Universe Within: The Surprising Way the Human Brain Models the Universe

Preface

What this Book is About

In this text, I make the case that a physical model of the universe exists within the human brain. This model is not the same as the ones we are more familiar with, like the perceptual or higher-level cognitive ones that our brains create to best represent our immediate environment and situations, or the conceptual ones in the form of religions, philosophies, and sciences that we humans collectively create to best represent the universe and our place in it. Rather, this model arises due to the structural organization and dynamics of a particular subsystem in the brain, a subsystem that I assert most resembles our present day universe at a particular time during our nightly sleep cycles. This book, a product of eleven years of focused research, analyses, and writing, represents my best attempt to communicate this potentially worldview-transforming insight and the evidence to support it.

I will refer to the ideas that I present in these pages as the Brain-Universe Isomorphism Framework (B-U IF). Its principal assertion is that at certain times, portions of the human brain define a system that is isomorphic to our current universe. This would mean that the universe has self-similar qualities and we, or at least portions of our brains, are the miniature copies of it that exist on a smaller spatiotemporal scale. In general, fractal phenomena are not at all uncommon because they can be found all throughout nature, even on the largest scales of the observed universe in the distribution of galaxies and galactic structures. However, given the current view of the universe emerging out of modern science, a fractal distribution of matter is just a subset of what it would mean for the universe to be self-similar. In other words, there are concepts being introduced by fields within physics, like string theory, that have a dramatic effect on what a miniature copy of the universe would actually look like.

Who Should Care and Why?

Scientists and philosophers on the quest for a theory-of-everything will benefit from this text because if it is true that the human brain can be used as a physical model of the universe, then these researchers can use this principle as a guide, illuminating the way to the theory that they know in their hearts is somewhere out there, just waiting to be discovered by humanity. Thus far, scientists have been able to construct beautiful mathematical frameworks, one of which is string theory, that they believe gives them the best chance to describe reality on the most fundamental level, even more fundamental than our most cherished, well-established theories, such as quantum mechanics and relativity theory. However, and particularly in the case of string theory, these scientists do not possess the technological prowess to experimentally verify their theory’s predictions; the consensus on this predicament is that, because experimentation and observation are crucial steps in the scientific method, string theory will not be fully accepted as a legitimate scientific theory that reflects reality as long as this lack of experimental verification persists. Therefore, a physical model upon which observations could be made would go a long way toward establishing string theory’s relevance to physical reality.

In addition to professional scientists and philosophers on the hunt for a theory that is capable of explaining the physical universe, anyone else who enjoys pondering the nature of reality, such as those who can no longer ignore inconsistencies in their current worldview, may find that this text imparts profound insight because B-U IF provides answers to our most fundamental philosophical questions like: what is the nature of reality and god, and what is the purpose of life? In other words, B-U IF is a self-consistent worldview that extends the reach of our scientific knowledge to address such concepts as god, our relationship to the universe, and the meaning of existence. For those individuals—professionals and laymen alike—who wish to catch a glimpse of how humans stand in relation to the universe, a deep dive into descriptions of the universe and the brain emerging out of modern science is a requirement, an arduous yet most important and rewarding one.

The Motivation

When I think back, it seems as though I have always been interested in the nature of reality. While a child growing up in New Jersey, there came a time when I realized that, in a sense, both religion and science attempt to provide explanations for what reality is. I could also sense incompatibility between these systems-of-thought, so I would often wonder how to decide between the two. Both impinged upon me from the environment that I was subjected to—religion from family, and science from school, books, and TV. I felt that the truth was present somewhere within this cluttered signal. Pretty soon, however, it became obvious that there was more resonance between me and science than there was between me and the particular religion adhered to by my family, the Baptist sect of Christianity. This resonance has largely determined the trajectory that my mind has embarked on ever since I left NJ in pursuit of a higher learning.

First stop: Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. It was here where I severed whatever little was remaining of the tether binding me to the religion that I had been exposed to up to that point in my life. I was aided in this process by being in the company of some of the brightest young African American male minds in the world (and female minds when Spelman College is included). It was an environment where independent thought, creativity, and bravery prevailed. By the end of my first semester at The House, I decided to let what I felt were my finest qualities shine. Consequently, I decided to major in mathematics, a decision that proved pivotal because it was this classroom experience that is responsible for teaching me how to reason effectively and evaluate arguments.

It was also during my time at Morehouse that I became exposed to non-Western views of the world, such as those held by ancient Egyptians and many Asian cultures. I began reading about hermetic philosophy, a term used to describe a view of the world whose origins can be traced to ancient Egypt, and whose subsequent evolution was most notably influenced by ancient Greek translations of the older Egyptian teachings. I also began studying the metaphysical teachings of some Asian schools-of-thought, like Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. What I learned from this experience is that I shouldn’t be so quick to close the door on all religious teachings, that apparently, there is some resonance between me and some of these teachings, particularly the ones that more closely resemble pure metaphysical principles as opposed to the mythical dogma that can dominate religion.

I graduated from Morehouse in May of 2000, and enrolled at Hampton University (HU) in Hampton, VA, the alma mater of my sisters. Here, I began studying physics. I finished in 2003 with a Master of Science in physics, concentration in atmospheric science. The significance of my time at HU is that it is when I began to learn about the physical world, and how to conduct thorough research and communicate the results to the scientific community and general public.

During the tail end of my stay in Hampton, I became interested in a potential link between modern physics and some of the esoteric teachings of ancient Egyptian and Asian schools-of-thought. To my surprise, this time period—spring of 2003—just so happened to be a period of renewed interest in the similarities that exist between Eastern thought and quantum mechanics, one of the crown jewels of modern physics. There were numerous books and magazine articles published on the topic, and perhaps the most discussed aspect of this debate involved the role of consciousness in the universe. Eastern philosophies teach that consciousness is the fundamental basis of reality, and many scientists and philosophers believed that conscious observers play a crucial role in the quantum processes that occur in the universe. Those who held the latter view argued that physical reality only exists in the presence of conscious observers because it is their consciousness that plays a causal role in the manifestation of physical reality from the unphysical quantum possibilities. If this is the case, it would be consistent with the Eastern teaching that consciousness is the root of all reality. However, the excitement about a possible underlying connection between these esoteric teachings and quantum mechanics seemed to die down midway through the first decade of this century, when quantum physicists began to increasingly interpret their findings within the context of information transfer. This way of viewing quantum processes removed the seemingly special role of the conscious observer in the outcome of quantum experiments, and I feel that this ultimately took the wind out of the sails of this most recent mainstream movement to show similarity between the teachings of esoteric traditions and modern physics.

After graduating from HU, I became a physicist at a US national laboratory where my experiences have reinforced my standards of research and ability to communicate my work. Even while settling into this career, I never lost sight of a potential connection between the teachings of esoteric philosophies and modern physics, and after some time, I realized that there are common themes in the esoteric teachings that have yet to be fully explored, namely, that the universe is created mentally and that we are the microcosm of it and/or the entity that creates it. I took from this that it might be possible to gain useful insight about the nature of the universe by comparing its structural organization and dynamics to that of the brain. Contrast this with the emphasis of the esoteric teachings on instructing those who wish to comprehend the nature of reality to first become familiar with their mind via altered states of consciousness, such as meditation and lucid dreaming; this is a subjective approach to comprehending the nature of reality. I, on the other hand, decided to take a much more objective approach. I saw this as an opportunity to conduct valuable philosophical and scientific research within the domain of my true passion—using the systems-of-thought that I naturally gravitate to, esoteric philosophy and modern science, to comprehend the nature of reality. Therefore, inspired by my interpretation of the instructions laid out by the esoteric teachings, I set out to compare what some of the leading scientific theories have to say about the universe and the brain. During my research, I have come across other reasons, ones offered up by modern science, why the universe and brain should be systematically compared. In other words, a plausible scientific argument can be made that there may be a deep fundamental similarity between the universe and our brains that makes no reference to the esoteric philosophical teachings that I have just mentioned. I present this argument in the introductory chapter of this book.

In his seminal text The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (first published in 1975),¹ Fritjof Capra does an excellent job presenting a myriad of parallels that exist between the respective worldviews of various Eastern schools-of-thought and modern science. However, he stops just shy of the critical insight that I consider in this text, insight that I gleaned from my own analysis of the teachings of esoteric philosophy, which in my usage of the term includes Eastern thought as well as hermetic philosophical teachings. Again, this critical insight is that we should perform a comparative analysis of the structural organization and dynamics of the universe and the brain. I am unaware of analyses like this other than the research of Michael Talbot who in his 1991 book The Holographic Universe² presented parallels between the respective teachings of the physicist David Bohm and the neuroscientist Karl Pibram. More recently, however, there are scientists and philosophers who have proposed views of the universe similar to the views expressed here in this book. Robert Lanza and Bob Berman state in their 2009 book Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness are the Keys to Understanding the True Nature of the Universe³ that the neuronal circuitry in our brains contains the logic of space and time and that physicists attempting to understand reality would probably benefit from also considering the insights gained from studying the brain. In addition, Bernardo Kastrup suggests in his book The Idea of the World: A multi-disciplinary argument for the mental nature of reality⁴ that the universe has brain-like structural organization and dynamics but that it is not necessarily analogous to human brains. I, in this current text, extend in both depth and scope the systematic brain-universe comparison hinted at and argued for by these great researchers and authors.

The Method

Before a comparison can be carried out, it is necessary that I clearly identify and define the models that I use to represent the universe and the brain because in the fields of physics and neuroscience, there are numerous competing theories. To be clear, the qualitative conceptual models that I present in this book are just two of many descriptions of the way things could be emerging out of their respective disciplines—physics and neuroscience. While it is true that I settled on these particular models over the many other possibilities because I found the interesting result that they are very similar to each other, I firmly assert that the two models are front runners in their respective disciplines. If it ultimately turns out that, in fact, there are very similar views of the universe and the brain that are based on leading theories in physics and neuroscience, respectively, then it will be up to the scientific community to determine if it is just a coincidence or an indication that there is a deep connection between the structural organization and dynamics of the two systems.

On the smallest and largest spatiotemporal scales, the model that I present to represent the universe is fundamentally based on string theory, but physical processes on intervening spatiotemporal scales are described by quantum physics, classical physics, relativistic physics, cosmology, etc. Furthermore, because the universe has been highly dynamic since the start, big history is another discipline that I found useful for capturing universal qualities. The model that I define to represent the universe is presented in Part I. To construct a qualitative conceptual model of the brain, which is presented in Part II, I incorporate many well-established findings and leading theoretical proposals within neuroscience. The overarching framework that I use to describe higher-order brain organization and function is based on Christof Koch’s ideas on the intermediate-level theory of consciousness that he presented in his book The Quest for Consciousness.⁵ Strategically along the way in Part II, I install waymarkers in the form of specified correspondences between the content of Parts I and II—the purpose of these waymarkers are to prime the reader on how to see correspondence between the universe and brain.

Research on the universe and the brain has revealed that both systems are highly complex, and that a fundamental activity of both is to process information; therefore, I have also consulted complexity theory and information theory, something that both physicists and neuroscientists have begun to do as well. And thanks to the highly interdisciplinary nature of this research, I also found general systems theory to be useful because it provides insights that pertain to systems of all types, no matter what their fundamental constituents are.

To build up my qualitative models of the universe and brain, I relied heavily on work published by other scientists and writers, some of whom are working scientists within the many subdisciplines relevant to this research, and some are science journalists who cover the work of working scientists. Where necessary, I provide references in support of what I claim. My hope is that the addition of this information will facilitate fact-checking of this work, something that I highly encourage people to do. Along with citation numbers appearing within the text, corresponding to reference sources listed in References, I also tried to provide page numbers as much as possible, whenever it was practical to do so, to more precisely support what is currently being discussed. It is my wish that this effort to preserve transparency serves to enrich the experience of interested readers.

With this research, I have integrated knowledge that has been uncovered by modern science into as complete and consistent a description of the universe and the brain that I possibly could. But what I do not do in this book is cover the story behind how each individual discovery in the various scientific disciplines were made throughout the years—my focus is almost exclusively on defining the conceptual models that I use to represent the universe and the brain. I have used the best available information to define these models and I present some equivalence between the two in Part III. It’s important for me to emphasize here that I do not believe the examples of equivalence, or, correspondences that I provide in Part III are exhaustive by any means. In defining models for the universe and brain, I went into a fair amount of detail, including as much as I felt I had a comfortable understanding of, and whichever details are not included in the list of correspondences in Part III can serve as clues to other scientists and metaphysicists who wish to pick up where I left off with the research and expand upon the details of the isomorphism. Just like when examining a fractal, if the reader looks deep enough, and long enough, he or she is sure to see more.

Ultimately, this research has allowed me to construct a self-consistent, credible, and powerful worldview, one that I believe will be a useful concept to humanity as we continue on our trajectory through universal evolution. This is a bold statement for sure, and one question that may be on the mind of many readers is: if it is true that the structural organization and dynamics of the human brain and the universe are identical, then why haven’t we noticed this already? For one, I have found that string theory offers up a theoretical framework for modeling the universe in such a way that the parallel between the universe and the brain can be seen in great detail, but note that some of the most pivotal insights to emerge from string theory did not do so until the late 1990s. In addition, many critical neuroscientific insights that allow a glimpse at the correspondence between the universe and brain in any significant detail also did not emerge until late last millennium and continue to emerge at a rapid pace. This leaves about a 20-year window—roughly 2000 to today (2020)—when it would have been possible to sift through the massive amount of information necessary to assess a potential correspondence between the universe and brain. But I would also argue that 2000 is still relatively early to expect that someone would perform this type of analysis because the insight within the respective fields of string theory and neuroscience most likely existed within local pockets of academia, expressed in very technical terms in obscure journals and not well suited for a broader audience. It would take at least another few years before the great work of scientists and science writers would make these insights digestible for non-experts. I began researching both string theory and neuroscience in 2009, right around the time it was just becoming possible to even detect the type of high resolution correspondence that I present for you in this text.

Chapter 1

Introduction

The Good Regulator Theorem in Light of Recent Findings in Neuroscience

Consider for a moment a seminal paper written by Roger C. Conant and W. Ross Ashby.⁶ In that paper the authors introduced the cybernetic insight that every good regulator of a system must do so by forming models of that system. When Conant and Ashby considered the extreme case of this theorem, one where the regulator is most optimum, they concluded that ... any regulator that is maximally both successful and simple must be isomorphic with the system being regulated. By isomorphic, the authors meant that it is possible through some type of transformation, or mapping, to view the regulatory system as having the same structural organization and dynamics as the system being regulated.

Conant and Ashby also suggested that when we consider humans in light of this theorem, it becomes apparent that ... the living brain, so far as it is to be successful and efficient as a regulator for survival, must proceed, in learning, by the formation of a model (or models) of its environment. In this corollary the authors explicitly acknowledge the possibility that the human brain can form multiple models to represent various aspects of the environment. This is a point that modern neuroscience is indeed finding to be true.⁷

But is the human brain more than just successful and efficient as a regulator for our survival? In other words, could the human brain be more like the most optimum regulator considered by Conant and Ashby, one that is maximally both successful and efficient? Interestingly, recent research into this matter has found that the brains of humans (and of other animals often studied to gain insight into the human brain) may indeed possess optimum, or at least near optimum, qualities when it comes to certain types of functions and structural organization. Consider the following:

There is evidence of optimal learning.

Scientists have developed a mathematical model of optimal learning referred to as the ideal observer, and it has been shown that during a learning task, humans can perform just as good as the ideal observer and they do so by evaluating the reliability of what gets learned and the confidence levels that they have in their predictions just like the ideal observer model does.⁸

Humans and rats have shown the ability to optimally accumulate evidence for decision-making.⁹

There is evidence of optimal perception.

Scientists have shown that when a person simultaneously inspects an object with their hands and eyes, the brain combines both forms of perceptual information in an optimal fashion.¹⁰

Processes in macaque monkey brains that coordinate saccadic eye movements and attention do so in a way that visual stimuli can be optimally tracked and processed.¹¹

There is evidence of optimal navigation.

An artificial intelligence (AI) program, inspired by the human brain, has been designed to, over time, optimize navigation within challenging, unfamiliar, and changing environments. In so doing, the AI system has shown the ability to recreate the same type of signature electrical activity displayed by neurons in the human brain that specialize in navigation, suggesting that these neurons may also employ an optimal algorithm to carry out their function.¹²

There is evidence of near-optimum structural organization.

Structural networks in the human cortex have 89% of the connections that a highly idealized model of the cortex has, one that optimizes the transfer of information.¹³

It’s important to note here that the use of the word optimum to describe function in the human brain does not imply perfection, as if the human brain is incapable of error and always has complete knowledge of every situation. The ideal observer model produces the best results at performing a particular task that any physical system can possibly achieve given the information that is available. If perfect knowledge is made available to the ideal observer, it will perform perfectly. However, when there is uncertainty, the ideal observer will make errors.¹⁴ Therefore, even though the human brain has shown the ability to perform as well as the ideal observer model for some cognitive functions, it too will make errors under conditions of uncertainty. Since there is an irreducible amount of uncertainty in the world due to such things as quantum uncertainty on the most fundamental level, deterministic chaos on the classical level, and the finite nature of human experience in both space and time, it is expected that the human brain will always be prone to errors.

A similar situation could exist on the collective level as well. That is, if each of us can perform as well as the ideal observer model as we live and we learn, then it’s also possible that we learn optimally on a collective level, meaning that the acquisition of humanity’s knowledge over the course of time could be occurring in an optimal fashion. Just like on the individual level, however, fundamental amounts of uncertainty will again act as a constraint on just how well humanity can collectively process information.

What Constitutes Humanity’s Environment?

Together, the Conant-Ashby Theorem and the recent findings of optimal organization and function in the brain suggest that on a fundamental level, the structural organization and dynamics of our brain and our environment may be very similar in some way. Before this inference can be fully investigated, a working definition of our environment will be necessary. In the broadest sense, the environment can be defined as ALL of the factors that CAN act on us, whether through our five senses or our scientific equipment, and influence our physical states or actions. Based on this definition, our environment is a concept that is much more expansive than simply the things that we can observe with our eyes, hear with our ears, smell with our nose, feel with our skin, or taste with our tongue. It’s even more expansive than the concept of the environment implied by the phrase environmental protection. This definition of environment includes things that may in fact influence our physical states or actions but yet still await discovery. Furthermore, there are things in our environment that we know exist but at any given moment we may not even perceive, or may not even be conscious of. However, the mere fact that we know a thing to exist means that it has affected our mental states and can help to shape our concept of the universe. Based on these considerations, the environment of humanity must at least be taken to be the entire observed universe, everything from fundamental particles that are on the smallest spatiotemporal scales observed via our most powerful particle accelerators, to the large-scale structure of the universe that occupies the largest spatiotemporal scales of observation allowed by our most sensitive telescopes. Put simply, I argue that if humanity can detect a phenomenon so that we can confirm that it exists, then it can be considered to be a part of our environment.

Academic disciplines within science and the humanities do a good job of explaining most of what we know about the observed universe. However, our scientific disciplines that attempt to describe the fundamental nature of