The Grand Biocentric Design: How Life Creates Reality

"quite thrilling...its notions are exciting ones, and they do a sound job of linking them to observable, replicable experiments. Fans of revolutionary science--or just big, cerebral questions--will enjoy this ambitious work. A thought-provoking dispatch from the frontier of physics." ―Kirkus Reviews ."For those addicted to exploring our role as observers in defining our universe, here is your long-awaited major update . . . You'll love The Grand Biocentric Design ―it adds new turf to the physics of making universes, and includes "solid evidence" at last, that observers define the structure of physical reality itself." ―George Church Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Health Sciences& Technology at Harvard & MIT, and member of the National Academy of Sciences & the National Academy of Engineering (on Thomson Reuters short-list for the Nobel Prize) . " The Grand Biocentric Design brilliantly draws our attention to the most important feature of the entire universe: our human minds . . . This new book brings out the real nature of our universe: for all of us to deeply search for fuller understanding & for meaning." ―Richard Conn Henry Academy Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, and former Deputy Director of NASA's Astrophysics Division . "For those searching for answers to contemporary physics' disturbing findings, The Grand Biocentric Design is must-reading." ―Ronald M. Green Eunice & Julian Cohen Professor Emeritus for the Study of Ethics & Human Values atDartmouth College . "In The Grand Biocentric Design , his third and best book on the topic, Lanza and colleagues unpack, with unprecedented rigor, his theory of biocentrism through the hard lens of physics . . . If you consider biocentrism mere philosophy, look to this volume to make the case thatscience is at its core." ―Pamela Weintraub Senior Editor at Aeon, former Executive Editor of Discover magazine & Editor-in-Chief of OMNI magazine . "This must-read book is a masterpiece...it will provide thought provoking and life changinginsights on your existence and everything that surrounds you." ―Anthony Atala W. H. Boyce Professor at Wake Forest University & member of the National Academy of Medicine . "A unique &paradigm-shattering concept that biological systems are primary & affect our perception of physical systems... This insightful work is certain to energizeour conversations about the nature of the biological & physical world." ―Lucian V. Del Priore,MD, PhD (Physics) Robert R. Young Professor, Yale University ."In his two previous books on biocentrism, biologist Robert Lanza proposed a bold new theory of the universe, one that builds on the insights of quantum physics to put consciousness at its center. Here, with theoretical physicist Matej Pavšič, Lanza strives, in language suited to the general reader, to explain the science behind this theory." ―Robert Wilson Editor in chiefat The American Scholar ,the venerable magazine of Phi Beta Kappa, which has published Albert Einstein,John Updike, Bertrand Russell, Margaret Mead & Robert Frost, among others . "Robert Lanza is one of the most creative and brilliant scientists I have ever known . . . The Grand Biocentric Design is his latest creative work based on his life-long scientific journey, which opens upa new biology-based vista to our understanding of existence and consciousness." ―Kwang-Soo Kim Professor of psychiatry & neuroscience at Harvard Medical School ."A masterly tour de force that will change your life. Robert Lanza and his coauthors take on the Herculean task of reconciling quantum theory, relativity, and consciousness. You will never look at science the same way again." ―Ralph Levinson Professor Emeritus of health sciences at the Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA na Robert Lanza, MD is one of the most respected scientists in the world-a U.S. News & World Report cover story called him a "genius" and "renegade thinker," even likening him to Einstein. Lanza is head of Astellas Global Regenerative Medicine, Chief Scientific Officer of the Astellas Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and adjunct professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He was recognized by TIME magazine in 2014 on its list of the "100 Most Influential People in the World." Prospect magazine named him one of the Top 50 "World Thinkers" in 2015. He is credited with several hundred publications and inventions, and more than 30 scientific books, including the definitive references in the field of stem cells and regenerative medicine. A former Fulbright Scholar, he studied with polio pioneer Jonas Salk and Nobel Laureates Gerald Edelman and Rodney Porter. He also worked closely (and coauthored a series of papers) with noted Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner and heart transplant pioneer Christiaan Barnard. Dr. Lanza received his undergraduate and medical degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was both a University Scholar and Benjamin Franklin Scholar. Lanza was part of the team that cloned the world's first human embryo, as well as the first to successfully generate stem cells from adults using somatic-cell nuclear transfer (therapeutic cloning). In 2001 he was also the first to clone an endangered species, and recently published the first-ever report of pluripotent stem cell use in humans. Matej Pavšic is a physicist interested in foundations of theoretical physics. During his more than 40 years of research at the Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia, he often investigated the subjects that were not currently of wide interest, but later became hot topics. For example, in the 70s he studied higher dimensional, Kaluza-Klein theories, and in the 80s he proposed an early version of the braneworld scenario that was published, among others, in Classical and Quantum Gravity . Altogether, Pavsic has published more than one hundred scientific papers and the book The Landscape of Theoretical Physics: A Global View . He is among the pioneering authors in topics such as mirror particles, braneworld, and Clifford space, and has recently published important works explaining why negative energies in higher derivative theories are not problematic, which is crucial for quantum gravity. Pavsic studied physics at the University of Ljubljana. After obtaining his master's degree in 1975, he spent a year at the Institute of Theoretical Physics in Catania, Italy, where he collaborated with Erasmo Recami and Piero Caldirola. Under their supervision he completed his PhD thesis which he later defended at the University of Ljubljana. Pavsic has participated at many conferences as an invited speaker and regularly visited the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste. Bob Berman is the longtime science editor of the Old Farmer's Almanac , and contributing editor of Astronomy magazine, formerly with Discover from 1989 to 2006. He produces and narrates the weekly Strange Universe segment on WAMC Northeast Public Radio, heard in eight states, and has been a guest on such TV shows as Late Night with David Letterman . He taught physics and astronomy at New York's Marymount College in the 1990s and is the author of eight popular books. His newest is Zoom: How Everything Moves (2014, Little Brown). Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. In all directions, the current scientific paradigm leads to insoluble enigmas, to conclusions that are ultimately irrational. Since World Wars I and II there has been an unprecedented burst of discovery, with findings that suggest the need for a fundamental shift in the way science views the world. When our worldview catches up with the facts, the old paradigm will be replaced with a new bio centric model, in which life is not a product of the universe, but the other way around. A change to our most foundational of beliefs is bound to face resistance. I’m no stranger to this; I’ve encountered opposition to new ways of thinking my whole life. As a boy, I lay awake at night and imagined my life as a scientist, peering at wonders through a microscope. But reality seemed determined to remind me that this was only a dream. Upon entering first grade, students at my elementary school were separated into three classes based upon their perceived “potential”—A, B, and C. Our family had just moved to the suburbs from Roxbury, one of the roughest areas of Boston (it was later razed for urban renewal). My father was a professional gambler (he played cards for a living, which at the time was illegal—not to mention the dog and horse tracks) and our family was not exactly considered scholarly material. Indeed, all three of my sisters subsequently dropped out of high school. I was placed in the C-class, a repository for those destined for manual, trade labor, a class which included the students who had been kept back and those who were mainly known for shooting spit balls at teachers. My best friend was in the A-class. “Do you think I could become a scientist?” I asked his mother one day in fifth grade. “If I tried hard, could I be a doctor?” “Good gracious!” she responded, explaining that she’d never known anyone in the C class to become a doctor, but that I’d make an excellent carpenter or plumber. The next day I decided to enter the science fair, which put me in direct competition with the A-class. For his project on rocks, my best friend’s parents took him to museums for his research and created an impressive display for his specimens. My project—animals—was made up of souvenirs from my various excursions: insects, feathers, and bird eggs. Even then I was convinced that living things—not inert material and rocks—were the subjects most worthy of scientific study. This was a complete reversal of the hierarchy taught in our schoolbooks—that is, the realm of physics, with its forces and atoms, forming the foundation of the world and thus most key to its understanding, followed by chemistry and then biology and life. My project won me, a lowly member of the C class, second place behind my best friend. Science fairs became a way to show up those who labeled me for my family’s circumstances. By trying earnestly, I believed I could improve my situation. In high school, I applied myself to an ambitious attempt to alter the genetic makeup of white chickens and make them black using nucleoprotein. It was before the era of genetic engineering and my biology teacher said it was impossible; my chemistry teacher was blunter, saying, “Lanza, you’re going to hell.” Before the fair, a friend predicted I’d win. “Ha-ha!” the whole class laughed. But my friend was right. Once, after my sister was suspended, the principal had told my mother that she wasn’t fit to be a parent. When I won, that principal had to congratulate my mother in front of the whole school. I did go on to become a scientist, and during my scientific career, I continued to encounter intolerance to new ideas. Can you generate stem cells without destroying embryos? Can you clone one species using eggs from another? Could findings at the subatomic level “scale up” to tell us something about life and consciousness? Scientists are trained to ask questions, but they are also trained to be cautious and rational; their questioning is often aimed at the incremental change, not the paradigm-toppling one. After all, scientists are no different from the rest of our species. We evolved in the forest roof to collect fruit and berries while evading predators and staying alive long enough to procreate; it shouldn’t come as any surprise that this skill set hasn’t always served us perfectly in understanding the nature of existence. “One thing I have learned in a long life,” said Einstein, “[is] that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike—and yet it is the most precious thing we have.” Science must work with simple concepts the human mind can comprehend. But as the evidence for biocentrism mounts, science may prove the key to answering questions previously thought to be beyond its borders, those that have plagued us since before the beginning of civilization. This may be the beginning of this book, but it is not the beginning of our story. That’s because we are plunging into an ongoing odyssey. It’s a movie that has already started, and we are seating ourselves long after the opening credits have rolled. As we will soon see, the Renaissance witnessed a transformation in the way humans attempted to understand the cosmos. But even as superstition and fear slowly lost their grip, the established view that emerged dictated a firm division between two basic entities—we observers glued to the surface of our small planet, and the vast realm of nature that constitutes a cosmos almost wholly separate from ourselves. The assumption that these entities are two entirely different balls of wax has so permeated scientific thought that it is likely still assumed by the reader even now in the 21st century. However, the opposing view is hardly new. Early Sanskrit and Taoist teachers unanimously declared that when it comes to the cosmos, “All is One.” Eastern mystics and philosophers inherently perceived or intuited a unity between the observer and the so-called external universe, and, as centuries elapsed, were consistent in maintaining that such a distinction is illusory. Some Western philosophers, too—among them Berkeley and Spinoza—challenged the prevailing views about the existence of an external world and its separation from consciousness. Nonetheless, the dichotomous paradigm remained the majority consensus, especially in the world of science. But the maverick minority got a major megaphone a century ago, when some of the originators of quantum theory—most notably Erwin Schrödinger and Niels Bohr—concluded that consciousness is central to any true understanding of reality. While they reached their conclusions by way of advanced math, in the course of developing the equations that would form the basis for quantum mechanics and its innumerable successes, they thus were also pioneers who helped set the table for biocentrism a century later. Today, oddities of the quantum world like entanglement have moved the minority increasingly into the mainstream. If it’s really true that life and consciousness are central to everything else, then countless puzzling anomalies in science enjoy immediate clarification. It’s not just bizarre laboratory results like the famous “double slit experiment” that make no sense unless the observer’s presence is intimately intertwined with the results. On an everyday level, hundreds of physical constants such as the strength of gravity and the electromagnetic force called “alpha” that governs the electrical bonds in every atom are identical throughout the universe and “set in stone” at precisely the values that allow life to exist. This could merely be an astounding coincidence. But the simplest explanation is that the laws and conditions of the universe allow for the observer because the observer generates them. Duh! This is also a story in progress because we’ve told some of it in two previous books on biocentrism—many of you may have already read one or both of these. If so, you won’t be faulted for wondering why this third book was necessary. The short answer is that this book both outlines biocentrism in a new way and also expands upon it. In the first biocentrism books, we employed a wide spectrum of tools to show why everything makes far more sense if nature and the observer are actually intertwined, or correlative—using not just science but also basic logic and the assessments of some of the great thinkers through the centuries. Our multi-pronged approach to explaining and reinforcing our conclusions has been both persuasive and popular, as demonstrated by the great success of those first biocentrism books, which have been translated into two dozen languages, with editions published around the world. And yet some science-minded readers wanted more. To some of them, biocentrism’s conclusions about consciousness skirted the category of “woo,” meaning scientifically dubious, New-Agey-type theorizing. Such comments gave us pause. Might our hard-won conclusions, though fundamentally based on cold logic and hard science, still amount to a mere “philosophical” interpretation of the experimental and observational results? Did biocentrism more properly fall under the rubric of philosophy than of science? We certainly didn’t think so. Yet we acknowledged that it would be nice to be able to seal the case for biocentrism on the physics alone. What’s more, since the first two books were released, new research has emerged that makes the case for biocentrism stronger than ever, allowing us to explain formerly fuzzy aspects of how our biocentric universe actually works. As our understanding has grown, we’ve been able to refine our theory and build upon it, discovering new core principles that demand inclusion in any complete accounting of biocentrism. It was time for a newly comprehensive view of the grand biocentric design governing our cosmos. That’s what’s in front of you now. As you’ll see, this present volume tells our story in a way that relies solely on the hard sciences. We’ve confined the equations and such to the appendices, since we know that many readers will slam a book shut at the mere sight of a square-root symbol. Because while rigorously scientific, we want this to be a fun exploration for the general public too—after all, the questions this book answers are those every one of us has asked, basic questions about life and death, about how the world works and why we exist. What follows is not an exhaustive treatment since we’ve omitted lengthy discussion of some things, like the double slit experiment, that were covered fully in the previous books. Nevertheless, we will recount the history of astounding physics discoveries that all lead inexorably to the bizarre but reality-shaking conclusion that the basic structure of the cosmos—things like space and time and the way matter holds together—requires observers. Though many physicists define the observer as any macroscopic object, we are among those who believe the observer must be a conscious one. More about why—and what that means—later on. As our story unfolds, we will see how Newton’s laws not only determined how things actually move, but also how an object could have moved if it started out another way, bringing with them the first faint breezes of alternate universes and foreshadowing quantum theory. We’ll visit the rise of that theory, and the discovery of the strange quantum behavior that challenged the idea that an external world exists independent of the perceiving subject—an idea debated by philosophers and physicists from Plato to Hawking. We’ll dive into what Niels Bohr, the great Nobel physicist, meant when he said “we’re not measuring the world; we’re creating it.” We’ll untangle the logic that the mind uses to generate our spatiotemporal experience, and get insights into the so-called “hard problem” of how consciousness arises, exploring those quantumly-entangled regions of the brain that together constitute the system we associate with the unitary “me” feeling. We explain, for the first time ever, the entire mechanism involved in the emergence of what we experience as time—from the quantum level, where everything is still in superposition, to the macroscopic events occurring in the brain’s neurocircuitry. Along the way, we’ll see how information that breaks the light-speed limit suggests the mind is unified with matter and the world. As we increasingly recognize life as an adventure that transcends our commonsense understanding, we will also get hints about death. We’ll look at the mind-twisting thought experiment called quantum suicide, which can be used to explain why we are here now despite the overwhelming odds against it—and why death has no true reality. We will see that life has a non-linear dimensionality, like a perennial flower that always blooms. Throughout the book, we will find countless commonsense assumptions turned on their heads. For instance: “the histories of the universe,” said the late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, “depend on what is being measured, contrary to the usual idea that the universe has an objective observer-independent history.” While in classical physics the past is assumed to exist as an unalterable series of events, quantum physics plays by a different set of rules in which, as Hawking said, “the past, like the future, is indefinite and exists as a spectrum of possibilities.” And while we’re at it, we’ll look at physicists’ century-long frustration at that very fact: that quantum mechanics exists via a “different set of rules.” After all, making sense of gravity, among other things, requires finding a way to reconcile Einstein’s theory of general relativity, which accurately describes the macroscopic, large-scale cosmos, with the altogether different rules governing the quantum realm of the tiny. Why can’t science-at-large-scales communicate with science at the subatomic level? Astoundingly, this book arrives at a breakthrough in exactly that quest, a Holy Grail of physics. That breakthrough comes in the final chapters, where we will encounter an astounding cover-story paper by one of the authors (Lanza) and Dmitriy Podolskiy, a theoretical physicist working at Harvard, that explains how time itself emerges directly from the observer. We will learn that time does not exist “out there,” ticking away from past to future as we’ve always assumed, but rather is an emergent property like a fast-growing bamboo stalk, and its existence depends on the observer’s ability to preserve information about experienced events. In the world of biocentrism, a “brainless” observer does not merely fail to experience time—without a conscious observer, time has no existence in any sense. But this book is not merely an arrow targeted at the shocking revelations in the final chapters. Nor even at the full flabbergasting scientific evidence that there is simply no time, no reality, and no existence of any kind without an observer. Instead, it is an odyssey engineered to awe and inspire as it reveals the workings of the cosmos and our place in it. So, yes, expect fireworks at the end, as the old paradigm is decisively replaced by the new. But watching this amazing story unfold is a journey that is its own reward, with surprises at every turn. And it starts where we might least expect it, in the familiar if still-puzzling realm of simple everyday awareness. Read more