I bought Dr. Lipton's
The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles a few weeks ago and was delighted and thrilled with the book and the insights it contained. In particular, I especially appreciated the various pieces of scientific evidence he provided, such as the Human Genome Project's findings, the enucleated cell scenario (a cell can survive for weeks or even longer with no DNA, no nucleus), the discovery that RNA can re-write DNA in certain circumstances, the notion of epigenetics (control above genes) with a scientific experiment involving mice as proof that the expression of genes can be influenced (at least in some cases) by environment. Mostly, however, I appreciated the journey of discovery that Dr. Lipton shared with us--indeed, that he took us along for. I felt in reading that book that I was right there, being SHOWN the steps along the way, the path. And it was amazing.
Now, I'm a scientist by training and profession--I work at Cornell university's particle accelerator--and by now I have a pretty good sense of when something is and isn't supported by actual scientific evidence. I'm not an atheist (nor am I a "believer") and I don't hold with the notion that only matter matters, nor with the thought that if something isn't objectively proven by scientific experiment it isn't "real".
However . . . in my opinion, one of the weaknesses of The Biology of Belief was that it often jumped a lot of steps from initial evidence and discovery and acquaintance to end-result. For example, OK, the membrane is the brain of the cell, and uses receptor and effector molecules to receive input from the outside and turn that into action, response. Check. Got it. Well established in the book and very enjoyable to read about. Mind blowing, really! I loved it. But then, there is talk about receiving electromagnetic information, in addition to chemical cues (such as hormones). OK. Cool. But what sort of EM? How do we know this? Yes, EM is fantastically more suited to information processing vs. chemical, but what EXPERIMENTS were done to probe the EM reception of cells? None were mentioned.
And, BAM! Suddenly we've jumped to BELIEF. Belief is the communication with our cells via an EM field. (Or maybe it's THE FIELD! OMG!) OK. Listen, it's not that I disbelieve this notion. I suspect there's something to it. And in my own life I've directly, personally experienced the power of my "mind-set" over my perceptions and wellbeing. I get it. I'm not trying to be a scoffer or a "debunker". Really, Im not. But, if you want to claim that your book is based on "new science" then, YOU'VE GOT TO SHOW ME THE SCIENCE. Otherwise, I can read any number of exciting and mind-blowing new age type books (and I'm not knocking the term "new age", by the way)--books that are very light on serious proof and scientific evidence, and very heavy on the message and meaning and what-we-need-to-do and how the world is all screwed up in this way or that way.
So, that was the weakness of The Biology of Belief, in my humble opinion. There were definite jumps in the evidence trail where you got taken by helicopter to a higher level. That doesn't make it untrue, but it does make it unscientifically grounded. Or at least undocumented.
I expected that Spontaneous Evolution was going to address these gaps. I wanted to hear MORE MORE MORE about epigenetics and evolution and experiments and etc. and etc. And, to be fair, to some extent, Spontaneous Evolution delivered on that. I was thrilled to read about Cairn's experiments with bacteria that showed that they could, in times of environmental stress, turn on a sloppy DNA copying mechanism that resulted in a great many more mutations than normal. And directed mutations, directed toward one specific gene that wasn't doing its' job. I loved it. Good stuff. And there was some good stuff about the evolution from primitive bacteria, how they formed colonies to better survive, and how these then became the more complicated cells that have a nucleus and organelles and so on. And then these form multi-celled organisms, and finally that organisms can be thought to be forming a super-organism: humanity. OK. Fine. But, honestly, you've just gotten about as much scientific content from my brief description as was provided in the book. If the Biology of Belief could be said to be more about exploration and explanation, Spontaneous Evolution is more about presentation: a summary and "big picture" of Dr. Lipton and Steve Bhaerman's BELIEFS.
Beliefs are fine. OK. But the notion that this book is different than other "New Age Fluff" because it is grounded in science is optimistic at best, and more or less incorrect in my opinion. The beliefs are HARMONIOUS with science, in my opinion, and I share many of them. I'm not trying to knock them! But, I wasn't expecting a book of presentation of beliefs. I was expecting something more, something different, something a lot more like The Biology of Belief.
Oh, and can I just complain about the writing style for a minute. Maybe it came from Mr. Bhaerman, or maybe Dr. Lipton just didn't keep as close a reign on his whimsy as before--or maybe I was in a less forgiving mood than before--but for whatever reason, the constant neologisms (nay, malapropisms might be more apt) really got under my skin. "Thrival of the Fittingest" (seriously). And "Scare-City" (for scarcity). And preverberation (for pre reverberation). And "mine-ing" for corporations saying MINE MINE MINE. They are "mining". Get it? And "from Lamb-o to Rambo" (for Jesus lamb of God, to law of the jungle where John Rambo rules.) And here's a typical Bhaerman-ism "When your only intention is looking out for number one, everyone and everything else gets treated like number two." (from "Swami Beyondananda"). Seriously, it felt like any time they COULD mess with a word, they DID mess with a word. I found it distracting and annoying.
Moving on, let me talk about quantum mechanics. First, yes, the wave function is the governing description of the particle at the quantum scale. But, physicists are rolling their eyes everywhere (or would be) on finding out that this means that "matter doesn't exist". Sorry, but that's not what a physicist will tell you. And it's not what Einstein meant when he talked about the governing field of a particle. In a very real sense, the wave function IS the particle, or is a description of the particle. It is not a negation of the notion of matter! I will agree, however, that it IS a negation of the Newtonian conception of matter as a hard billiard ball that is always at a specific place with a specific momentum. But, just because the OBSERVATION affects the particle--collapses the wave function--that DOES NOT prove that it was the CONSCIOUSNESS of the observer that did it! Honestly, I have no idea why physicists have been letting that get smuggled into things for so long now! In the Shrodinger's Cat paradox, for example, the observation IS THE GEIGER COUNTER. That is where the transition from mico to macro realms takes place. There is no need to invoke the consciousness of the cat or of the human who eventually opens the box. Feynman alludes to this in his Lectures when he says that nature doesn't care if we look at the data or not.
So, that simple fact of the observation collapsing the wave function does not prove that the consciousness is a co-creator of reality. However, it does not DISPROVE it either. And, indeed, there are experiments--real valid scientific experiments--that suggest that human intention can and does affect reality. I highly recommend Dean Radin's
The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena for more information on this. But, anyway, the point is that without actual experiment you can't make the LEAP from one thing to the other and call it "scientific" just because your leaping off point was vaguely scientific. Clear?
And this is precisely what Spontaneous Evolution does far FAR too often. I wanted to LOVE this book. I was really looking forward to it. But I only can say that I like it. It's a decent and very ambitious overview of much enlightened "new age" "new science" type views. If you don't really know what I mean by this, you'll probably like this book a lot more than I did.
Anyway, here is a specific example where I felt REALLY let down:
HOW DID WE GET HERE? THE HOLISTIC VIEW
Cosmologists agree that before the appearance of matter the Universe was comprised of an entangled matrix of invisible energy referred to as the field. After the Big Bang, estimated to have occurred 15 billion years ago, physical matter precipitated out of that energy field and has been entangled with it ever since.
The principles of quantum mechanics emphasize the primacy of energy fields in their influence over matter. Consequently, the Universe's matter is organized by information, represented as energy patterns contained within the field. The principles of quantum mechanics lend support to Socrates' notion that invisible forms, or souls, are responsible for shaping the physical realm.
Because the field's information existed prior to the material world, we can easily entertain the notion of CREATIONISM in which an organism's form existed in the field as a defined energy pattern before the physical organism appeared on the planet.
Over a period lasting billions of years, Earth's physical matter gradually assembled into complex physical forms that complement the field's invisible information patterns.
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