The American Scholar - A New Theory of the Universe - By Robert Lanza - The Diigo Meta page

• 14 Jan 08
  

  David Dawson

  Science Imported Bookmarks brain consciousness universe physics theory life

• 15 Apr 07
  

  Andrew Black

  Science Philosophy

  • Despite such things as the development of superconducting supercolliders containing enough niobium-titanium wire to circle the earth 16 times, we understand the universe no better than the first humans with sufficient consciousness to think. Where did it all come from? Why does the universe exist? Why are we here? In one age, we believe that the world is a great ball resting on the back of a turtle; in the next, that a fairy universe appeared out of nowhere and is expanding into nothingness. In one age, angels push and pummel the planets about; in another age, everything is a meaningless accident. We exchange a world-bearing turtle for a big bang.
    
    “I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics,” said Nobel physicist Richard Feynman. “Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‘But how can it be like that?’ because you will go ‘down the drain’ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped.” The reason scientists go down the drain is that they refuse to accept the immediate and obvious implications of the experimental findings of quantum theory. Biocentrism is the only humanly comprehensible explanation for how the world can be the way it is. But, as the Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg admits, “It’s an unpleasant thing to bring people into the basic laws of physics.”
    
    In order to account for why space and time were relative to the observer, Einstein assigned tortuous mathematical properties to an invisible, intangible entity that cannot be seen or touched. This folly continues with the advent of quantum mechanics. Despite the central role of the observer in this theory—extending it from space and time to the very properties of matter itself—scientists still dismiss the observer as an inconvenience to their theories.
• 02 Apr 07
  

  Tim Chambers

  Philosophy

• 15 Mar 07
  

  Robert A Gagnon

  biocentrism consciousness quantum_physics reality spacetime theory_of_everything

• 14 Mar 07
  

  Kevin Painting

  Philosophy

• 11 Mar 07
  

  Eric Hoefler

  biology cosmology physics science

  • We can never have any experience
    that does not conform to these relationships, for they are the modes of
    animal logic that mold sensations into objects. It would be erroneous, therefore,
    to conceive of the mind as existing in space and time before this process,
    as existing in the circuitry of the brain before the understanding posits in it
    a spatio-temporal order.
  • Even Steven Weinberg concedes that although consciousness
    may have a neural correlate, its existence does not seem to be derivable
    from physical laws.
  • 26 more annotations...
  • • Trying to trace life
      down through simpler stages is one thing, but assuming it arose spontaneously
      from nonliving matter wants for the rigor and attention of the quantum
      theorist.
    • But before
      matter can exist, it has to be observed by a consciousness.
    • The universe bursts into existence from life, not the other way
      around as we have been taught. For each life there is a universe, its own universe.
      We generate spheres of reality, individual bubbles of existence. Our
      planet is comprised of billions of spheres of reality, generated by each individual
      human and perhaps even by each animal.
    • We can only imagine and recollect things while in the body; this is
      for sure, because sensations and memories are molded into thought and
      knowledge in the brain. And although we identify ourselves with our thoughts
      and affections, it is an essential feature of reality that we experience the world
      piece by piece.
    • non-separability is now one of
      the most certain general concepts in physics
    • The
      distinction between here and there is also not an absolute reality. Without
      consciousness, we can take any person as our new frame of reference. It is
      not my consciousness or yours alone, but ours.
    • What I would question, with respect to solipsism, is the assumption that
      our individual separateness is an absolute reality.
    • “If you deny the objectivity of
      the world unless you observe it and are conscious of it, then you end up with
      solipsism—the belief that your consciousness is the only one.”
    • “No phenomenon is a real
      phenomenon until it is an observed
      phenomenon.”
    • Max Born demonstrated that quantum waves are waves of probability,
      not waves of material
    • If observed,
      particles behave like objects; if unobserved, they behave like waves and can
      go through more than one hole at the same time.
    • Instead, the entities we observe are floating in a field
      of mind that is not limited by an external spacetime.
    • Reality is not “there” with definite properties waiting to be discovered but
      actually comes into being depending upon the actions of the observer.
    • Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has its root here: position (location
      in space) belongs to the outer world, and momentum (which involves the
      temporal) belongs to the inner world.
    • time is the inner form
      of animal sense that animates events—the still frames—of the spatial world.
      The mind animates the world like the motor and gears of a projector.
    • It has been proven experimentally that when studying subatomic
      particles, the observer actually alters and determines what is perceived.
    • Biocentrism is the only humanly comprehensible explanation
      for how the world can be the way it is.
    • “I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics,”
      said Nobel physicist Richard Feynman.
    • Return to the revelation that we are thinking animals and that the material
      world is the elusive substratum of our conscious activity continually defining
      and redefining the real.
    • Time
      is not an absolute reality but an aspect of our consciousness.
    • Without perception, there is in effect no reality. Nothing has existence
      unless you, I, or some living creature perceives it, and how it is perceived further
      influences that reality.
    • And more important than this, that the observer in a significant sense creates
      reality and not the other way around.
    • But as exciting and glamorous as these theories are,
      they are an evasion, if not a reversal, of the central mystery of knowledge:
      that the laws of the world were somehow created to produce the observer.
    • Modern
      
      physics has become like Swift’s kingdom of Laputa, flying absurdly on
      >
      
      an island above the earth and indifferent to what is beneath
      >
    • Ever since the remotest of times
      philosophers have acknowledged the primacy of consciousness—that all
      truths and principles of being must begin with the individual mind and self.
    • Science has not succeeded in confronting the element of existence
      that is at once most familiar and most mysterious—conscious experience.

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