Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe

225 Pages·2009·6.77 MB·English

by  Robert Lanza

How Life and Consciousness are the Keys
to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe
RobeRt Lanza, MD, with bob beRMan
BENBELLA BOOKS, INC.
Dallas, TX
Copyright © 2009 by Robert Lanza, MD, and Robert Berman
Illustrations © 2009 by Alan McKnight
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
BenBella Books, Inc.
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Printed in the United States of America
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this title.
ISBN 978-1933771-69-4
Proofreading by Stacia Seaman
Cover design by Todd Michael Bushman
Text design and composition by PerfecType, Nashville, TN
Printed by Bang Printing
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To Barbara O’Donnell on the occasion of her ninetieth year

Acknowledgments
T
he authors would like to thank the publisher, Glenn Yeffeth,
and Nana Naisbitt, Robert Faggen, and Joe Pappalardo for their
valuable assistance with the book. We would also like to thank
Alan McKnight for the illustrations and Ben Mathiesen for his help
with the material in the appendix. And, of course, the book wouldn’t
be possible without the help of our agent, Al Zuckerman.
Various portions of the material in this book appeared separately
in the New Scientist, the American Scholar, the Humanist, Perspectives
in Biology and Medicine, Yankee magazine, Capper’s, Grit, the World &
I, Pacific Discovery, and in several literary magazines, including the
Cimarron Review, the Ohio Review, the Antigonish Review, the Texas
Review, and High Plains Literary Review.
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contents
Introduction 1
1. Muddy Universe 3
2. In the Beginning There Was . . . What? 11
3. The Sound of a Falling Tree 19
4. Lights and Action! 25
5. Where Is the Universe? 33
6. Bubbles in Time 41
7. When Tomorrow Comes Before Yesterday 47
8. The Most Amazing Experiment 61
9. Goldilocks’s Universe 83
10. No Time to Lose 95
11. Space Out 111
12. The Man Behind the Curtain 129
13. Windmills of the Mind 135
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