Again I violate the rules by answering a title question with the word “yes.”

About two weeks ago I posted about the theory of “biocentrism” proposed by Robert Lanza. At that time, I didn’t know much about the theory, but was decrying a piece Lanza wrote in the Independent arguing that his theory suggested that we would have an afterlife: that the concept of death was an illusion, and therefore “could not exist in any real sense.” If that’s the case, where is my last cat?

I’ve now read a bit more about the theory, since in 2009 Lanza published a precis of it on the NBC website. His precis is called “‘Biocentrism’: how life creates the universe,” and it’s an excerpt from his book with Bob Berman, Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe.   (When reading the piece, be sure to click on the bottom where it says “show more text.”) Even though the book was published in 2010, it’s still at position #4538 on Amazon—a respectable showing after 3.5 years.

Like Deepak Chopra, Lanza has substantial scientific credentials. As I wrote earlier:

Wikipedia describes Robert Lanza as “an American medical doctor, scientist, Chief Scientific Officer of Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) and Adjunct Professor at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine, Wake Forest University School of Medicine.” He has substantial accomplishments, including being the first person to clone an endangered species (the gaur), to develop a way to harvest embryonic stem cells without destroying an embryo, and to inject stem cells into humans to treat genetic diseases.

Indeed, the accomplishment of such substantial work is more than Chopra can claim. But Lanza resembles Chopra in a darker way, for, after reading about biocentrism, I conclude that it’s just another form of woo—granted, a more sophisticated form of woo than Chopra’s, but only marginally. And, astoundingly, “biocentrism” uses some of the same tropes as does Chopra: the primacy of consciousness in the universe and the idea that quantum mechanics makes a hash of the notion of “reality.” Lanza’s stuff appears to be idle speculation, but speculation that is presented as fairly well established science; and its publication on the NBC “Science” site is bound to mislead or confuse the layperson—especially because there are no rebuttals. (There appear to be “comments,” but I can’t see them.)

Lanza’s main idea is, in fact, identical to that of Chopra: the universe and everything in it is a construct of consciousness (he doesn’t say whose, but I assume humans). Remember when Deepak said that the Moon doesn’t exist until you see it? Well, Lanza thinks exactly the same thing (all excerpts from the NBC piece):

In the past few decades, major puzzles of mainstream science have forced a re-evaluation of the nature of the universe that goes far beyond anything we could have imagined. A more accurate understanding of the world requires that we consider it biologically centered. It’s a simple but amazing concept that Biocentrism attempts to clarify: Life creates the universe, instead of the other way around. Understanding this more fully yields answers to several long-held puzzles. This new model — combining physics and biology instead of keeping them separate, and putting observers firmly into the equation — is called biocentrism. . .

Could the long-sought Theory of Everything be merely missing a component that was too close for us to have noticed?  Some of the thrill that came with the announcement that the human genome had been mapped or the idea that we are close to understanding the “Big Bang” rests in our innate human desire for completeness and totality.  But most of these comprehensive theories fail to take into account one crucial factor: We are creating them. It is the biological creature that fashions the stories, that makes the observations, and that gives names to things. And therein lies the great expanse of our oversight, that science has not confronted the one thing that is at once most familiar and most mysterious — consciousness.

Lanza then traverses familiar ground:  modern science does not explain consciousness, the “beauty” of a sunset is all a subjective sensation filtered through our brain, and, indeed, none of our perceptions reflect a reality “out there”—merely our brain’s interpretation of something (he doesn’t say what). He implies that because science hasn’t explained consciousness, it can’t:

There are many problems with the current paradigm — some obvious, others rarely mentioned but just as fundamental. But the overarching problem involves life, since its initial arising is still a scientifically unknown process, even if the way it then changed forms can be apprehended using Darwinian mechanisms. The bigger problem is that life contains consciousness, which, to say the least, is poorly understood.

Consciousness is not just an issue for biologists; it’s a problem for physics. There is nothing in modern physics that explains how a group of molecules in a brain creates consciousness. The beauty of a sunset, the taste of a delicious meal, these are all mysteries to science — which can sometimes pin down where in the brain the sensations arise, but not how and why there is any subjective personal experience to begin with. And, what’s worse, nothing in science can explain how consciousness arose from matter. Our understanding of this most basic phenomenon is virtually nil. Interestingly, most models of physics do not even recognize this as a problem.

Well, physicists aren’t concerned much with consciousness, but biologists and philosophers are.  And we don’t understand nothing about it: we know which parts of brain affects parts of consciousness, like recognizing faces, and we know that we can remove consciousness with anesthetics and bring it back. We can alter consciousness in predictable ways with drugs. Everything to date suggest that consciousness is an emergent property of brain organization, though we don’t yet know yet how this subjective sensation arises through neurology or arose through evolution. (We do know that things that taste good were, generally, good for us in the past, so some aspect of subjective sensation is comprehensible.)

Lanza then take a brief detour through Fine Tuning Land, just short enough to suggest that the physical constants are a mystery, and to imply that perhaps his own theory (he doesn’t say how) is involved in the answer:

Then, too, in the last few decades there has been considerable discussion of a basic paradox in the construction of the universe. Why are the laws of physics exactly balanced for animal life to exist?  There are over 200 physical parameters within the solar system and universe so exact that it strains credulity to propose that they are random — even if that is exactly what standard contemporary physics baldly suggests. These fundamental constants of the universe — constants that are not predicted by any theory — all seem to be carefully chosen, often with great precision, to allow for existence of life and consciousness (yes, consciousness raises its annoying head yet another time). We have absolutely no reasonable explanation for this.

But that’s simply not true. First of all, we don’t know which constants are independent of one another, and we certainly know that not all of them have to be “fine tuned” to permit life as we know it.  Further, Sean Carroll, in the video I posted last week, suggested four “reasonable” explanations for the so-called Anthropic Principle, including luck, multiverses, and so on. None of them are unreasonable; we just don’t know which is correct. (Lanza considers several of these briefly but dismisses them, and doesn’t mention the multiverse hypothesis, which was around when his book was published.) But again, the nature of physical constants is a hard problem, like consciousness, and there’s no reason to think that science won’t eventually answer it. Has Lanza not learned the historical problems with “woo of the gaps” arguments?

Then, inevitably, Lanza drags in quantum mechanics, in the form of The Observer Effect. Lanza notes that “the observer” (and consciousness) affect the outcome of quantum-mechanical studies. He doesn’t note, though, “observer” need not be conscious: it can be a non-conscious machine that measures quantum phenomena. That by itself would seem to make hash of his theory.  Lanza then mooshes together the observer effect and the fact that we perceive a version of reality filtered through our neurons to confect his Big Theory:  reality is in fact created by the observer, and isn’t there (or isn’t coherent) when it’s not observed. Here’s the meat of his theory:

The results of quantum physics, such as the two-slit experiment, tell us that not a single one of those subatomic particles actually occupies a definite place. Rather, they exist as a range of possibilities — as waves of probability — as the German physicist Max Born demonstrated back in 1926. They are statistical predictions — nothing but a likely outcome. In fact, outside of that idea, nothing is there!  If they are not being observed, they cannot be thought of as having any real existence — either duration or a position in space.  It is only in the presence of an observer — that is, when you go back in to get a drink of water [he says that our kitchen isn’t really there when we leave it]— that the mind sets the scaffolding of these particles in place. Until it actually lays down the threads (somewhere in the haze of probabilities that represent the object’s range of possible values) they cannot be thought of as being either here or there, or having an actual position, a physical reality.

Indeed, it is here that biocentrism suggests a very different view of reality. Most people, in and out of the sciences, imagine the external world to exist on its own, with an appearance that more-or-less resembles what we ourselves see. Human or animal eyes, according to this view, are merely clear windows that accurately let in the world. If our personal window ceases to exist, as in death, or is painted black and opaque, as in blindness, that doesn’t in any way alter the continued existence of the external reality or its supposed “actual” appearance. A tree is still there, the moon still shines, whether or not we are cognizing them. They have an independent existence. True, a dog may see an autumn maple solely in shades of gray, and an eagle may perceive much greater detail among its leaves, but most creatures basically apprehend the same visually real object, which persists even if no eyes were upon it.

This “Is it really there?” issue is ancient, and of course predates biocentrism. Biocentrism, however, explains why one view and not the other may be correct. The converse is equally true: Once one fully understands that there is no independent external universe outside of biological existence, the rest more or less falls into place.

He never explains the “rest more of less falls into place” (i.e. does this explain the physical constants—or are they mere constructs?), but this idea is badly wrong. Yes, of course our perception of reality may be conditioned by our neurons (a bee sees differently from us), but the wavelengths of light that fuel perception are invariant among organisms.  And even if quantum phenomena are puzzling on the micro level (Lanza mentions, of course, quantum entanglement and the two-slit experiment—phenomena also used to empower Chopra’s woo), they almost certainly have no effect on the macro level: on our consciousness and on the behavior of objects bigger than a cell (that is, if molecules aren’t illusions of our consciousness!).

In the end, it’s simply foolish to claim that nothing is there until we observe it—that there is simply a wave function that collapses into a rock or a cat when a human sees it. The observer need not be conscious, not even a machine. I was reading last night, in my mountaineering book, how George Mallory‘s body was found on Everest in 1999. If you’re a mountain fanatic, you’ll know the story, but Mallory and his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, disappeared while climbing Everest in June of 1924.  Since they were last seen near the summit, it’s possible that they actually made it to the top, though evidence suggests they didn’t.  What’s important here is that when Mallory’s body was found after 75 years, something had happened to it. It had become mummified, much of his clothing was ripped by winds (he was identified by a label in his shirt), and his bones were showing.  That all suggests—as do many other things that happen to inanimate objects—that there are real phenomena that occur even when nobody is there to see them. And that reality—in this case the cold and winds of Everest—have predictable effects.  No observer was there to watch Mallory’s body wither and be buffeted by winds, no observer is there when we leave a sand castle on the beach and return to find it effaced by the tides, no observer is there when you forget to take the cake out of the oven and it burns.

Are these phenomena, then, “created” by consciousness? If so, how; and why are they “created” in a predictable way?  Lanza’s big mistake, it seems to me, is to say that a combination of the “observer” effect (which doesn’t apply on the macro level) and the fact that reality is filtered through evolved neurons, together suggest that reality does not exist. If it doesn’t, it’s curious that the illusory reality we create with our consciousness—and Lanza includes “death” as such an illusion—certainly behave in ways that are predictable and perceived identically by different people, changing in expected directions even when no observer is around.

In the end, Lanza suggests not only that consciousness creates reality, but that it somehow created the universe. When discussing anthropic “fine-tuning,” he says this:

At the moment, there are only four explanations for this mystery. One is to argue for incredible coincidence. Another is to say, “God did that,” which explains nothing even if it is true. The third is to invoke the anthropic principle’s reasoning that we must find these conditions if we are alive, because, what else could we find? The final option is biocentrism pure and simple, which explains how the universe is created by life. Obviously, no universe that doesn’t allow for life could possibly exist; the universe and its parameters simply reflect the spatio-temporal logic of animal existence.

Now how on earth is the universe (much less those fine-tuned constants) created by life? How does our consciousness create the universe if that universe had to preexist for our consciousness to evolve? According to Lanza, it’s not just that we filter a pre-existing reality through our consciousness, thereby distorting it, but that we actually create that reality when we perceive it.  If that’s the case, where did animals, with their attendant consciousness, come from? How did the Big Bang occur without people around to create it? Does he admit of a “wave function” that allowed us to evolve, and in ways that our own consciousness can understand by collapsing the wave functions that correspond to fossils?

Maybe I’m not understanding Lanza, and perhaps he’s saying something very deep. But I doubt it, and certainly others do too, for “biocentrism” hasn’t exactly caught on in the last few years.  It seems to me that what Lanza is proffering is merely a Deepakian form of woo, one empty of substantive content. If that’s the case, then it’s a mystery why someone like Lanza, who has solid scientific credentials and accomplishments, has gone astray in this manner. Unlike Chopra, Lanza doesn’t sell ayurvedic medicines or tea mugs, and it’s clear he really believes what he says.  But, I suspect, what he claims could be demolished in a few minutes by someone who knows quantum mechanics.

We have some of those people here, so if you want to have a go at “biocentrism,” be my guest. It’s time for physicists, biologists, and philosophers to join forces to go after this unnourishing word salad that people like Lanza and Chopra feed to a hungry public. It’s not quite as bad as religion, but they have their similarities, including the use of incoherent language, the use of deepities, and nebulous claims about reality.

The puzzle of consciousness and the counterintuitiveness of quantum mechanics are indeed cause for wonder—and stimuli for research—but they’re not reasons to jettison the notion of reality.