Victor Grippi – The Atomic Writer

This post is based a book due to be released in May 2009, Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe, by Robert Lanza and Bob Berman, and also an article that appeared in the MAy 2009 issue of Discover magazine.

A Biocentric view of the universe holds that what we perceive as real, the universe and everything in it, is based on our ability to cognitively make the observation in the first place. Are space and time physical objects that would exist even if life did not? This view reminds me of the old adage, if a tree falls in the woods, but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? I suppose one way to test this would be to leave an audio recording device next to the tree and then exit the woods. After the event one would only have to analyze the recording for the sound of the tree. Is the recording device alive? But more importantly is the act of making the observation the critical point?

Take another popular example, the two slit photon test. Here a beam of light (photons) is directed towards two slits made on one side of a box. If you observe the subatomic particle, the photon appears to pass through one slit or the other, by the reflection it makes on the inside of the opposite side of the box. However, if no one observes the particle, it exhibits the behavior of a wave that can inhabit all possibilities, including passing through both slits simultaneously.

Quantum mechanics is the physicist’s best model for describing the subatomic world. It also makes some of the best arguments that conscious perception is integral to the workings of the universe. Quantum theory tells us that a unobserved particle, like an electron or a photon, exists in a blurry unpredictable state with no well defined location or frequency until the moment it is observed. This is the famous Heisenberg uncertainty principal. Physicists describe the unobserved condition as a wave function. Wave functions are mathematical equations that attempt to predict the location and/or motion (frequency) of the particle at a precise moment in time. When an observation is made, by hitting it with a photon in order to see it, it is said to have collapsed the wave function. The act of making the observation has caused the particle to change. We can only know its location or its frequency, but never both at the same time. Experimenters suggest that mere knowledge in the experimenter’s mind is sufficient to collapse the wave function and convert possibility to reality.

Another theory in quantum mechanics deals quantum entanglement. Einstein called this behavior, “spooky action at a distance”, and told Roger Penrose he thought it was only a mere calculation error. Entanglement deals with two particles that share the same wave function. If we measure one particle and thus collapse its wave function, the other one collapses simultaneously. If one photon is observed to have vertical polarization, its waves all moving in one plane, the act of observation causes the other photon to instantly collapse into a horizontal polarity. This has been tested using one way mirrors where the particles were split and separated by many miles. Nicolas Gisin tested this at the University of Geneva in 1997.

Before these experiments most scientists believed in an independent universe where physical states exist in some absolute sense before they are measured. This has now been proven to not be the case.

What is time? The passage of time can be thought of like frames in a motion picture. The change from one frame to the next can be cognitively resolved to the passage of time. But is time object that exists in a past, present and future form? The past exists in the electrical stimuli of our brain cells. The future has not been reduced to the collapse of the multitudes of wave functions that make up our perceivable world. We are left with only the present. Time exists in the snapshots of wave functions we choose to collapse that make up the reality of the present in which we live. What else could it be? We observe time as a delta from one moment to the next regardless of what another person experiences on the other side of the world. Time is as personal as the way we brush our teeth. When we learn of another persons sequence of events that occurred during a span known as time, we splice their experience into our own. Time is then rendered to no more than the total summation of the internal reel running inside our minds.

What is space? Is it an object that is constantly expanding from the origin point known as the big bang? Most of us still think like Issac Newton, that space is an object or container that can be picked up and taken to the laboratory. But isn’t space really just our way of interpreting how an object should look once we collapse its wave function?

Our notions of space are false.

1. Distances between objects mutate depending on conditions like gravity and velocity, as described by Einstein’s theory of relativity. Translation: There is no absolute distance between anything and anything else.

2. Empty space, as described by quantum mechanics, is in fact not empty and but full of potential particles and fields.

3. Quantum theory also doubts that distance objects are actually separated by great distances. Entanglement has been proven to show that particles can act in unison rendering great distances mute.

Science tries to explain the physical universe, by making an investigated assumption based on the wrong initial starting point. By inclination and training these scientists are obsessed with mathematical descriptions of the world. Biocentrism should help unlock the mysteries of the universe be providing another investigated tool. By allowing the observer into the equation new avenues of insight can be realized. New thinking machines can be developed that experience the world as we do, and will certainly provide solutions that are more organic to the reality we see playing on the projector inside our minds. Perhaps a unified field theory, Einsteins dream, may finally be realized by merging physical observation with consciousness as science continues to collapse our reality into theories that are discarded just as fast. Take string theory as an example.

To answer my original question: Is the audio recorder to be considered alive in order to meet the criteria for collapsing the wave function of the fell tree? The answer is of course no. However, if no one listens to the recording of the tree that fell in the woods, would the recording make a sound. However, if I make a recording of the recording of the fallen tree… And on, and on, and on.

Remember, never stop looking up at the night sky and asking…what if.

Victor Grippi
The Atomic Writer