Biocentrism - The Biocentric Universe

Welcome! This website explores the intriguing theory that living organisms build the physical world, rather than the physical world giving rise to life. We are presenting a series of short videos, each with an accompanying article, examining the theory and its possible implications. We are NOT arguing that this theory must be true — only that it is sufficiently plausible to warrant serious consideration and testing. Please read our FAQ to learn more.

N E W Sbiocentrism, a self-programming "simulation" of the universe For Gamma Rays, Quantization of Spacetime Undetectable (7/1/2011) Analysis of an intense gamma-ray burst detected in 2004 was expected to reveal the scale at which spacetime is quantized — i.e., the size of the "grains" that subdivide time and space into incredibly small, discrete chunks. The polarization of high-energy gamma rays was predicted to be rotated to a greater extent than that of lower-energy rays. No polarization differences were found, within the limits of the study's accuracy. This shows that spacetime must be at least ten trillion times finer-grained than previously thought. Biocentric perpective: The study assumes that the gamma rays have been interacting with an absolute quantized spacetime across billions of light-years. But in the biocentric view, no such interaction occurs. For any individual gamma-ray photon, interaction occurs at the detector only, the detection event depending statistically upon the (statistical) distribution of matter and energy in the universe and the resulting curvature of spacetime. The photon does not encounter any absolute "graininess" of the intervening billions of light-years at all, and therefore, it should not be expected to show a resulting effect. The biocentric prediction is that no quantization will ever be found in this type of study, no matter how accurate the data. Galaxy-Cluster Masses Depend Upon How We Measure Them (6/30/2011) The most massive systems in the universe, galaxy clusters, refuse to reveal just how massive they are. The clusters can be "weighed" using three different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum: x-ray, visible light, and millimeter wavelengths. Measurements using two of the methods can be made to agree with each other, but then the third method always produces a result inconsistent with the other two. According to Science Daily, "It is as if the universe is being difficult by keeping back one or two pieces of the jigsaw and so deliberately preventing us from calibrating our weighing scales properly." Biocentric perspective: Conventional thinking assumes that a galaxy cluster has a mass that is absolute and observer-independent, and therefore, any proper measurement should produce a value that reflects this mass. That assumption does not exist in the biocentric paradigm. This discovery may not be revealing new physics or even a flaw in the observations, but rather, a flaw in our understanding of logical consistency between the observations. Consider that light measured one way will reveal wave behavior, and measured another way, particle behavior. We now understand that light is not absolutely made of either particles or waves; such observations are understood to be consistent even if they once represented a paradox. The situation may be similar here: No absolute properties in this universe, even for the largest systems in existence. DNA Can Discern Between Two Quantum States (6/4/2011) A recent experiment demonstrated that molecules of DNA interact with quantum systems in ways that ordinary, non-biologically derived molecules do not. Long chains of DNA performed well at separating electrons based on their spin properties, disproportionally selecting electrons with one spin direction over the other. Short fragments of DNA and single or damaged strands lacked this ability. The researchers believe that this is tied to the molecule's chirality (right- or left-"handedness") — but we biocentrists are not surprised: Asymmetrical chirality is commonplace in the biological world, whereas in nonliving nature, chiral molecules are always found in a symmetrical 50/50 mixture. This experiment is extraordinary, as it may be the start of an explosive drive to probe the connections between biology and quantum mechanics. Ultimately, we think these experiments will show that biological processes are fundamental to, and critical for, the emergence of objective reality in both the microscopic and macroscopic world. Read Our Entry in the FQXi/Scientific American Essay Contest Is Reality Digital or Analog? That was the most recent topic of this major annual-ish physics competition. Our essay, titled "Biology Goes Digital," just missed advancing to the finals — we finished ranking #40 out of 161 entries — but we did beat out a handful of physics Ph.D.'s and even a Harvard Professor Emeritus in Astrophysics (#67). Our entry, which explores issues regarding measurement, decoherence, and information theory, argued that perhaps the universe has not been "collapsed" into one definite history for the past 13 billion years, as is commonly assumed. We point out that in our world, the fixing of discrete information is exclusively a function of biological organisms (and, by extension, our technology), and that information content in the world exists solely in relation to the entity perceiving that information, rather than being fixed and absolute. Download the PDF of the essay	.	F R E Q U E N T L Y A S K E D Q U E S T I O N S A B O U T T H E T H E O R Y What is the biocentric universe theory?biocentrism Why does this theory even exist?biocentrism Isn't this theory much more complicated than the standard theory? Is this even science? Or a new-age misuse of quantum physics like The Secret? Is this theory motivated by religion, creationism, or intelligent design? Isn't this a philosophical idea rather than a scientific one? Does the theory conflict with established, mainstream science? Is this the "theory of everything"?biocentrism How can this theory be tested?biocentrism How could the first organism create the first matter, when life is made of matter? Where did the first living organism come from?biocentrism What's so special about life, to the point that life is at the "center" of this theory? How can we see galaxies that formed billions of years before our Solar System? Isn't the cosmic microwave background evidence that the Big Bang happened? How do inanimate measuring devices factor into the observation process? Was the Earth flat 1,000 years ago, since that's how it was perceived back then? To paraphrase Einstein, is the Moon there when we aren't looking at it? There are multiple observers in the world, but they all observe the same world. Doesn't this point to a world that is external and independent of observers?
O U R V I D E O S E R I E S
P A R T 1 : I N T R O D U C I N G T H E B I O C E N T R I C U N I V E R S E An intriguing theory — that the living world builds the physical world — may help answer some of the biggest questions in science. Read the article or watch the video below.		P A R T 2 : I T ' S A L L R E L A T I V E Some physicists believe that objects must be measured or described only in terms of other things, an idea that goes back to Einstein. This is a key to understanding the biocentric universe theory. Read the article or watch the video below.
P A R T 3 : W I K I W O R L D Experiments suggest that the physical world is an ongoing, participatory project — more like Wikipedia than a paper encyclopedia. Read the article or watch the video below.		P A R T 4 : W H E R E A R E T H E A L I E N S ? The lack of any sign of alien life may be another clue that the universe is biocentric — and therefore specific to our biological lineage. Read the article or watch the video below.

What is the biocentric universe theory?

The biocentric universe theory, first described by the pioneering biologist Robert Lanza in 2007 (based on ideas by physicist John Archibald Wheeler), is a radical change in the way we view the world and our place in it. It proposes that all of reality, the whole experience of being, is like a gigantic, complex, millions-of-years-long computer simulation. However, two important factors distinguish biocentric reality from the programmed reality of a simulation: (1) It is not programmed from the outside, by "aliens" for example, and (2) unlike what may happen in a computer reality that we can simulate, everything that happens is logically consistent with everything else — things that are physically impossible never occur. We know that the real world operates in consistent and predictable ways, which allows scientists to write down the laws of nature. This consistency, of course, is the basis upon which we define reality. A biocentric universe, however, may turn out to be a more fundamentally accurate picture of what reality (really) is.

Most of us have been taught that the universe is a collection of absolute, defined particles "out there" — atoms and molecules that have been around far longer than us or even the Earth — and that billions of years ago, some of them came together to create the first life forms. Biocentricity considers these ideas to be unfounded assumptions, not supported by any empirical evidence. Instead, it proposes that the structure we observe in the universe is generated on our end, not pre-existing "out there," and that this structure has been evolving along with life on Earth. The complexity we see today is actually a function of the complexity that biological life has attained, as exemplified by the human brain. This explains how the universe could have an extremely simple beginning, while today appearing to be so incredibly vast and complex, as well as seeming to be precisely "fine-tuned" for the existence of matter (and life) — without requiring multiple universes, astonishingly good luck, or intelligent creators or other complex entities. The detail we see in the universe has been built up out of trillions of biological observations, all within a framework of consistent spatio-temporal logic. Today the universe appears in a highly defined, information-rich form to us humans — a species that has not only achieved an advanced form of consciousness, but also has developed the tools to probe the universe to extremely far distances as well as to high degrees of precision.

Why does this theory even exist?

For centuries, science has done well assuming that the universe is exactly what it seems to be — an independent, predefined world that we humans passively observe, like visitors to a museum. But as experiments have gotten more refined, it has become increasingly difficult to explain certain discoveries under this conventional, absolute view of matter, space, and time. This is particularly evident in the realm of quantum mechanics, where the act of measurement appears to change what is being measured, sometimes in bizarre ways. For example, in the "delayed choice experiment," a decision that an experimenter makes can seem to change the way a particle behaved earlier in time. These phenomena are difficult to explain if you assume that our observations are passive measurements of some absolute course of events "out there in the world" that would occur exactly the same whether we observers were around to watch or not. Biocentricity offers an alternative — one that is completely consistent with everything we truly know in science. It solves other mysteries inuitively as well, such as why there is no hint of alien life anywhere we look in the Cosmos (the so-called Fermi paradox): Our observable universe is unique to our particular lineage of biology. An unrelated alien lineage would dwell in a separate universe, one that consists of an accumulation of that lineage's observations, which are entirely independent from our own observations.

Isn't this theory much more complicated than the standard theory?

No. It is simpler. Biocentricity boils down to only two postulates: (1) The raw, uninterpreted results of physical observations are the only things about our universe that we can say for certain; and (2) every observation that we make is logically consistent with every other observation. All aspects of the universe ultimately may be considered to be consequences of these two (apparently true) facts. For example, our subjective notion of space is a result of the observations themselves, as well as the consistent, logical relationships we infer among them. Meanwhile, the sequence of the observations, and the differences we notice between them, is what creates the perception of time.

The theory only seems complicated, because we've lived our whole lives within the assumption of an entirely independent world of matter "out there." On top of that, our brains have been evolving for millions of years to create a comprehensible, unified perception of absolute objects in space and a steady flow of time. It is therefore a challenge to intellectually step out of this comfort zone and imagine the world, perhaps, as it really is: a simulation-like phenomenon experienced collectively by all the life forms on Earth. What truly is complicated is trying to reconcile the many discoveries of 20th- and 21st-century physics with an absolute, independently existing world. Doing so often requires invoking extraordinary and untestable propositions, such as constantly splitting "real" parallel universes (the many-worlds interpretation), "pilot waves" (Bohmian mechanics), or "advanced" and "retarded" waves that move in opposite directions in time (the transactional interpretation). Considering the great lengths that physics must go to in order to explain experimental findings in the context of an absolute world, some physicists are asking whether instead we ought to re-examine the deepest assumptions that have led us to this point.

Is this even science? Or a new-age misuse of quantum physics like The Secret?

There is nothing "new age" about the theory. In the last few decades, remarkably similar or related ideas have been introduced by prominent physicists. John Wheeler was the first, with his participatory anthropic principle; physicist Amit Goswami expanded upon a related philosophical position known as monistic idealism. Stephen Hawking's notion of "top-down cosmology," in which the universe began as a combination of a great number of different configurations, questions the conventional view of the Big Bang as a fully defined, absolute beginning — the long-sought-after "initial conditions" of the universe. The emerging fields of relational physics and relational quantum mechanics are key to understanding the non-absolute nature of things within a biocentric universe. Overall, the idea that conscious observation can have an active, participatory role in the physical world is not as mystical as it may seem — consider the serious proposition that our observations from Earth may be hastening the demise of the universe. In 2011 you might be surprised by how many reputable alternate thinkers there are in physics; on the website of the Foundational Questions Institute, for example, you will find leading theorists writing about ideas that veer away from the orthodox canon, such as questioning the independent existence of time and even of space. We believe it's scientifically healthy for a segment of the community to pursue radical, new-paradigm concepts, given the distinct possibility that some of the major assumptions and inferences that have been made along the way are incorrect.

Is this theory motivated by religion, creationism, or intelligent design?

We can't say for certain what Robert Lanza's motivations were in introducing the theory. However, it is about simple beginnings (much simpler than conventional Big Bang cosmology) — and intelligent, directed creation necessarily calls for complex beginnings. No complex creator or designer is necessary in a biocentric universe.

Isn't this a philosophical idea rather than a scientific one?

That's a common reaction to the biocentric universe, as people notice similarities to the age-old question, "If a tree falls in the forest...." Indeed, the philosophical school of idealism proposed that the fundamental nature of reality was more mental or perception-based than "hard-wired" and material. Also, the idea of solipsism suggested that the world was but a figment of your (or my) imagination. The biocentric theory owes a historical debt to those ideas, but it is more than a mere rehashing of idealism or solipsism.

Anyone who argues that biocentricity is "just philosophy" needs to understand something about the philosophy of science: The idea of an absolute, hard-wired universe — in which the act of observation is merely a passive readout of pre-existing properties — is every bit "just philosophy" as any other metaphysical take on the world. It's just that in the Western scientific tradition, the metaphysics of an absolute and hard-wired world is the one that's assumed to be the true underpinning of physical reality. This is why people have been trying so hard to square the quantum experimental findings with the absolute paradigm. But it isn't working, any more than it was working in Copernicus' time to explain planetary motion using an Earth-centered astronomical model. It is arguably a philosophical choice whether to use the Earth or the Sun as the reference point about which the planets can be thought to move; amazingly, Ptolemaic astronomers refined their system to where they could predict eclipses based on the Sun's and planets' motion around the Earth. However, their theory was arcane and complicated. Astronomical theory became much, much simpler and more elegant when we abandoned the assumption that the Earth was the "center," fixed at an absolute point in absolute space. The biocentric universe asks for a similar shift: It proposes that a much simpler, more elegant, and more unified model of the universe emerges when we are willing to alter our metaphysical perspective, and consider scientific evidence in the context of the new perspective rather than the old one. So, even if it seems like "just philosophy," it's a philosophy that may enable the most significant unification of scientific theory ever.

Does the theory conflict with established, mainstream science?

There is no conflict regarding the empirical findings of physics. The only conflict with mainstream science involves the interpretation of these facts. Biocentricity does not seek to throw out established science; it is more of a "wrapper" theory that solves persistent problems by providing an explanation of what the universe fundamentally is.

Biocentricity treats the laws of physics a bit like the number π. When the Bible was written, π was considered to be about 3 — good enough for the times — and it has been calculated to greater and greater accuracy over the centuries. But imagine what it might be like if we had never figured out what the number π means, or why it takes the value that it does. We had never thought to measure a circle's circumference and compare it to the diameter; instead, we calculated π based on its role in other formulas. The value of π might then be something of a mystery. Perhaps mathematicians would speculate that there are other universes where π is different, such as 3.24 or 4.0. In the real world, however, we know that π expresses a relationship between circumference length and diameter length. In a similar manner, the biocentric universe theory expresses our observable universe as a relationship, in this case between the living world and the sum of all possible universes, sometimes referred to as the universal wave function. This relationship is what determines the principles and laws upon which the universe operates, just as the relationship expressed by π determines why the number takes that exact value. Today we can calculate π to enough decimal places to fill a hard drive, and with the laws of physics we can drill down with greater mathematical calculations and experiments at higher and higher energies, and propose things like string theory, with its ten-plus dimensions and 10⁵⁰⁰ landscape configurations, probably without end. But that kind of inquiry misses the fundamental issue: that at the top-most level, the operating principles of the universe, like π, can be understood elegantly as a simple relationship between two things.

Is this the "theory of everything"?

Yes and no. Traditionally in physics, the long-sought-after "theory of everything" was expected to be one equation from which the standard model of particle physics, the universe's initial conditions, and all physical laws could be derived. Biocentricity is not that theory, and there may be no such theory. However, it is a "theory of everything" in the sense that it reframes and unifies three foundational areas of science that have the deepest and most puzzling mysteries: cosmology, quantum mechanics, and the origin of life. It certainly isn't an "end of physics," as some claim that a TOE might be. As in the calculation of ever more precise values of π, we will continue to study how the world works, only with a better understanding of how the pieces fit together in the big picture.

How can this theory be tested?

In an experiment studying very small objects, there is a point at which an indefinite state of the object — a combination of states, known as a quantum superposition — transitions into a definite state. Thereafter, the definite state remains definite; if you measure a particle, you get only one value, even if it can be shown that the particle had a superposition of measureable values beforehand. The exact nature of this transition has never been fully understood, leading to what is commonly called the "measurement problem." In the biocentric universe theory, the function of observation and the subsequent collection of information is fundamental to this measurement process, and by extension, to the emergence of the classical world — in both small experimental systems as well as the universe as a whole. What has never been tested, to our knowledge, is whether small organisms, such as one-celled photosynthetic Euglena, can display measurement abilities in experiments, possibly producing empirical evidence of quantum observation effects in a manner similar to humans and technical devices. For example, apparent "retrocausal" phenomena, such as those seen in the delayed-choice experiment, might be changed or eliminated through the intervention of living participants — with these influences suddenly vanishing if the Euglena were killed with a burst of UV light. Such a finding would strongly implicate biological activity as a key agent in these processes.

How could the first organism create the first matter, when life is made of matter?

This is probably the most common immediate objection to the theory. However, several things to keep in mind: First, let's not be sloppy with our language. Life, in fact, isn't made of matter; life is a quality that matter may or may not be seen to possess — similar to other qualities that matter may display, such as nuclear instability, incandescence, or mass. (The distinction between living matter and life is like the difference between a massive object and mass itself.) Just as we wouldn't say that mass or charge or velocity is made of matter, neither should we say the same about life. Second, parallel "chicken-and-egg" questions can be asked of the conventional cosmology as well, such as: Where was mass before the Big Bang? What was matter doing before space gave it somewhere to exist? If the cosmic singularity created the first energy and matter, what was it made of? But these sound silly to us, because we accept that they don't really have answers.

The difficulty or paradox in the original question arises when we assume that the first organism had to be in one particular, fully defined molecular state, like cells we look at under a microscope today, with all of the atoms and complex interacting systems of our modern, human-observed world. Biocentricity rejects this assumption. As explained in part 2 of our video series, if we could reproduce the appearance of the first organism in a modern laboratory, perhaps we would see molecules coming together in a very unlikely manner. But that picture doesn't necessarily represent what went on in the world of that first organism, when both itself and the rest of the universe may have been in an extremely simple, uniform, almost completely undefined state.

Where did the first living organism come from?

In the same way that Big Bang cosmology does not take a position on the origin of the cosmic singularity (if any), neither does biocentricity take a position on this question. The two cosmologies can be considered mirror images of one another: For example, it is thought that neither time nor space existed "before" the Big Bang, while in biocentricity, neither time nor space existed "before" the appearance of the first organism, whatever that first organism might have been. One view proposes that the abstract property of life arose spontaneously to begin the universe; the other proposes that it was inflation. The primary difference between the two views is that conventional cosmology assumes that all matter and energy in the universe has to some extent a defined form that we may or may not observe — a postulate that is arguably inconsistent with quantum mechanics — and that shortly after the Big Bang, the universe contained the same (roughly) 10⁸⁰ fully defined particles that currently exist. While conventional theory proposes a universe beginning with an extremely large amount of simplicity, biocentricity proposes that the universe begins in the simplest possible form, short of being completely empty.

Many cosmologists believe that the universe was born out of the universal wave function, the same kind of probability-based world that can be seen at the atomic level in the electron cloud, only spanning the entire universe. But imagine that instead of the spontaneous appearance of an inflationary event, there arises some primordial asymmetry in this otherwise uniform world, a basic partitioning of some kind between "here" and "there." The event is of such a nature that it enables further, continual symmetry-breaking events in a self-perpetuating sequence. It is a bit like the fall of a single domino initiating a branching pattern of dominos to fall, in a runaway, ever-multiplying process. This is how life may begin in a biocentric universe. Today, looking back through the eons, we conscious, analytical, language-oriented modern humans think of these as the first events of biological observation, reproduction, and evolution, even though the world looked very different to its inhabitants at the time.

Thermodynamically speaking, such an origin would be a much more likely event than a Big Bang from a cosmic singularity. This issue of likelihood relates to something called the Boltzmann brain problem, which posits that a single conscious brain in empty space is much more likely to appear spontaneously than an entire high-energy universe from a singularity. In biocentricity there is no such problem; the first organism is not an absolute object made of many absolute atoms, but rather is a spontaneous establishment of the most basic asymmetry — far simpler than a single neuron from a Boltzmann brain.

What is so special about life, to the point that life is at the "center" of this theory?

There are a number of ways in which living matter profoundly distinguishes itself from nonliving matter. Life is a quality that allows information to be actively sought out, absorbed, and assimilated. This isn't seen in any other natural process — an energetic event where matter dynamically self-restructures based on environmental conditions, in a way that decreases internal entropy (disorder) at the expense of increased external entropy. Life is also the only known quality that allows a natural system of matter to self-replicate, which is significant because reproduction not only enables evolution but also causes the accelerated accumulation of information over time. Despite all of the advances in science and technology, biologists have utterly failed at a task that seems relatively easy: imparting the property of life into ordinary matter, creating a simple living thing out of off-the-shelf chemicals. This suggests that the property cannot be simply manufactured, the way electric current in a circuit can. Furthermore, living organisms respond to their environment in complex, often unpredictable ways; even a bacterium exhibits a form of free will, which has physical consequences for the non-living objects around it. (In both physics and philosophy, free will presents a persistent conundrum, which this theory finally resolves.) And ultimately, life is the only known property that allows for the emergence of consciousness, which makes it possible for the universe to be contemplated and rigorously explored in the first place. These unique characteristics are vastly unlike anything seen in the natural, non-living world. Life's possible role as a fundamental agent in the configuration of the observed universe, therefore, ought to be seriously considered.

How can we see galaxies that formed billions of years before our Solar System?

We see those galaxies today; we do not see them five or ten billion years ago. We say they are billions of years old, or more accurately we are seeing them now as they were billions of years ago. But that assessment reflects how these objects appear to us, as human observers, now. And distant galaxies are exactly what should be expected to be seen in a physically consistent universe with gravity and nuclear forces and everything else we've discovered. But, there is no empirical way to know for certain that these galaxies were, absolutely, in those specific places and shapes those many billions of years ago.

It helps to think of the distant universe as something like the probability cloud of electrons around an atom, only turned inside out: When we look at the sky, we see specific galaxies with specific, logically consistent properties and histories. Thus the galaxies are analogous to individual electron positions being observed when we look for them within the electron cloud.

Isn't the cosmic microwave background evidence that the Big Bang happened?

Biocentricity puts the CMB in the perspective of the modern world in which it is observed. (See part 2 of our series.) Through our observations, we living organisms have learned about various physical laws that govern our universe. We have also observed that the universe is expanding. Taking these observations together, we arrive at a mathematical prediction that the cosmic microwave background ought to be found — and when we look for it, we find it. The CMB is therefore consistent with our previous observations. If we can say anything in physics, it's that the universe appears to be 100% internally consistent; whenever we seem to find inconsistencies, we eventually realize that they only reveal flaws in our interpretation of the observations, not flaws in the universe itself. So, the CMB is an observable phenomenon that can be interpreted as evidence for a real Big Bang 13.7 billion years in the past — but only if you assume that matter and energy are absolute and independent of observation, and therefore pre-existed in the same form prior to the emergence of life. If however you consider it relational to the observer, as biocentricity does, events that happened prior to any biological observations cannot be said to have occurred in any defined or "classical" manner at all. Whenever we humans find evidence for a pre-biological event, it is evidence not necessarily of what actually happened classically at the time, but rather what humans would have witnessed, had we been around that many years ago to observe the event with the aid of our modern tools and knowledge.

There is one tantalizing fact about the CMB, however: When the CMB data (rigorously interpreted and corrected) is transformed into a large-scale map of the whole sky, the fluctuations in the temperature of that background radiation — originating over 13 billion light-years away — eerily line up on opposite sides of the ecliptic, the plane of the Earth's orbit around the Sun. Although such distributions were predicted to be purely random across the sky, statistical studies show that the pattern is not a result of chance (to within 99.9% confidence). Even stranger, there is no such correlation of the CMB with the plane of our galaxy, or any other astronomical plane. While the mapping of the CMB in general was a huge success for cosmology, this particular unexplained fact verges on embarrassing, and has been dismissed by some as an error. But the data is robust, with dozens of researchers over the past seven years searching for an overlooked factor and coming up empty, so many astronomers and physicists are puzzled by this apparent contradiction with the Copernican principle. There may be a biocentric explanation: The first biologically observed astronomical motion almost certainly involved what we now call the Sun, moving across (what we now define as) the same plane of the sky. Our modern observations of the deepest reaches of space are constrained to be consistent with all previous observations, including the earliest observations in the universe's history. Perhaps this manifests to us in the form of this bizarre anomaly.

How do inanimate measuring devices factor into the observation process?

As quantum experiments show, any measuring apparatus is capable of "observing," similar to the way a human observes. If we set up a double-slit experiment, and we install a particle detector on one of the slits, the interference pattern will diminish — even if the data is not recorded and no human learns the "which path" information. This fact cannot be accounted for by the mystical "consciousness causes collapse" theories that put human perception at the forefront of quantum mechanics. Biocentricity, however, can account for inanimate objects functioning as "observers": Particle detectors, digital cameras, and the like are information-seeking tools that are designed and built by biological beings. They are in a sense modeled on living organisms, in that they seek and respond to information, at the expense of energy and increased external entropy — what Neils Bohr called "an act of irreversible amplification." But before the rise of humans, no known objects of this kind existed, anywhere in the non-living universe. All things were either biologically alive and responded actively to their surroundings, or were non-living and responded passively. Here in the 21st century, humans have all kinds of these active tools, everything from telescope satellites to heat-seeking missiles. Such tools effectively extend the reach of human observers, the way a chainsaw extends the physical capabilities of a lumberjack, and are therefore at least as capable of observing and resolving the universe's features as a human observer is. But they would never exist if life had not appeared to begin with.

Was the Earth flat 1,000 years ago, since that's how it was perceived back then?

No. The raw observations that people (and other organisms, and artificial measuring devices) make of the world are accurate. The interpretation of those observations, however, is subject to human error. Plenty of ancient observations suggested a round Earth — for example, the shape of the shadow in a lunar eclipse, or the fact that a ship's mast was the first thing to appear above the horizon as it approached land. Yet, many people simply assumed that the Earth's surface did not curve. This assumption, of course, had no bearing on the actual (round) shape of the Earth, which — even if it wasn't yet considered by most people — was nevertheless perfectly consistent with every human observation that had been made thus far. (It was the flat-Earth view that was actually inconsistent with the observations, as would be realized centuries later.)

To paraphrase Einstein, is the Moon there when we aren't looking at it?

This is more a question of language and semantics — depending on how we define "there" — than a question of physics. In biocentricity, the objective reality of something like the Moon (or your kitchen table when you're asleep) is a function of our previous observations of the object, combined with the degree of certainty that when we look again, it will be where it's expected to be. Strictly speaking, if no biological organism or technological tool were observing the Moon over a given duration, the Moon's probability state would evolve. It would "smear out" very slowly, because there is an extremely high probability that it will be precisely where it is expected tomorrow. But this probability would diminish with each passing day, as there is no guarantee that the Moon, or the Earth, won't be knocked out of its orbit by an asteroid in the mean time. Undiscovered asteroids, meanwhile, persist as extremely weak probability states, broadly "smeared out" — anywhere, at any time, one may unexpectedly appear on a course toward us, like a beta particle or cosmic ray whose detection can only be described as a probability until it actually happens. As observers, we have no control over when or where such potentials, large or small, become realized.

There are multiple observers in the world, but they all observe the same world. Doesn't this point to a world that is external and independent of observers?

Yes, it does! Which is why, for thousands of years, an external, observer-independent world has been assumed. But Einstein's relativity, followed by the discovery of quantum phenomena and its bizarre experimental findings, have given us reason to question this assumption. It is certainly true that everyone experiences the same course of events in the world. In the biocentric view, this makes perfect sense because all biological observers are directly linked, genetically as well as through a continuous chain of reproductive physical interactions between parent and offspring, and thereby constitute a kind of common observer — a superorganism that is correlated to one and only one course of universal events. (This is explained in Part 4 of our video series.) Just as the universe is 100% consistent for one individual, so must it be 100% consistent for all observers from the same biological lineage. However, individual observers within this superorganism can receive different quantities of information about the world. One way to think of it is to imagine the human body experiencing a sensation: Individual neurons in the person's brain are transmitting various aspects of that sensation, and they are playing different roles in the building of that sensation — even though for the person, the sensation manifests as a unified whole.