December 18, 2017

Quantum Biology



Let us take Deepak Chopra’s notion of “quantum healing” and set it aside as something that is so far unproven, unsubstantiated by evidence, and a theory and method that remains unconfirmed experimentally. Let’s simply consider the possible role of quantum physics in the processes of earthly life and evolution. Subatomic particles behave in different ways than does matter at the atomic, molecular, and higher levels of complexity. Despite not being well understand, it is well known that subatomic activity influences and is influenced by matter at higher levels.

If the details of quantum mechanics ever become known, that is, it becomes precisely known how subatomic particles relate to higher matter, then we shall have achieved the next major scientific breakthrough. Solutions to many if not all the physical and metaphysical questions will have become possible. Solving the hard problem of consciousness, developing a physics “theory of everything” that reconciles general relativity and quantum field theory, and high-probability prediction in the natural and social and behavioral sciences all might become possible.

The above linked essay discusses the quantum aspects of life processes in a very stunning way in terms of the early, still primitive understandings we have, yet entices us to imagine where the research might lead. 

“In 1944, a decade before James Watson and Francis Crick, the physical nature of genes was still mysterious. Even so, it was known that they must be passed down the generations with an extraordinary high degree of fidelity: less than one error in a billion. This was a puzzle, because one of the few other known facts about genes was that they were very small – far too small, [physicist Erwin] Schrödinger insisted, for the accuracy of their copying to depend on the order-from-disorder rules of the classical world. He proposed that they must instead involve a ‘more complicated organic molecule’, one in which ‘every atom, and every group of atoms, plays an individual role’.

“Schrödinger called these novel structures ‘aperiodic crystals’. He asserted that they must obey quantum rather than classical laws, and further suggested that gene mutations might be caused by quantum jumps within the crystals. He went on to propose that many of life’s characteristics might be based on a novel physical principle. In the inanimate world, as we have seen, macroscopic order commonly arises from molecular disorder: order from disorder. But perhaps, said Schrödinger, the macroscopic order we find in life reflects something else: the uncanny order of the quantum scale. He called this speculative new principle ‘order from order’.

“Was he right?

“A decade later, Watson and Crick unveiled the double helix. Genes turned out to be made from a single molecule of DNA, which is a kind of molecular string with nucleotide bases (the genetic letters) strung out like beads. That’s an aperiodic crystal in all but name. And, just as Schrödinger predicted, ‘every group of atoms’ does indeed play ‘an individual role’, with the position of even individual protons – a quantum property – determining each genetic letter. There can be few more prescient predictions in the entire history of science.”
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"How, then, does life manage to maintain its molecular order for long enough to perform its quantum tricks in warm and wet cells? That remains a profound riddle. Recent research offers a tantalising hint that, instead of avoiding molecular storms, life embraces them, rather like the captain of a ship who harnesses turbulent gusts and squalls to maintain his ship upright and on-course. As Schrödinger predicted, life navigates a narrow stream between the classical and quantum worlds: the quantum edge."

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