. Sorry for being poetic, but that how Dr. Lanza presents his ideas, so I’ll naturally try to mimic his style.
Dr. Robert Lanza is a famous biologist. Not surprisingly, he wants to argue that the whole Universe can be described only using the language and methods of biology – as he explains in his recent book “Biocentrism: how life and consciousness are the keys to understand true nature of the Universe“.
To support this statement, Dr. Lanza tries to combine some ideas from biology, psychology and neuroscience as well as physics. Although his opinions about biologists, psychologists and neuroscientists are usually polite, he seems to be particularly angry on physicists for some reason – here is, for example, one passage from the very end of the book:
Finally, one must consider the endless ongoing attempts at creating GUTs – grand unifying theories. Currently, such efforts in physics have been maddeningly lengthy – stretching typically for decades – without much success except as a way of financially facilitating the careers of theoreticians and grad students.
I guess, the reason of his attitude towards physics and physicists is that he wasn’t able to establish a healthy dialogue with them while developing his ideas (on the other hand, as it seems, he was able to establish such dialogue with biologists and psychologists). Since I am a physicist myself, let me try to explain why it did not happen.
In my explanations, I will also try to be as polite as possible since, I must admit, I am always sympathetic with rebels, and Dr. Lanza seems to be quite a rebel. Here are my notes, anyway.
1. Regarding physics, the book contains multiple factual errors and features misuse of physics terminology. Let me list some of the errors and such misuses:
a)
Attempts to combine all forces in order to produce an underlying oneness – currently in vogue is string theory – require invoking at lest eight extra dimensions
I am afraid, it is “at least six”, not eight.
b)
…Z-point energy…
There is no such physical quantity as Z-point energy (and I am not sure how exactly this term was born by the Dr. Lanza’s conciousness), but from the context it is clear that he is talking about zero energy vacuum fluctuations (vacuum energy).
c)
…vacuum field…
There is no such thing as “vacuum field”. Generally, a field can be in the vacuum state or in an excited state. In other words, “vacuum” means a particular state of a quantum field (the state without particles).
etc. etc.
Finally, the word “ether” should actually be spelled “aether” (sorry for that, but facing with the same wrong spelling for the 6th time in the book is a bit annoying.)
2. Dr. Lanza really misses several important pieces of the overall puzzle such as
a) general relativity. Dr. Lanza mentions it a couple of times but never actually demonstrates his understanding of what he is talking about – actually, his physics discussions only include special relativity.
Einstein did not really stop after discovering special relativity in 1905, he has also discovered general relativity in 1915. In essence, general relativity explains what gravity really is – roughly speaking, it is a curvature of spacetime. Spacetime is dynamical since any matter (any non-zero mass/energy density) curves it – sources its curvature, as we say. I guess, Dr. Lanza could throw his argument “spacetime is not real” on the table in 1905, but not after 1915: it is actually possible to detect dynamics of spacetime – and the Nobel Prize 1993 in physics was awarded for exactly that (check out Google for details).
b) general relativity leads to several important conclusions such as, for example, existence of horizons (in cosmological context as well as for black holes). To put it brief, horizon essentially means that an infinite time is needed for a photon emitted inside horizon to reach the area outside it.
c) There is no problem with “coupling” special relativity with quantum mechanics – this is what quantum field theory does, the area of physics which took off back in 1950s. The real problem is to “couple” general relativity with quantum mechanics – that’s what the buzz is currently about in cutting edge physics (as it was for the last 50 years). I cannot believe that Dr. Lanza could have missed this.
d) In quantum mechanics experiments involving wavefunction collapse and EPR paradox information cannot be transferred. This is simple to understand, really. Surely, you know what’s the polarization of the photon far away if you measure the polarization of the entangled particle, but try inventing a way to exploit this knowledge – try to send some information via EPR.
e) decoherence. Actually, wavefunction collapse does not only happen if we, ourselves, try to detect the properties at a quantum object. It is enough if the quantum object interacts with another, nearly classical, object or – even better – with environment. For macroscopic objects, with sizes of the order the ones we are dealing with in our everyday’s life, decoherence time is shorter than 
sec. That’s why we are mostly dealing with classical objects in everyday’s life, and that’s why quantum mechanics was only discovered in 20th century. Whether you want it or not, you are sitting on a classical stool in front of a classical table.
g) a process of quantum measurement does not really have much to do with conscience. Canonically (in Heisenberg’s interpretation of quantum mechanics for example), any interaction of a quantum object with a classical device can be considered a “measurement”, since it leads to wavefunction collapse.
Probably, Dr. Lanza would be able to incorporate all these ideas into the version 2.0 of his book, so, I guess, there is really no point in criticizing his ideas this way. There is a much more important issue related to his constructions. Any theory can only be denoted as such if it has a predictive power, i.e., if it predicts something. I think, Dr. Lanza’s theory has a fatal flaw – it explains everything, but it does not really predict anything, and it is really impossible to come out with a physics experiment that would determine whether Dr. Lanza is right.
In this respect, his ideas are no better than any religion – which by the way also explains everything we see around us by stating that it was God’s Will for the world to look like we see it…
Instead of conclusion, let me strengthen Dr. Lanza’s arguments for the sake of fun
Of course, physicists won’t understand
Actually, I believe, I understood the idea quite well. Lanza’s point is that any measurement really includes a human factor, and no measurement device can be considered fully classical. If so, wave functions will never ultimately collapse – they will seemingly “collapse” only in our minds, simply because our perception of reality is not perfect (that is, not complete). This idea has its right to live, I guess, but the problem is that Dr. Lanza does not throw enough arguments on the table to support it. Ultimately, it means that he won’t be crucified for his work (and he seems to want it – as I would imply after reading one of his interviews). iInstead, most probably his work will be soon forgotten.
P.S. Dr. Lanza has a co-author, astronomer Bob Berman. I don’t mention him in this review since I was unable to determine what’s his particular contribution into the book – actually, I believe, would Dr. Berman even read the book, he would at least pick some of the errors and misunderstandings mentioned above and advice Dr. Lanza how to present his ideas more appropriately.
P.P.S. Yep, and about anthropic principle… you see, it is not really anthropic. The very same physical laws and values of physical constants are necessary to make a piece of rock – in this sense, you could denote the Anthropic Principle as the Lithic Principle (the first who made this observation – several decades ago – was actually Carl Sagan). At which point life “enters the equation” is really unknown.
24 Comments
The general bogosity of “biocentrism” first came to my attention two and a bit years ago, when it was only an essay. Now he’s gotten an entire book out of it, eh?
Hi Blake,
thanks for the link, it was fun reading.
He wants to be crucified too much.
Hi Dmitry
This book shows that physics is not so easy for people outside the field to grasp.
I fully agree with your comments. But I think some people do spell ether.
I don’t quite see why the decoherence time is of the Planck time scale although this is a natural time scale.
Keith
Hi Keith,
Biology is no easy grasp for physicists either
– check out Small Amphibian Collider.
“ether” spelling is wrong, believe me – or better don’t and check the spelling in any dictionary
Cheers,
Dmitry.
Good to agree, after some time. Biocentrism is only as good as the input and its definitions. Biology is defined as the research of living objects – within a particular interval of sizes, concentrations of organic compounds, velocities, etc.
So the other things, phenomena, and their aspects that don’t fit into this classification of biology are either not described by biology at all or they’re described incorrectly. If they’re described well, e.g. mathematically accurately, it is by definition not biology.
Indeed, Laughlin could view the author as a more extreme version of himself, someone who promoted a manifestly limited viewpoint and toolkit beyond its range of validity.
Hi Lubos,
in his book, Lanza asks many times – try to check whether what I say feels right. To me, it doesn’t – I think, the ultimate thing that I’ve learned from my life is that objective reality is so much larger than our cognitive models of it. And that’s just absolutely perpendicular to what Lanza (or any other idealist) is saying.
I agree with your overall assessment except for points D and G (by the way, what happened to point F? lol). In any case, decoherence is not a solution to the measurement problem.
Just disappeared on its way to print
I did not say that decoherence explains the physics of measurement, what I said is that Lanza misses the nature of quantum/classical transition issue.
By the way, do you care to explain why you disagree with me?
Cheers,
Dmitry.
I suppose that Wolfgang Pauli (he believed in synchronicity- meaningful coincidences, consciousness creates reality) didn’t understand physics.
Dear Aleksandar,
I am not saying that Pauli did not understand physics, I am saying Dr. Lanza does not understand it. But for the sake of arguing… physics is a large science – so surely he did not know all of it – and advanced quite a bit since Pauli’s death. For example, it was established much later after his death that Pauli-Fierz massive gravity is sick
Another thing is that science is not a question of believe, region is.
Cheers,
Dmitry.
So the idea of the feedback loop is just fantasy? Heck!
Dear Kate,
I am not quite sure how you were able to conclude from my review that
Would you want to explain?
Cheers,
Dmitry.
What does the book provide that helps readers like myself (outside of physics and biology) understand and explain the world that we live in. What is he actually trying to say?, but much of your comments I arrived to one thing, many are unhappy with the work, because he made certain remarks about the exact field that you all have passion towards. I don’t wan to apologize for him, but I would love to hear knowledgeable individuals like yourself to explain in plain words what it is he is trying to do? what is his motivation? and how does physics fundamentally differs from his understanding of the world?
I would appreciate a lengthy response by those who are willing to continue this lively discussion. Now what I’m asking you is to put the physicist inside of you aside for a minute and remember the thought pattern that you were receiving while reading the book. Was there anything out of the ordinary that you yourself found appealing? confusing? out of the ordinary? perhaps scary?
Hopefully this will help me develop a curiosity for his book further.
I have not read the book yet.
Thank you,
Peace
Here henry.pha.jhu.edu/biocentrism.pdf is a nice review. It can’t be better by a person who almost agrees with ideas in this book.
Dear Aleksandar,
thanks for the link, angry guy
my review seems to be much less sardonic than his.
Cheers,
Dmitry.
Dear Eldar,
Then, you have missed my point – what I said in the end of the review goes beyond physics. Let me try to explain… Dr. Lanza basically says that observer determines objective reality around him/her and without observer no objective reality exists. Fine, let it be so, suppose this is an established fact that observer defines the world around him. How can I use this fact? Exploit it? What’s there in this fact for us/me? How can a funding agency make money out of this fact? Sorry, maybe I am a bit practical.
Second question is – is there a practical way to make sure that Lanza’s observation is indeed correct or wrong (or maybe it is correct just in a certain regime)?
Unfortunately, answers to both sets of questions are absent in the book, and if you think a bit, you’ll find that it is fundamentally impossible to get such answers out of the Lanza’s idea. That’s why I am saying that Dr. Lanza explains everything but predicts nothing.
I am not sure why exactly a funding agency will want take its money out of string theory research and give it to Lanza – especially taking into account that biotech is a huge bubble and capitalization of Advanced Cell Technology is tremendously overestimated as any careful study will show.
Actually, I did not quite get why exactly you “wanted me to put a physicist inside of me aside” taking into account that 90% of Lanza’s book is about physics. This blog is also about professional theoretical physics, and you may have guessed correctly, that I have more important and interesting things to do than writing a second review of Lanza’s book. Also, I don’t think that my audience will understand me
But I tell you what – if you are willing to buy my precious time at rate, say, about 70 USD/hour, then I am willing to explain you physics (quantum mechanics, special relativit, even general relativity), biology and philosophy behind Dr. Lanza’s book in details, and at the level understandable for a newcomer.
Cheers,
Dmitry.
I apologize if I missed your point (end of the review) which went beyond physics. From what I understood from the paragraph above, I think you mean that even if we have agreed that objective reality only exists if there is an observer ?me and you? are yet to understand how we can use it in a practical way. Dmitry don?t get me wrong I think you were very honest when you expressed that. In a way I?m looking for the same answer that you are. How can this fact be used? How does this benefit me and you in our practical lives? From these series of questions you might help me understand the following:
Since you read the book, does Dr. Lanza give ?ordinary people? or maybe even ?physicists? an advice on how we should implement this fact into our practical ways? If he doesn?t do you genuinely believe that he doesn?t know, or maybe he does and chose to avoid further comment on that matter?
Even though you understand that Dr. Lanza is onto something, he himself doesn?t predict anything. Do you think he doesn?t predict anything because those predictions are very hard to test under a practical equation. Now do you think his objective point of view is actually transforming towards a subjective matter which will require a totally new way of thinking (perhaps a new science?).
Ok here you going into funding. I also agree with you that we can?t completely stop the projects that we are funding now just to explore something somewhere else. I do think that Dr. Lanza have a very interesting point of view that does need further funding in order to explore the possibilities that I can?t completely grasp.
Now regarding your next statement ?ACT is tremendously overestimated as any careful study will show?. Can you please advise me to where I can read or find these careful studies to make myself a bit more aware regarding that statement. I want to know exactly what you mean by ?capitalization of ACT is tremendously overestimated?.
I stumbled upon your blog from different links and found it very interesting. Your review raised many questions in my mind. Yes I can admit to my ignorance in the field of physics and biology. I do see much opportunity to learn from an individual like you in order to be more aware and help myself understand the world that we are experiencing. With this knowledge we can make a better sense in the world that we live in, and probably develop a happier state of mind. I?m sorry I will decline your offer to explain fundamentals of these sciences for a charge. I?m however very interested in your point of view and would love to continue our discussion.
That Henry character has some pretty ‘mental’ things to say for himself -
“The Hoyle example is refuted decisively by David Gross, who points
out that quantum chromodynamics is a fixed structure, so the nuclear resonance that is required to make carbon is there, Fred Hoyle or no Fred Hoyle. Once you understand that the universe is purely mental, you are hardly surprised at the fine tuning.”
“… what I care about is truth or falsity, as judged by experiment. And
the answer, by experiment, is, that the universe exists only in our minds.”
“Acceptance would be of immense value to society, through placing humankind once again at the center of the cosmos.”
Well, I have nothing to say to Henry’s philosophy.
But if Gross said that he is wrong, the quark masses are not ‘fixed’ by anything that we know about, and the carbon resonance might very easily depend on fine-tuned values of them.
Of course there may be other ways to create carbon – for example if beryllium-8 were stable. This might happen if nuclear forces were slightly different…
When subatomic particles were first realized, there were n immediate uses for that knowledge, but they did increase exponentially. It seems the notion of biology as a necessary consideration in understanding creation may well gain its utility as the debate continues.
After reading the book I can’t explain it, but I simply do not view existence as I once did.
Not having an immediate use is different than not predicting anything.
Dmitry’s point above just says that Lanza’s work, even if it’s true, is ultimately just to say “oh, that’s nice.”, but you can’t really do anything with it.
It’s like Kent Hovind’s ridiculous “vapor canopy theory” for explaining the biblical flood myth — let’s hypothetically assume he’s correct. There is absolutely no useful knowledge to be gained from that since the cause (God) is not predictable and thus there are no potential applications. Intelligent Design suffers a similar fate — how would one apply the knowledge that life was designed by an intelligent agent?
If Lanza wants to think that objective reality exists only in our mind, the best you can get out of that is some kind of new age philosophy (hence “woo”) — there is no application for that idea.
Though not a physicist or biologist by degree, I have studied and read such for many years. To clarify or add to points made in above comments, and raise another, I believe Lanza was arguing that not only do we create reality by our observation of it, but that (the entangled twins experiment) we create/change, influence its structure by our thoughts and intentions, and that such thoughts, intentions, observations, and purposes also then create opposite effects elsewhere.
It is that postulation I found most interesting, and want more discussion and experimentation on. It poses mindboggling ramifications, but not ones that aren’t understandable.
Peggy Miller
Missoula, Montana
Hey,
I came upon this review after repeatedly having my comments blocked on Huffington Post, where Lanza frequently posts, and appears also to frequently clip people who disagree with his take on the cosmos. Thanks for the review.
I have read that the double-slit experiment and Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment use devices to “observe” the state of a particle, and so collapse its probability wave. I presume, “observe” means “interact with” (“measure”, “register”) or really, “alter”. I understood this problem to be part of the uncertainty principle.
But I have also read that there are experiments that show that this paradox is not merely a problem of measurement and instruments. (I can’t say now where I have read this.)
And I have read that decoherence allows the possibility for the “observer” to ever be any other matter or environment.
My question – and I will accept just links if you don’t have time and attention to answer this – is, isn’t the means by which we “observe” electrons/photons/etc. simply a non-conscious device? I don’t get in the slightest how this implies a conscious observer. I can accept that I am uninformed, or wrong, or that Lanza is wrong, but I just don’t get where a mechanical experiment implies a conscious observer.
Thanks.
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