Are our brains the universe within?

A US physicist in his first book likens the universe to a ‘cosmic brain’ and says we humans are miniature models of it

Physicist Melvin A Felton Jr proposes that the human brain is a physical model of the universe because of the structural and dynamical similarities between the two systems being detected in neuroscience and physics, and that this relationship could be the missing principle leading to the long-sought-after ‘theory of everything’.

What he describes as ‘stunning correspondences’ between the organisational structures of the human brain and the universe ‘can provide evidence-based answers to many of the classic philosophical questions concerning the nature of reality, the purpose of life and the existence of gods’.

He claims that religion, philosophy and science are already evolving along a trajectory leading to the realisation that our brain, the organ central to our ability to experience the world, is the model of the universe, and believes there is potential synergy to be realised between physics and neuroscience if the two communities open constant dialogue about attaining a thorough investigation of the issue.

At the beginning of his far-sighted and deeply considered book, Universe Within: The surprising way the human brain models the universe (Iff Books, UK £17.99 / US $26.95, February…