BIOCENTRISM

by Robert Lanza

  already been ruled out by a number of experiments.

  Of course, there was no ether; space has no physical properties.

  “Knowledge,” Henry David Thoreau once said, “does not come to us

  by details, but in flashes of light from heaven.” It took several years

  for George Fitzgerald—using not heaven but the rapture of properly

  applied logic—to point out that there was another explanation for

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  the negative results of the Michelson–Morley experiment. He sug-

  gested that matter itself contracts along the axis of its motion, and

  that the amount of contraction increases with the rate of motion. For

  instance, an object moving forward would be slightly shorter than it

  was at rest. Michelson’s apparatus—indeed, all measuring devices,

  including the human sense organs—would adjust themselves in the

  same way, contracting as they were turned into the direction of the

  Earth’s motion.

  At first, this hypothesis suffered from the lack of any credible

  explanation—always a deficiency in science if not in politics—until

  the great Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz invoked electromagne-

  tism. Lorentz had been one of the first to postulate the existence of

  the electron, leading to its discovery in 1897 as the very first sub-

  atomic particle, and still one of only three deemed to be fundamen-

  tal or indivisible. He was considered by many theoretical physicists,

  including Einstein, as the leading mind among them. It was Lorentz’s

  belief that the contraction phenomenon was a dynamic effect, and

  that the molecular forces in an object in motion differ from those

  from an object at rest. He reasoned that if an object with its electrical

  charges were moved through space, its particles would assume new

  relative distances from one another. The result would be a change

  in the object’s shape, which would contract in the direction of its

  motion.

  Lorentz developed a set of equations that later became known as

  the Lorentz transformation (or Lorentz Contraction—see Appendix

  1) to describe events taking place in one frame of reference in terms

  of a different one. This transformation equation was so simple and

  beautiful that it was utilized in its entirety by Einstein for his 1905

  Special Relativity theory. Indeed, it embodies the whole mathemati-

  cal essence of Einstein’s special theory of relativity, not only succeed-

  ing in quantifying the contraction hypothesis, but also presenting,

  before the invention of the relativity theory, the right equation for

  the increase in mass of a moving particle.

  Unlike changes in length, the change in mass of an electron

  can be determined from its deflection by a magnetic field. By 1900,

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  Walter Kauffman had verified that an electron’s mass increased just

  as predicted by Lorentz’s equations. In fact, subsequent experiments

  show Lorentz’s equations to be well-nigh perfect.

  Although Poincaré had discovered the relativity principle, and

  Lorentz the formula for change, the time was ripe for Einstein to

  reap this harvest. It was in this special relativity theory that the full

  implications of the space-time transformation laws were laid out

  clearly: clocks really do slow down when they move, and very much

  so when they move at velocities that approach the speed of light. At

  586 million miles per hour, for instance, a clock would run half as

  fast as when at rest. And at the speed of light—670 million miles per

  hour—a clock would stop completely. The actual, everyday conse-

  quences of this may seem perceptually ungraspable, for nobody is

  sensitive enough to detect the extremely minute changes that occur

  in clocks and measuring rods at the level of ordinary life. Even in a

  rocket hurtling through space at 60 million miles per hour, a clock

  would only slow by less than 0.5 percent.

  The equations in Einstein’s theory of relativity, building on the

  equations of Lorentz, predicted all the remarkable effects of motion

  at high speeds. They described a world that few could imagine, even

  at a time when the prevailing fiction included fantastic works from

  fertile minds such as H.G. Wells, the author of The Time Machine.

  Experiment after experiment appear to bear Einstein’s ideas

  out. His equations have been checked, cross-checked, and counter-

  checked. In fact, there are whole technologies that depend on them.

  The focusing of the electron microscope is one. The design of the

  klystron, the electronic tube that supplies microwave power to radar

  systems, is another.

  Both relativity and the biocentric theory presented in this book

  (which prefers the dynamic “compensatory theory” suggested by

  Lorentz) predict the same phenomena. It is not possible to choose

  one theory over the other based on the observational facts. “One

  must choose relativity over the compensatory [biocentric] alterna-

  tives,” wrote Lawrence Sklar, one of the world’s leading philoso-

  phers of science, “as a matter of free choice.” But it is not necessary

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  to jettison Einstein in order to restore space and time to their place

  as means by which we animals and humans intuit ourselves. They

  belong to us, not to the physical world. There is no necessity to create

  new dimensions and invent an entirely new mathematics to explain

  why space and time are relative to the observer.

  However, this equi-compatibility does not pertain to all natural

  phenomena. When applied immediately to spaces of a submolecu-

  lar order of magnitude, Einstein’s theory breaks down altogether. In

  the relativity theory, motion is described in the context of a four-

  dimensional continuum of space-time. Therefore, using it alone, it

  should have been possible to determine both position and momen-

  tum or energy and time simultaneously with unlimited accuracy—

  a conclusion that wound up being inconsistent with the limits

  imposed by the uncertainty principle.

  Einstein’s interpretation of nature was designed to explain para-

  doxes accrued by motion and the presence of gravitational fields.

  They make no philosophical statement about whether or not space

  or time exists absent an observer. They would work as well if the

  matrix of the traveling particle or bit of light were a field of con-

  sciousness as in a field of total nothingness.

  But no matter how we regard mathematical conveniences for cal-

  culating motion, space and time remain properties of the perceiving

  organism. It is solely from the viewpoint of life that we can speak

  of them, despite the popular view of space-time of special relativity

  existing as a self-sustaining entity having independent existence and

  structure.

  Moreover, it is only with considerable hindsight that we now

  realize that Einstein merely substituted a 4D absolute external entity

  for a 3D absolute external entity. In fact, at the beginning of his paper

  on general relativity, Einstein rais
ed the same concern about his own

  theory of special relativity. Einstein had ascribed objective reality to

  space-time independent of occupation of whatever events happen to

  take place in its arena. His concern—abandoned because he could

  not take it further—would no doubt resonate with him today if he

  were alive. After all, his one consistent spiritual viewpoint, repeated

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  over and over, was that “there is no free will,” the invariable conse-

  quence of which is a universe that is self-operating, and on down

  that slippery slope we go until dualism and ego-independence, and

  isolated compartments for consciousness and an external cosmos,

  become untenable. In truth, there can be no break between the

  observer and the observed. If the two are split, the reality is gone.

  Einstein’s work, as it stood, was superb for calculating trajecto-

  ries and determining the relative passage of the sequencing of events.

  He made no attempt to elucidate the actual nature of time and space,

  because these cannot be explained by physical laws. For that, we

  must first learn how we perceive and imagine the world around us.

  Indeed, how do we see things when in fact the brain is locked

  inside the cranium, inside a sealed vault of bone? That this whole

  rich and brilliant universe comes from a quarter-inch opening of the

  pupil, and the faint bit of light that gains entry thereby? How does it

  turn some electrochemical impulses into an order, a sequence, and

  a unity? How can we cognize this page, or a face, or anything that

  appears so real that very few ever stop to question how it occurs?

  Obviously, it is outside traditional physics to discover that these per-

  petual images that surround us so vividly are a construction, a fin-

  ished product hovering inside the head.

  “After having in full confidence begun with it [epistemology],”

  wrote Albert Einstein, “I quickly recognized what a slippery field

  I had ventured upon, having, due to lack of experience, until now

  cautiously limited myself to the field of physics.” What a statement—

  and written with the benefit of wisdom and hindsight nearly half a

  century after he had already formulated his special theory.

  Einstein might as well have attempted to construct a castle with-

  out knowledge of the mass of materials or of their fitness for this

  purpose. He believed in his youth that he could build from one

  side of nature, the physical, without the other side—the living. But

  Einstein was not a biologist or a medical doctor. By inclination and

  training, he was obsessed with mathematics and equations and par-

  ticles of light. The great physicist spent the final fifty years of his life searching in vain for a Grand Unified Theory that would tie together

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  the cosmos. If only, after leaving his office in Princeton, he would

  have looked out upon the pond and watched the schools of min-

  nows rise to the surface to behold that vaster universe of which they

  too were an intricate part.

  abandoning space to find infinity

  Einstein’s relativity is fully compatible with a much more flexible

  definition of space. Several threads in physics indeed imply that

  a rethinking of space is necessary to move forward: the persistent

  ambiguity of the observer in Quantum Theory (QT), the nonzero

  vacuum energy implied by cosmological observations, and the

  breakdown of general relativity on small scales, to name a few. To

  this we may add the unsettling fact that space as perceived by bio-

  logical consciousness remains a domain apart, and remains one of

  the most poorly understood natural phenomena.

  To those who assume Einstein’s development of special rela-

  tivity necessitates the reality of external, independent “space” (and

  likewise assume the reality of an absolute separability of objects,

  what quantum theory calls locality, and rest the concept of space on this basis) we must emphasize once again that to Einstein himself,

  space is simply what we can measure using the solid objects of our

  experience. Rather than spend half a dozen pages here with a more

  technical exposition of how relativity’s results are equally obtained

  without any need for an objective, external “space,” see Appendix 2,

  which describes special relativity’s postulates in terms of a funda-

  mental field and its properties. Doing so, we have unseated space

  from its privileged position. As science becomes more unified, it

  is to be hoped that we can explain consciousness as well as ideal-

  ized physical situations, following the current threads of quantum

  mechanics that have made it clear that the observer’s decisions are

  closely linked to the evolution of physical systems.

  Although consciousness may eventually be understood well

  enough to be described by a theory of its own, its scaffolding is

  clearly part of the physical logic of nature, that is, the fundamental

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  grand unified field. It is both acted on by the field (in perceiving

  external entities, experiencing the effects of acceleration and gravity,

  etc.) and acts on the field (by realizing quantum mechanical sys-

  tems, constructing a coordinate system to describe light-based rela-

  tionships, etc.).

  Meanwhile, theorists of all stripes struggle to resolve the con-

  tradictions between quantum theories and general relativity. While

  few physicists doubt that a unified theory is attainable, it is clear that

  our classical conception of space-time is part of the problem rather

  than part of the solution. Among other nuisances, in the modern

  view objects and their fields have blurred together in what seems to

  be an eternal game of peek-a-boo. In the modern view according to

  quantum field theory, space has an energy content of its own and

  a structure that is very quantum mechanical in nature. Science is

  increasingly finding that the boundary between object and space is growing ever fuzzier.

  Moreover, experiments in quantum entanglement since 1997

  have called into question the very meaning of space and ongoing

  questions as to what these entangled-particle experiments mean.

  There are really only two choices. Either the first particle communi-

  cates its situation far faster than the speed of light, indeed, with infi-

  nite speed, and using a methodology that totally escapes even our

  most desperate guesses, or else there really is no separation between

  the pair at all, appearances to the contrary. They are in a real sense

  in contact, despite a universe of seemingly empty space standing

  between them. Thus, these experiments appear to add yet another

  layer to the scientific conclusion that space is illusory.

  Cosmologists say that everything was in contact, and born

  together, at the Big Bang. So even employing conventional imagery,

  it may even make sense that everything is in some sense an entan-

  gled relative of every other, and in direct contact with everything

  else, despite the seeming emptiness between them.

  W
hat, then, is the true nature of this space? Empty? Seeth-

  ing with energy and therefore matter-equivalent? Real? Unreal?

  A uniquely active field? A field of Mind? Moreover, if one accepts

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  that the external world occurs only in Mind, in consciousness, and

  that it’s the interior of one’s brain that’s cognized “out there” at this

  moment, then of course everything is connected with everything

  else.

  A separate oddity is that during high-speed travel, especially

  near the speed of light, everything in the universe would seem to lie in the same place, unseparated and undifferentiated, directly ahead.

  This bizarre wrinkle comes from the effect of aberration. When we

  drive through a snowstorm, the flakes seem to come from in front

  of us, while the rear window hardly gets hit at all. The same thing

  happens with light. Our planet’s eighteen-miles-per-second motion

  around the sun causes stars to shift position by several seconds of

  arc from their actual locations. As we increase our velocity, this

  effect grows ever more dramatic until at just below lightspeed, the

  entire contents of the cosmos appear to hover in a single blindingly

  bright ball, dead ahead. If one is looking out any other window,

  there appears nothing but a strange, absolute blackness. The point

  here is that if some thing’s experiences alter radically depending on

  conditions, that thing is not fundamental. Light or electromagnetic

  energy are unvarying under all circumstances, as something that

  is intrinsic and innate to existence, to reality. By contrast, the fact

  that space can both seem to change its appearance through aberra-

  tion, and actually shrink drastically at high speed, so that the entire universe is only a few steps from end to end, illustrates that it has

  no inherent, let alone external, structure. It is, rather, an experien-

  tial commodity that goes with the flow and mutates under varying

  circumstances.

  The further relevance of all this to biocentrism is that if one

  removes space and time as actual entities rather than subjective, rel-

  ative, and observer-created phenomena, it pulls the rug from under

  the notion that an external world exists within its own independent

  skeleton. Where is this external objective universe if it has neither time nor space?

  We can, at this point, formulate seven principles: