Book Reviewed: The Grand Biocentric Design: How Life Creates Reality Hardcover by Robert Lanza and Matej Pavsic

Consciousness and the cosmic self This is the third book by author Robert Lanza about Biocentrism, an idea that life and consciousness create physical reality. This book propose that our observations and knowledge affect how physical objects behave and appear. Hence the principal argument here is that life isn't just a part of the universe, but life determines the structure of the cosmos including spacetime, matter energy, forces, and fields. The authors propose 11 principals of biocentrism, which states that matter and spacetime are not independent realities but rather tools of our mind. The ideas presented in this book is somewhat farfetched and may be outlandish. Simple considerations of the concepts of physics and biology illustrates the veracity of authors contention. The 4-dimensional spacetime is assumed to be the fabric of reality on which matter, and energy behave according to the laws of physics. Space behaves differently from matter, it can expand faster than speed of light, as it happened during the inflationary epoch. And spacetime apparently does not require energy for existence. But it also falls apart at the black hole implying that it is not fundamental, but an emergent structure from something deeper. General relativity treats gravity as the geometry of spacetime, but it also entails its dissolution which may explain why information escapes from a black hole. When black hole evaporates fully, the information also escapes completely because there is no black hole and no space. Dark energy is probably the intrinsic energy of space. At the cosmic level, the dark energy is overpowering gravity and pushing spacetime apart. When the universe was 380,000-year-old, the universe had 63% dark matter and no dark energy. But after 13.8 billion years, the dark matter is reduced to 23% and dark energy rose to 72% with only 5% visible matter. The universe consists of information; every elementary particle carries information about their physical properties that characterizes them. Fundamental particles like quarks and Higgs Bosons are not directly observed since they are extremely unstable, and generally characterized by the information associated with them. Hence, matter becomes the secondary concept. In addition, space is not smooth and continuous as we see and perceive. At quantum scales space is grid like and exists in discrete bits (like information). It is possible that our universe could be a simulation running on a cosmic computer using these information as codes. Information as a fundamental component of physical reality emerges from the fact that the universe may be like a hologram or an illusion, as illustrated by analyzing the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation left over from the Big Bang. A black hole also contains information about matter and energy that fell into it. This information is stored on a two-dimensional surface but contains information that came from three-dimensional space. Spacetime may also exist in a knot into doughnut- or pretzel-like shapes. The extra connectivity creates tunnels or wormholes between otherwise far-flung places in the universe and permits quantum entanglement and information exchange that is otherwise forbidden by special relativity. Wormholes, the holographic principle, emergent space-time, quantum entanglement, and quantum computation are some of the concepts in physics that makes understanding physical reality captivating and confounding. At best, the laws as we understand, explains many puzzling things in cosmos, but not all! We know all there is to know about the genome a laboratory mouse, but we don’t know what it feels like to be a mouse. Living systems are defined by the concept of "organization. Cells are autopoietic systems that build themselves: they literally construct their own constraints on the release of energy into a few degrees of freedom. Life’s emergence might rest on the foundations of physics, but it is not derivable from them. Living systems achieve a local reduction in their entropy as they grow and develop; they create structures of greater internal energy (lower entropy), higher order, and higher information out of the nutrients they absorb. Central to this philosophy is life is not an objective property of the cosmos, but a collection of special cases that links of non-equilibrium processes and boundary condition constraints on the release of energy into a few degrees of freedom. In reproducing systems such as cells, a closure is achieved linking these processes and constraint construction into an organization that closes on itself. Such a system is a self-controlled machine that is independent. Experiments on self-assembly and self-organization in large molecules such as metal oxides are attempting to take an ensemble approach to provide new paths for developing general theories on the universal principles bridging matter and life. Is quantum reality (of subatomic particles) linked to classical reality (of larger molecules/structures) in everyday life? It should be because all objects are made of subatomic particles. It appears that deep down spacetime and matter-energy, the underlying realities may also include consciousness that appears in the interpretations of quantum reality. The nature of dark matter and dark energy and their relationship to each other and their impact on spacetime is also unclear. In metaphysical terms, the book contains ideas of Advaita Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism which proposes that the Pure Consciousness (Brahman) is the Ultimate Reality, and the phenomenal transient world is an illusion (Maya). Brahman is the material cause of all that exists in the cosmos. it is the primordial reality that creates, maintains, and withdraws from the universe. Brahman's qualities are called Sat-Cit-Ananda (Eternal Being-Consciousness-Bliss.)