Religion and Ethics Forum

General Category => General Discussion => Topic started by: Sriram on April 03, 2016, 05:23:22 AM

Title: Biocentric Universe
Post by: Sriram on April 03, 2016, 05:23:22 AM: Hi everyone,

Here is a Wiki article about Biocentricism proposed by Robert Lanza.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocentric_universe

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Biocentric universe (from Greek: βίος, bios, "life")—also known as biocentrism—is a concept proposed in 2007 by American doctor of medicine Robert Lanza, a scientist in the fields of regenerative medicine and biology,[1][2][3] 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.

Biocentrism states that life and biology are central to being, reality, and the cosmos—consciousness creates the universe rather than the other way around. It asserts that current theories of the physical world do not work, and can never be made to work, until they fully account for life and consciousness.

While physics is considered fundamental to the study of the universe, and chemistry fundamental to the study of life, biocentrism claims that scientists will need to place biology before the other sciences to produce a theory of everything.[4]

He sees this as supporting the central claim that what we call space and time are forms of animal sense perception, rather than external physical objects.[8] Lanza argues that biocentrism offers insight into several major puzzles of science, including Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, the double-slit experiment, and the fine tuning of the forces, constants, and laws that shape the universe as we perceive it.[9] According to Lanza and Bob Berman, “biocentrism offers a more promising way to bring together all of physics, as scientists have been trying to do since Einstein’s unsuccessful unified field theories of eight decades ago.”[10]

Seven principles form the core of biocentrism.[9] The first principle of biocentrism is based on the premise that what we observe is dependent on the observer, and says that what we perceive as reality is “a process that involves our consciousness.[11]” The second and third principles state that “our external and internal perceptions are intertwined” and that the behavior of particles “is inextricably linked to the presence of an observer,” respectively.[12] The fourth principle suggests that consciousness must exist and that without it “matter dwells in an undetermined state of probability.[13]” The fifth principle points to the structure of the universe itself, and that the laws, forces, and constants of the universe appear to be fine-tuned for life.[14] Finally, the sixth and seventh principles state that space and time are not objects or things, but rather tools of our animal understanding.[15] Lanza says that we carry space and time around with us “like turtles with shells.[16]”

Physician and Nobel laureate E. Donnall Thomas said of biocentrism, "Any short statement does not do justice to such a scholarly work. The work is a scholarly consideration of science and philosophy that brings biology into the central role in unifying the whole."

Jacquelynn Baas, Director Emeritus of the University of California Berkeley Art Museum, wrote that a major challenge confronting modern times is whether “all questions can be answered by means of the scientific method of objective observation and measurement.” She cites Lanza’s book "Biocentrism,” saying that it casts this perspective into doubt.[24]

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So...before most of you become science dinosaurs....shed your phobias and start thinking laterally!!!

Cheers.

Sriram
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: ippy on April 03, 2016, 06:58:12 AM: I note you've found another sciency sounding couple of words, have you thought of trying, inertial dampers, straight out of Star trek, there must be some way you could gradually introduce blue elephant theology into Star Trek as well as this present one and, think about it Sriram, they'd both make about as much sense.

ippy
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Stranger on April 03, 2016, 08:25:20 AM: Quote from: Sriram on April 03, 2016, 05:23:22 AM
Hi everyone,

Here is a Wiki article about Biocentricism proposed by Robert Lanza.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biocentric_universe

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...

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So...before most of you become science dinosaurs....shed your phobias and start thinking laterally!!!

Cheers.

Sriram

Another flight of fancy by... a medical doctor (wonder why he'd like it to be true?)

Testable predictions?

I note that criticism comes not only from scientists:
Daniel C. Dennett, a Tufts University philosopher whose work on consciousness and free will has fundamentally influenced many scientists who study the brain, says he does not think Lanza’s thinking meets the standard of a philosophical theory either.

“It looks like an opposite of a theory, because he doesn’t explain how it happens at all,” Dennett says. “What is wonderful about biology is it has these reductive explanations of how healing works, how reproduction works, how self-repair works.” Lanza, he says, isn’t explaining how consciousness works, or influences the world around it. “He’s stopping where the fun begins.”

Taken from: A Biotech Provocateur Takes On Physics
http://tinyurl.com/glomlxl

The thing with this sort of speculation, that stops short of saying anything concrete and testable, is that, yes, it's possible (so are endless other wild speculations) but why would we take it seriously? Why should we consider it probable?
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Sriram on April 03, 2016, 03:27:34 PM: Wonder why you would not want it to be true!

Nobody is going to give you all assurances and probabilities on day one. Thankfully when Relativity and QM were in initial stages of development in the early 20th century, scientists were still philosophers who had integrative capabilities and had vision and wisdom. That is why even though most of the evidence and proof for such theories came decades later....the ideas were respected and continued efforts were made to test them again and again with improved technology.

If people then were as habitually skeptical and hard headed as many are today.....these theories would have been dismissed as nonsense even before they were properly understood....let alone proved.
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Shaker on April 03, 2016, 03:36:09 PM: Quote from: Sriram on April 03, 2016, 03:27:34 PM
Wonder why you would not want it to be true!
I think I can see where you've been going wrong all this time now.

Wanting or wishing or needing has absolutely no bearing on what is reliably and knowably true. You for some reason desperately want there to be a purposive direction to biological evolution, for example. There isn't, or none that we know of so we can discount it for now and put it in the "Unproven but very likely false" box.

The universe of which you are a part does not operate according to your whims. It doesn't know and therefore doesn't (indeed cannot) care about what you would like to be the case.

Grasp this point at last and you may not come out with quite so much of the anthropocentric, me-first, exceptionalist guff that you consistently do.

The short and simple, quick and nasty version of this is: for fuck's sake, you're not a special little snowflake where your every little brain scraping is a worthwhile model of reality, get over yourself.
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Stranger on April 03, 2016, 03:40:03 PM: Quote from: Sriram on April 03, 2016, 03:27:34 PM
Nobody is going to give you all assurances and probabilities on day one. Thankfully when Relativity and QM were in initial stages of development in the early 20th century, scientists were still philosophers who had integrative capabilities and had vision and wisdom. That is why even though most of the evidence and proof for such theories came decades later....the ideas were respected and continued efforts were made to test them again and again with improved technology.

Both of the theories you mention were developed from science that was already known and/or puzzling phenomena that could be clearly observed but not yet explained. They also made testable predictions.

Lanza's musings are based on neither and make no testable predictions.

I also quoted a philosopher (Daniel Dennett) who claims that his ideas didn't even constitute a theory in philosophy.

Quote from: Sriram on April 03, 2016, 03:27:34 PM
If people then were as habitually skeptical and hard headed as many are today.....these theories would have been dismissed as nonsense even before they were properly understood....let alone proved.

Drivel - see above.
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Walt Zingmatilder on April 03, 2016, 03:43:32 PM: Biology is a kind of a second order science and one from where the confusion between science and atheism is frequently made..........vis, Dawkins, Myers, Coyne, Dennett, Harris etc.
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Shaker on April 03, 2016, 03:45:49 PM: Quote from: Jonique Anoo on April 03, 2016, 03:43:32 PM
Biology is a kind of a second order science
What's a first order science then?

Quote
and one from where the confusion between science and atheism is frequently made..........vis, Dawkins, Myers, Coyne, Dennett, Harris etc.
Only Dawkins, Myers and Coyne are biologists. In the case of Dawkins and Coyne their specific specialist fields are ethology and genetics respectively. Dennett is an academic philosopher (but hugely knowledgeable of evolution: see his magnum opus Darwin's Dangerous Idea) and Harris is a neuroscientist.
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Walt Zingmatilder on April 03, 2016, 03:53:44 PM: Quote from: Shaker on April 03, 2016, 03:45:49 PM
What's a first order science then?
Only Dawkins, Myers and Coyne are biologists. In the case of Dawkins and Coyne their specific specialist fields are ethology and genetics respectively. Dennett is an academic philosopher (but hugely knowledgeable of evolution: see his magnum opus Darwin's Dangerous Idea) and Harris is a neuroscientist.
Shakes all science boils down to physics. That's why Dawkins shows a massive inferiority complex towards it in th God Delusion.
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Shaker on April 03, 2016, 03:54:33 PM: Quote from: Jonique Anoo on April 03, 2016, 03:53:44 PM
Shakes all science boils down to physics. That's why Dawkins shows a massive inferiority complex towards it in th God Delusion.
Where? Specifically I mean.
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Walt Zingmatilder on April 03, 2016, 04:03:40 PM: Quote from: Shaker on April 03, 2016, 03:54:33 PM
Where? Specifically I mean.
There is a monumental and petulant display of intellectual penis envy in chapter 4.
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Stranger on April 03, 2016, 04:44:16 PM: Quote from: Sriram on April 03, 2016, 03:27:34 PM
Wonder why you would not want it to be true!

You completely misunderstand - it would actually be fascinating and amazing to discover that something like this was true. I have read a really good science fiction book based around "anthrocosmology" (a very similar idea). It would be equally amazing to find that there was an afterlife.

The point is we can't just take the ideas we'd like and then just expect science to follow. Science can only work with testable hypotheses. Testable hypotheses have often come from initial conjectures but those tend to be based in some way on observed phenomena, gaps in the current scientific theories, or logical extension to them.

Ideas that are just of the form "it might be like this" or "perhaps this internal experience actually is what it seems to be to some people" can be nothing more than guesswork. It is up to those who propose them to justify them and work through to working models and testable hypotheses.

To reiterate what I said before: yes, it is possible that there may be an afterlife and it is possible that Lanza's idea could be correct - but we have no reason at present to think they are probable or any better than anybody else's guesses and stories...
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Jack Knave on April 03, 2016, 06:52:09 PM: There was an Horizon programme the other night on dark energy and they said it started up about 6 billion years ago. Well our solar system is about 5 billion yrs. old, Earth 4.5 billion years old and life started on Earth nearly 4 billion years ago. I wonder if there is any link?
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: jeremyp on April 03, 2016, 07:01:09 PM: Quote from: Sriram on April 03, 2016, 03:27:34 PM
Thankfully when Relativity and QM were in initial stages of development in the early 20th century, scientists were still philosophers who had integrative capabilities and had vision and wisdom. That is why even though most of the evidence and proof for such theories came decades later....the ideas were respected and continued efforts were made to test them again and again with improved technology.
This is, of course a total misrepresentation of the facts. Both the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics arose as responses to known problems with the existing ideas. Not only that, but both of these theories made falsifiable predictions that were verified within a few years - not decades.

Why are you lying?
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Leonard James on April 03, 2016, 07:05:31 PM: Quote from: jeremyp on April 03, 2016, 07:01:09 PM
This is, of course a total misrepresentation of the facts. Both the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics arose as responses to known problems with the existing ideas. Not only that, but both of these theories made falsifiable predictions that were verified within a few years - not decades.

Why are you lying?

Because he suffers from selective memory syndrome.
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Stranger on April 04, 2016, 08:04:44 AM: Quote from: jeremyp on April 03, 2016, 07:01:09 PM
This is, of course a total misrepresentation of the facts. Both the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics arose as responses to known problems with the existing ideas. Not only that, but both of these theories made falsifiable predictions that were verified within a few years - not decades.

Why are you lying?

I think he probably thinks he's telling the truth. He seems seriously allergic reading much, learning anything or bothering to check facts. I imagine he'll have skimmed over a couple of articles on some pop science site a long time ago and just remembered his own distorted version that fits with his beliefs.
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Sriram on April 04, 2016, 08:46:08 AM: Ok guys...take it easy. :)

You don't have to over analyse me and my personality. Lots of people knowledgeable in science and even professional scientists believe that there is more to life than meets the eye. Lots of scientists are spiritualists.

Many scientists, psychologists and doctors accept NDE's as proof of an after-life. Many doctors believe 'miracle' cures are due to some unknown spiritual forces.

So...just because you guys have this problem with your faculties (we have discussed how if a stubborn person is born blind....he cannot be convinced of the existence of Light....however much you try) ...you should not imagine that everyone who knows science will necessarily be a materialist.....and just because someone is a spiritualist or even religious...he must be ignorant of science.

Tut..Tut! Not true! ;)

Anyway...have fun bashing me! Nice alternative from bible bashing....I am sure. (Do however keep in mind that little Eleanor Roosevelt quote about 'Small minds discussing people.......). :D
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Stranger on April 04, 2016, 09:08:45 AM: Quote from: Sriram on April 04, 2016, 08:46:08 AM
Lots of people knowledge in science and even professional scientists believe that there is more to life than meets the eye. Lots of scientists are spiritualists.

Many scientists, psychologists and doctors accept NDE's as proof of an after-life. Many doctors believe 'miracle' cures are due to some unknown spiritual forces.

You are confusing personal beliefs with scientific evidence. Yes, you can find scientists and doctors that believe in all sort of religions and other spiritual ideas. That is a very different thing to being able to produce scientific evidence. If they are any good at their jobs, they will not confuse personal faith with science.

There is no such thing as scientific proof of any theory (outside of dishonest advertising).
Title: Re: Biocentrc Universe
Post by: Maeght on April 04, 2016, 01:31:01 PM: Quote from: Sriram on April 04, 2016, 08:46:08 AM

Many scientists, psychologists and doctors accept NDE's as proof of an after-life. Many doctors believe 'miracle' cures are due to some unknown spiritual forces.

When you say 'many' what sort of number or percentage are you meaning? Do you have the data on this?