Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
My Fascination with Life
Development of the Book
Descartes––“Doubt all that can be doubted!”
Part I: The Nature of Life
1) The Assent of Matter
Mechanism and Mater
The Dimension of
the Gods
Science Exorcises the Vital
Force
2) The Perplexing Order of Life
Two Physicists’
Doubts
Life’s Astronomic Complexity
Entropy and the
Probability of Disorder
The Assembly of an Egg
3)
Schrödinger’s Mysterious Force
Force and the
Motion of Matter
Life’s Perpetual
Disequilibrium
Forces in Machines
The Woman in the
Pool
Schrödinger’s Conclusion
4) The Force of Life
Feynman and the Nature of Force
Forces of Direct Contact and Global Fields
Evidence a Global Field Organizes Life
Animate Fields
and Block Time
5) The Brain
A Material Explanation of Brain Function
Lashley’s Futile Quest for
Memory
The Brain is Not a Computer
Watching Neural
Fields
The Molecular
Immensity of the Brain
Eccles’ Nonphysical Mind
6) The Mind
The Mystery of Consciousness
The
Mind of the Microorganism
Amoebal
Intelligence
The
Elemental Mind
The Vital Force of
Mind
Part II: The Revolution
7) A Vital Mechanism
The Mystery of Being
The Strange
Reality of Modern Physics
Mental Choice Overrides
Material Momentum
Eccles’ Theory of Nonphysical
Mind-Brain Interaction
8) The Mystery of Memory
Memory’s Chronological Organization, Volume, and
Permanence
Looking for Memory
Reasons to Doubt that Memory Resides in the Brain
9) Memory and the Thickness of Time
Einstein’s Thick Time
Might
Consciousness Look Through Time?
10) Perception
Gestalt Experiments on Perception
Resonance
A Nonphysical Mechanism of Memory
Block Time
Supplies the Structure of Life
Part III: Weighing The
Evidence
11) Learned and Instinctive Memory
Learning and Instinct Are Indistinguishable
Bird Brains
Genes and the Multidimensional Content of Instinct
Spatial Memory of Homing
Instinctive
Migratory Memory
Further Reasons to
Doubt Genes Hold Instinct
Block Time and
Instinctive Migratory Memory
12) The Origin of Life
Mechanism Embraces Darwin’s
Theory
Natural Selection
and Mental Selection
The Evolution of
Genetic Theory
The Theory of
Creation
13) Sequence
Alternatives that Fill the Universe
Dissecting the Bacterium
Calculating the
Volume of Sequence Alternatives
What does Virtual
Life Tell Us about Life?
Considering a
Nonphysical Explanation
14) Conscious Intelligence
The Spider’s Web
Spider Mind and Memory
Consciousness Selectively Acquires Motor Memory
The Constraints of Genes and Mechanistic Theory
Infinite Possibilities of
Motion
15) Freeing The Cheetah
Mind or Matter?
The Vital
Dimension
References
Primary References
Spider Journal Articles
A Quest for Mind, Memory and
God in the Thickness of Time
Questions on the nature of life, the mind, and the existence of God remain unresolved. Some say the answers will never be more than a matter of belief. However, the questions are not nebulous. Beyond the great complexity of life’s material structure there are answers. The current debate over evolution and the source of life has been characterized as an issue of teaching religion in the classroom. This dispute ignores the broader issues of the nature of life and the mind that stand quite apart from religious doctrine and a personal need to find meaning for existence. The question is of understanding reality. Is the Universe, at its core, no more than a construction of insensate matter? Or is living being manifest by a mysterious force unacknowledged by conventional science?
Charles Darwin brought life out of the supernatural domain of Biblical teachings. In his thesis, “On the Origin of Species,” Darwin attacked the theory of simultaneous creation from every angle possible. At the same time he presented compelling evidence for an alternate theory––that of natural selection. Since that time, mechanistic science has embraced Darwin’s theory as proof that life is not a separate force but is solely a process of matter.
This thesis investigates the nature of life in the spirit of Darwin’s careful consideration of the facts. However, the intent of this thesis is to return life to the Vital Dimension. Further, the thesis provides persuasive evidence for an alternate theory that unites the material framework of conventional science with the dimension of the nonphysical Mind.
A purely material theory of life is rife with internal contradictions. It relies on vast improbabilities that beg for resolution. From the thoughts and observations of the world’s great scientists such as the renowned physicist, Erwin Schrödinger, it is clear that life is a mysterious organizing force that is unacknowledged by conventional science. Like the known forces of physics that affect the behaviors of matter, life’s mysterious force directs molecular motion into the construction of living form.
The full nature of life is not the province of theologians. It is the province of science in the truest sense. One cannot understand the organization of life from the acknowledged forces of physics anymore than one can hope to understand the behavior of a computer and ignore the electromagnetic force. It makes no sense. Until we acknowledge that life is a proactive force distinct from the four forces currently identified by physics, the fundamental mechanisms of life will remain a mystery. We will never satisfactorily explain what directs molecular events into the form of an organism. We will never understand the nature of human memory and the action of the mind. We will never find the source of animals’ instinctual behaviors. Eventually, the material orientation of conventional science will have to come to terms with this fact. The answers lie beyond the immediate, physical dimension of matter. Yet the answers are accessible to rational analysis.
This thesis is meant to clearly present the evidence of life’s mysterious force. Like a thesis nailed to the door of mechanistic science, I want to leave no uncertainty for a strictly material theory of life to hide behind. My vision is that future textbooks on biology and physiology will clearly identify the limits of current, material explanation. Conventional science will plainly acknowledge that a mysterious force manifests living being. Instead of hiding from the great unknowns of life and mind, we will delight in embracing them.
I hope this book excites the reader’s imagination. I hope to pull in the interest of the general reader as much as possible. However, the primary objective of the thesis is to develop a clear case that can stand up in a court of science or law. The goal of this book is to provide a concise technical argument on the nature of life and the mind. I attempt to intermix simple descriptions with supporting quotes from textbooks and the writings of prominent scientists. Some of the quotes are stiff, so please take what you like and leave the rest.
This thesis is not an exhaustive literature search. To provide a cohesive sense of discovery, the thesis relies on a limited number of sources. Among these are the writings of Nobel Prize winners and scientific greats such as Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, John Eccles, Karl Lashley, Charles Darwin, Ernst Mayr, Albert Einstein and Herbert Jennings. More general theory and observations come from well-known college textbooks such “Biology” by Neil Campbell and “Biochemistry” by Donald and Judith Voet.
The reader need not read this book straight through but may want to skip around. Ideas overlap and I had to choose which points to develop first. The book is divided into three sections. The first section considers the limits of conventional scientific explanation and moves from the molecular level on into the operation of the brain and the mind. The second part presents a new theory of life based on John Eccles’ theory of nonphysical mind-brain interaction and the modern physicist’s concept of the thickness of time called “block time.” The third section focuses on examination of the evidence and compares the robustness of competing theories with regard to the source of instinctive behaviors and the origin of biological information in general.
One can trace the theory that life is a vital force back through the history of Eastern and Western thought. This book does not review the many authors, past and present, who have presented related theories. Yet, the many works of those who have sought to expand our understanding of life have influenced this thesis. To avoid discussion of preexisting characterizations of this vital force, this thesis uses the term “animate fields” to describe this nonphysical force of molecular organization.
I do not intend to promote any particular religious or spiritual doctrine. In this thesis, I characterize the mysterious force that constructs life as the vast dimension of conscious Mind. I try to use the term Mind as broadly as possible and invite the readers to interpret the nonphysical dimension in accord with their own beliefs.
The Vital Dimension
A child recognizes that animals and plants are very different from nonliving things. Life moves on its own whereas nonliving stuff is entirely dependent on external forces to direct its motion. A turtle crawls through the grass, feeds and mates and has young. In contrast, a rock sits patiently in the field awaiting something to come along and move it elsewhere. Living creatures act on the environment; they are not passive, reactive bodies. And from our human perspective, we are conscious, emotive beings whom have little similarity to the insensate, material nature of rocks.
Despite such differences, in school I was taught that scientific discovery proved that life is not a special “vital” or spirit force that animates matter. Rather, I learned that such forces exist only in the superstitious ignorance of our ancestors. Today, life is explained to be a property that “emerges” from the complex organization of matter. Biologists attribute the differences between the turtle and the rock to their differing molecular organizations. The rock is a rigid, crystalline matrix of atoms that does not move. In contrast, the turtle is an extremely intricate composition of fluid organic molecules caught in the dynamic called life. And in humans, the conscious mind is said to emerge from insensate matter as a property of complex neural networks.
But do the physical properties of matter adequately explain life? When I was growing up, I watched a spider spin its web and wondered, was the spider a little robot operated by so many preprogrammed neural levers? Did the DNA provide genetic programming for its little brain? When I tried to understand the spider in terms of a machine, there was a nagging sense that too much was unexplained.
I could readily understand the animation of a car from the forces directed through its rigid structure. But life is essentially a fluid, a watery blob that mysteriously forms the structure that houses it. The possibility that DNA’s tiny strands direct the assembly of a spider’s body, construct its intricate filigree web, and provide the spider’s complex instinctive interactions with its environment seemed entirely incredible. And if a spider were just a robot, what did that say of me? Was I just a complex neural computer determined by material interactions? I could never fathom why nonliving molecules so totally change their character to become life. But what was the choice? Given my strong mechanistic background, a nonphysical explanation appeared even more unlikely.
Scientists readily acknowledge the astronomic improbabilities inherent in conventional biological theory. In the modern theory of life’s origin, it is readily agreed that extraordinary quantities of time are required to overcome the extreme improbability that molecules should accidentally fall together in the extravagant complexity of a self-replicating cell. And in the evolution of life’s species, again scientists agree that vast volumes of time are necessary to overcome the immense improbability that random mutation of genes will produce viable change. Yet despite the apparent overwhelming improbabilities, life has sustained itself and evolved for billions of years. Life is incredibly robust, self-healing, and adaptable. But again, what were the choices? To me, the active hand of God in life’s creation seemed far more incomprehensible than the improbabilities presented by biological theory.
Early on, my curiosity about life drew me to chemistry. Since atoms and molecules are the building blocks of life, then by deciphering life’s molecular mechanics, it seemed to me that one should gain the keys to the ultimate mysteries. But in high school botany class as I looked through the microscope at protoplasm streaming through a cell, I wondered why its organized motion never stops. Outside of life, a fluid soon finds equilibrium and ceases to change. Why did the molecules of life avoid a similar fate? To many people, such a question might appear to have little bearing on the ultimate nature of reality. But to me, there was a fundamental contradiction that needed to be clearly explained.
Pursuing chemistry and biology at Boston University, I learned the minutia of life’s molecular mechanics but gained little insight into what orchestrated the grand picture. I continually wondered if I were alone in the suspicion that a profound mystery was being ignored. Then as a graduate student in chemistry at Georgetown University, I expressed my bewilderment to my mentor, a respected Czech chemist, and asked for his thoughts. He responded with the same question that had mystified me in high school. “How do you explain the perpetual disequilibrium sustained by a cell?” he replied. It was clear that he could not answer to his own question.
To others, the nature of life or God might not rest on such an arcane issue as the molecular disequilibrium found in the continuous, directed dance of living molecules. But for me, his response was like a light bulb that went off in my mind. The answer succinctly defined the basis of the problem. Over time, the organized molecular motions in an isolated nonliving chemical system become disorganized and move to a state of balance and rest. This occurs because balance is an exceedingly probable event. Yet in a cell, the imbalance of forces between molecules not only remains continuously directed, the molecular forces become evermore organized as the cell grows! This is an exceedingly improbable course of events. The sum of these trillions of directed molecular forces provides the continuous activity of life. But what did it all mean?
I left chemistry, gained an MBA at Cornell University, and pursued a career in the business world. My interest in life became focused on the experience of living. I delved into the emotional mechanics of my own mind and explored various spiritual and transformational programs. Yet the material basis of science still sustained my view of reality. The explanatory framework of religions and spiritual doctrines provided me little insight into the mechanics of the natural world and the behaviors of spiders. And I wondered if God should exist, how did He do his work?
But on the other side, the physical properties of matter hardly explained the full nature of my being and the products of the human mind. Science provided me a confused and conflicting view of life and rather than a comprehensive understanding of reality. I wanted a coherent framework yet I had no more than a bunch of jagged pieces that wouldn’t smoothly fit together. The conflict disturbed my whole sense of self and my relation to the universe.
Many years later, I again began to ponder the molecular mysteries of life that perplexed me when I was younger. To move from the abstraction of the very tiny realm of molecules I could not see, I imagined enlarging atoms by 10 million times to the size of small beads the size of this (o). I then contemplated the relative sizes of molecular machines in a cell. In this dimension, a strand of human DNA becomes the thickness of a one-inch rope three hundred miles long. An average cell becomes a skyscraper the size of the former World Trade Center. And within this fantastic skyscraper-cell, the thousands of miles of DNA rope, contained in the cell’s 24 pairs of chromosomes, is tightly coiled within a nucleus that is only the size of a three-story sphere. In total, the human body composed of 100 trillion such skyscraper-cells stands twice as tall as the Earth! Suddenly the mystery gained more clarity. Either the electromagnetic force—the only recognized force of organization between molecules—explains the organization of this titanic assembly or an unacknowledged force is in action.
To me, it seemed inconceivable that in the growth of an organism, the forces of DNA’s molecular rope housed in my model’s three-story sphere should be able to direct the assembly of the body’s phenomenally intricate physiology that is trillions of times greater in size. The only other conclusion that I could reach was that an unknown organizing force comes from beyond the physical dimension of the here and now. Such an invisible force was completely at odds with my material orientation. Modern biology summarily rejects the possibility that life is unique organizing force. It aggressively dismisses the arguments of the old Vitalists and the New Age philosophers that life is a global organizing field.
But suppose we step outside of our preconceptions of what is possible? What if biological theory were freed from the constraints of classical physics? What if we let theory freely flow from what is observed rather than attempt to stuff the fluidity of life into the rigid, material constraints of modern mechanistic theory? If life is an unknown organizing force, how might we characterize it? If we simply let logic drive construction of an internally consistent theory, where might that take us?
A close friend who had frequently listened to me go on about skyscraper cells built of bead-sized atoms challenged me to write a thesis that explained my thoughts. But how should I approach the issue, I wondered? How might I launch a concise attack on the material basis of science that defined my view of reality? In the four hundred years since René Descartes first expounded “mechanistic theory” based on the known forces of matter, it has risen to apparently invincible supremacy. The arguments of the Vitalists who assert that life is a proactive force, the speculations of the philosophers of the mind, and the evidence presented by those with religious and spiritual beliefs have not cracked the formidable foundations of mechanistic theory in the least. Their cases have been presented to the courts of orthodox science and dismissed. Could a viable, alternate theory be constructed? Could a strong scientific case be made? How does one prove the existence of an invisible, nonphysical organizing force?
Taking the task to heart, I returned to Georgetown University and scoured the library’s stacks in search of a compelling argument. I read works of the Vitalists such as Hans Dreisch and various New Age thinkers. Their views were appealing but not convincing. I wanted arguments presented by those deep within the orthodox scientific establishment who could summon the weight of scientific evidence to present their case. I was uncertain as to what I would find for the material basis of mechanistic theory thoroughly dominated scientific thought. However, after skimming the titles and contents of shelf after shelf, I finally found a number of scientific greats who explained their dispute with mechanistic theory. It was now clear that support of mechanism within the orthodox scientific community was not as unanimous as my textbooks portrayed it to be.
The first significant name I encountered was Werner Heisenberg who received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1927 for work on quantum mechanics and creation of the uncertainty principle that bears his name. In “Physics and Philosophy” Heisenberg expressed doubt that the known forces of physics were sufficient to explain the origin of life but he avoided a clear pronouncement on the issue. However, with regard to the human mind, Heisenberg argued emphatically that the known properties of energy-matter do not explain mental phenomena. Rather, he argued, the mind must be regarded as a substance unique to itself and distinct from the substance of energy-matter. With Heisenberg’s stature as one of the great minds in physics, I lingered over the pages, fascinated by Heisenberg’s thoughts, however tentative they were at times. Yet to my disappointment, I realized that he provided no more proof for his views than any other philosopher’s opinion.
In a subsequent search through the science library’s collection on neurophysiology, I chanced on a work of Sir John Eccles who received the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the neurotransmitter mechanism in the brain. To my surprise, Eccles unequivocally asserted that the mind is a nonphysical force. Further, I discovered that Eccles wrote several books, including collaboration with the renowned philosopher Karl Popper, on a mechanism of mind-brain interaction. Eccles maintained that the nonphysical mind acts through the realm of molecular uncertainty, defined by Heisenberg’s equation, to direct the release of neurotransmitters and thereby to direct action of the brain. The nonphysical mind skews probability fields to make improbable events become highly probable. Eccles asserted that the mechanism does not violate the laws of physics because it adds no energy to the system. Although Eccles provided a credible mechanism for the interaction of the physical and nonphysical dimensions, he provided no concise argument that life or the mind is anything other than a manifestation of matter. In frustration I wondered, would the issues forever remain a matter of belief?
Finally, I found the concise argument I sought. It was in Erwin Schrödinger’s slim classic entitled, “What is Life?” In his thesis, Schrödinger addressed the strange motion of living matter from the vantage point of a physical chemist. Schrödinger’s arguments were straightforward and based solely on the physics of matter. Schrödinger was not interested in the nature of the mind or in nonphysical forces. He simply wanted to understand the behavior of living matter in the same terms as he understood the behavior of nonliving molecules in his test tube. Yet, he could not. He observed that the perpetual activity –– the ever-organized dance of living molecules –– was astronomically improbable when one applied the statistical understanding that ruled molecular events in nonliving processes.
Schrödinger was mystified as to why life’s molecules continuously move towards greater complexity when nonliving matter naturally moves towards greater disorder and equilibrium. And now I had come right back to my chemistry professor’s observation of the mysterious behavior of life. Schrödinger could only conclude this behavior was the result of a strange organizing force as yet to be acknowledged by conventional science.
What this mysterious force is, Schrödinger did not know. In attempt to characterize it, he noted that the unknown force removes the “entropy” or randomness from molecular motion analogous to the way random thermal energy disappears from a super-cooled material. He observed that the molecular interactions of living matter are directed with the mechanical certainty of a clock or other machine. But why does entropy vanish from living matter? The reason completely baffled him. Schrödinger was no mystic or Vitalist and he admitted distain for a nonphysical explanation. But it is clear from his reasoning that life does not “emerge” from the complexity of molecular organization. Rather, an unknown force creates and maintains this organization called life.
If anyone could make such a sweeping pronouncement about the strange physics of living matter, Schrödinger was certainly the one to do so. Schrödinger’s credentials were impeccable. Schrödinger devised the mathematical equation, known as the Schrödinger equation, which defines modern understanding of the molecular realm. And around the same time, Heisenberg devised the same equation in a different form.
Yet, conventional textbooks of biology, biochemistry and physiology present the theory that life “emerges” from the known properties of energy-matter with the same certainty as the fact that the Earth is round. Any possibility that an unknown force organizes living beings is aggressively dismissed. The strange, highly organized motion of living molecules is characterized as “spontaneous” and ignored. What was going on? Was Erwin Schrödinger deceived in his conclusions? Or is there a strangeness occurring that is so vast and mind-boggling that modern science is unable to address the issue?
René Descartes, the father of modern thought, started his quest from the basis of doubt, proclaiming, “A man who seeks truth must call in doubt whatever can be doubted.” Descartes did not complacently look for evidence that supported preexisting points of view; he determinedly looked for truth in the holes and gaps in accepted theories and timeworn beliefs. In the true revolutionary spirit of Descartes, the philosopher Kenny challenges us, “Let us clean our canvas of preconceptions lest it be blotched by apprentice painters, our uncritical sense perception or testimony of unreliable educators, so that our beliefs do not constitute a shaky edifice on rotten foundations. If need be, let the house of belief be pulled down and rebuilt from the foundations.” And before we raise our brushes to paint anew, we must “question everything about which there can be the slightest uncertainty” (Kenny, Descartes, p. 14).
Conventional biological theory has not changed in the four hundred years since Descartes brought life out of the grip of the supernatural realm. Biology is firmly entrenched in the material framework of Descartes’ “mechanism” and the forces of classical physics. For the classical physicist, reality is a vast crate of tiny billiard balls that bounce against each other while carried forward at a steady rate through time. But in the Twentieth Century, physics underwent a profound revolution and the certainty of classical physics was fractured into fuzzy, multidimensional strangeness. The physicist’s “common sense” approach to understanding reality gave way to the mind-bending weirdness of Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics.
Today, the modern physicist must let observation drive theory into whatever strangeness best describes the phenomena. The tangible substance of matter has become mysterious probability clouds that may or may not exist but for their interaction with the conscious observer. For the physicist, time may equally well travel forward or backwards and is only defined by the observer’s memory of events. And possibly even stranger, the modern physicist views time not as the transient state of human experience but to have the thickness of a dimension of space! Further, the granularity of matter has become a weave of tiny, multidimensional strings that some physicists suggest forever branch into an infinite number of potential universes.
On the surface, these theories of modern physics appear to deal with realms that are totally outside of our human experience. The theory of relativity looks at the thickness of time and space to explain gravity in the astronomically large realm of planets, stars and galaxies. And quantum mechanics deals with the fuzzy, undetermined probability clouds of matter in the remote minuteness of electron orbitals. These theories do not appear to touch our day-to-day human frame of reference in the slightest way.
But could these theories of modern physics be key to a new understanding of life? Could they explain the intractable mysteries that haunt conventional biological theory? Today physicists view the physical universe in terms of invisible fields that extend through higher dimensions of space and time. Although the thickness of time, known as “block time,” may be completely alien to our ordinary sense of things, many physicists suggest that the totality of time since the moment of Creation still exits. We simply do not have physical access to it. Might mysterious “animate” fields extended through higher dimensions of space-time also organize the form and function of biological being?
How might this relate to our human experience of life? Although it might seem incredible, could the postulated thickness of time explain why the mechanism of memory has yet to be found in the substance of the brain? Might block time contain human memory outside of our physical bodies? What if the fuzziness of the minute quantum realm is the key to how this information is brought into the brain’s neural network? Could block time explain the baffling chronological organization of life’s memory that so eludes modern understanding?
When I gathered the thoughts and observations of Schrödinger, Heisenberg, Eccles, and others, it became clear that the modern mechanistic theory of life is on the verge of the same profound revolution that occurred in classical physics. The conventional scientific theories of life based solely on the known processes of energy-matter are fundamentally flawed and ready to fall. It is not just that theories based solely on properties of matter cannot encompass the full nature of the mind or explain why inanimate matter has curiosity, goals, dreams, and yearns to travel to Paris to fall in love.
Mechanistic theory will never adequately explain human choice and self-awareness. It will not find the content of human memory in the substance of the brain. It will forever flounder on the mechanism of instinct. It will never adequately explain the origin of life. It will not provide a substantive mechanism for the morphogenesis of an egg cell that directs molecular events into the form and function of the organism. It will never explain the perpetual dance of living molecules. Conventional science maintains these complexities are simply beyond current material understanding. But rather, as we will see, these questions are the shadow of a vast, unacknowledged vital dimension that conventional science determinedly ignores.
A mechanistically oriented mind such as my own has the greatest trouble in conceiving of the possibility that life is the conscious construction of a vast nonphysical dimension of Mind. I don’t relate to the operation of invisible, animate powers. Everything about me appears to have substance and a physical cause. I know nonphysical forces don’t just wander around in space moving matter at will. How can there be living Mind with no substance? How can the formless create form? How can life exist without a body? How can intelligence exist outside a brain? The modern, mechanistic mind cannot reasonably connect to these possibilities.
Yet if we, in the spirit of Descartes, free ourselves of all preconceptions and look for an internally consistent, highly probably explanation for the behaviors of life, what might we find? Suppose we follow the path of the modern physicists who adheres to the adage of Sherlock Holmes telling Watson “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?” (Kaku, Hyperspace p. 167). What if we, like the modern physicist, let observation drive theory into whatever strangeness best fits the data? Could there be compelling evidence that life possesses these strange qualities of Mind independent of material substance?
Modern self-perception is shackled to matter. Even for those with a spiritual sense of life, the material structure of mechanistic theory provides a rigid grip on how we experience the world. We tend to view ourselves as androids with consciousness imprisoned in a physical form fed by the body’s systems of pumps, tubes, squirters and suckers as insensate as rubber tissue. And dispensing with a Creator, we view ourselves as isolated conscious entities, separate from each other and stranded in the immense vastness of universal matter as lifeless as desert sand. Rather than rejecting the nature of the nonphysical mind with the assertion that the issue is so nebulous that it is beyond serious scientific contemplation, let us embrace the possibility and seek to characterize the mind’s action. We may thereby better understand ourselves and enter into a far greater experience, freed from the blindness of constricting beliefs. And we may encounter a new magic and mystery in life.
Some suggest our modern view of reality is on the verge of a profound change. The anthropologist, Robert Ardrey, wrote in the “Territorial Imperative,” “It was only a generation or so ago that the physical sciences added the dimension of time to their three-dimensional calculations of matter and energy, and with a single mathematical leap plunged us into the world of the atom……..It is the turn now of biology, I believe, to extend our calculation of man by the addition of that same fourth dimension, time. It will be a leap, I believe, of not incomparable consequence. There will be terror of a sort in losing, once and for all, this comfortable, pupa-like, three-dimensional chamber of human uniqueness, the only world we have ever known,” (Ardrey, p. 40).
When one carefully considers the instinctual behavior of animals, there is compelling evidence that all life, including the smallest one-celled creatures, possesses the qualities of conscious mind. Further, we shall find persuasive evidence that the spider’s instinctual behaviors are not contained in the material substance of DNA. Rather, instinctual memory resides in the modern physicist’s dimension of time that is thick like a dimension of space. Should this be true, this means that human consciousness is not rigidly bound to the material form of the here and now but continuously wanders through a vastly expanded dimension of time in the recall of memory. However strange and implausible these ideas might appear, we will find compelling evidence that they are true.
We face a new frontier far grander than our quest into the physical universe. I have come to accept that we are immersed in a vast dimension of Mind of which we sense only the smallest glimmer. There is a door to a human experience that transcends material form. Where it may lead us, I have no idea. But on a fundamental level, like the physical forces of nature, the operation of the nonphysical Mind is amenable to characterization and logical analysis. And further, in the directed motion of life, one cannot escape the ultimate presence of the conscious intent that not only originated living form but sustains its every moment of existence. And for many, this cosmic organizer is called God. Dare we open the door to the Vital Dimension?
The
Vital Dimension
Chapter
1
The
Assent of Matter
Might a vast strangeness lie beyond our material understanding of reality? Does God exist? Or is the Universe no more than a physical construction of energy-matter acting upon itself? Questions such as these have challenged human imagination and self-understanding since ancient times. And today, despite the extraordinary accomplishments that science has made in our understanding of the physical Universe, we seem no closer to an answer for these most basic of all questions. Of all mysteries, the nature of life is perhaps most keen for it describes the nature of our being and defines the self-perceived limitations of the human mind.
The modern world is pulled between diametrically opposed views of reality. On the one side, the material view of science explains life as simply a process of energy-matter organized by known forces of physics. On the other side, religious or spiritual theory maintains that life is the conscious creation of a mysterious, nonphysical dimension of God, Mind or Spirit. And between these poles are those many people who believe that life is influenced by some sort of inexplicable force that neither conventional science nor religion can adequately explain.
Although conventional science does not explicitly deny the existence of God or the strangeness of a nonphysical dimension, the material basis of scientific theory provides no mechanism for nonphysical forces to act on matter. Conventional scientific textbooks assert that scientific discovery has demonstrated that nonphysical, vital, or spirit forces play no part in the evolution of the Universe or the molecular organization of biological being. In this light, the nature of life and the human mind is reduced to the strictly physical processes of insensate matter.
To exist, a force must influence the Universe in one-way or another. Should nonphysical or unknown forces exist, how might they operate? Were such forces present in the creation of the Universe? Are they present in biological being? Are they present in the enigmatic wonder of human mind? If God or some unfathomable force participates in our universe, this force must affect, or have affected, the physical dimension in some way. Many people ignore this conflict and point out that conventional science is limited to the study of matter. They argue that science is not equipped to study God or the action of the nonphysical mind. But if a mysterious or nonphysical force exists, it must have a mechanism by which it affects the material world.
In a purely materialistic view, the basis of reality begins with insensate energy and matter. This view assumes that the Universe exists whether or not it contains life or the conscious mind. The theory of the Big Bang tells us that the Universe began as a vast explosion of energy that cooled into the atomic matter of galaxies, stars and planets. Over vast quantities of time, atoms blindly stumbled into the wondrously intricate molecular structures of life. Somehow, these structures evolved in complexity to gain the conscious mind and curiosity about their own existence.
On the other side, a spiritual view starts with a vast dimension of creative intelligence that precedes physical form. In this view, neither the material Universe nor the existence of life can be separated from this mysterious, proactive source of all being. The many different characterizations of this force as God and the nonphysical dimension of Mind lead into a whole other realm of discussion. However, Eastern spiritual philosophies possess a very broad view of the Absolute that can encompass many other doctrines. In this view, reality is manifest in a vast ocean of conscious Being. The human mind with its intelligence, emotion and self-awareness are all qualities of this dimension of conscious Mind. The Mind inhabits physical substance and becomes differentiated in our individual experience of life. Of this spiritual view the famous guru of the 1960’s, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, wrote, “The existence, life, or Being is the unmanifested reality of all that exists, lives, or is. The Being is the ultimate reality of all that was, is or will be. It is eternal and unbounded, the basis of all the phenomenal existence of the cosmic life. It is the source of all time, space, and causation. It is the be all and end all of existence, the all-pervading eternal field of the almighty creative intelligence” (Mahesh Yogi, The Science of Being and Art of Living, p. 21).
Those who strongly disbelieve in nonphysical forces derisively characterize the entire nonphysical dimension as the realm of ghosts, astrologists, crystal gazers, voodoo priests and spoon-benders. Among those who believe nonphysical forces there is little agreement on their nature. Each religion of the World has a different characterization of God and his will for man. Whether Christ, Mohammed, and Buddha are divine beings or human prophets are points of contention. There is no agreement on the nature of the soul. Is the soul eternal? Is it destined for reincarnation or an afterlife in Heaven or Hell? These questions are unresolved. And beyond religion there are other aspects of the nonphysical. Some psychologists believe that the human mind is nonphysical for human nature is so unlike the properties of matter. Other people believe in extrasensory perception and spiritual healing. Science provides little insight into these matters and asserts that the answers are primarily matters of personal experience and faith.
The nature of the physical dimension is readily apparent. One cannot argue against the existence of a rock or the energy of the Sun. These qualities of the Universe are self-evident. Centuries of scientific observation have quantified the physical dimension with concise, mathematical equations. This understanding provides the framework of “mechanism,” by which science attempts to explain all phenomena of the Universe in terms of the agreed-upon properties of matter. The framework of mechanism unites an enormous number of diverse disciplines that range from geology and astrophysics to the life sciences of biochemistry, biology, genetics, physiology and psychology. The power of the mechanistic approach is vividly clear in our modern medical miracles and technological marvels.
Given the strength of material explanation, those who believe in nonphysical forces have found it most difficult to mount a persuasive argument for their existence. A person’s connection to God may profoundly affect her life, but this is hardly proof of God’s existence to a disbeliever. Other people assert that the marvelous complexity of biological being is clear proof that it was designed by cosmic intelligence. But conventional scientific theory asserts that this design arose from randomly mutated genetic programs culled by environment pressures. The debate on the issue remains open. And studies on other aspects of the nonphysical dimension such as ESP and spiritual healing provide conflicting results.
However, material explanation, despite its power, has its limits. When we turn to the human mind, how do the reactive properties of molecules gain passion, personality and purpose? The known forces of physics do little to explain the history of Western civilization with its literature, arts, crusades, kingdoms and cathedrals. These are all products of a human mind––our experience of life. And on a very concrete level, why has human memory been impossible to find? How does memory operate the brain? How does memory define our conscious reality?
The mechanistic “theory of emergence” maintains that the qualities of life and mind are caused by the complex organization of matter. But exactly how do the purely reactive forces of nonliving matter get so twisted about that they become the proactive behaviors of life? Nonliving matter waits for external forces to come along and move it elsewhere. In contrast, life forever directs its own motion. A rock sits in a field while the frog hops out of the pond on a quest for food, information, safety, or sex.
What do we make of these acute gaps in understanding? Will further scientific discovery provide the answers enclosed within the unified framework of mechanism? Or when we look closely at the unknown, do we discover that the gaps in understanding are actually canyons of such irreconcilable depth that they can never be bridged by a material structure? The question is not idle speculation. The presence of a nonphysical realm is not just an issue of belief. Either unknown or nonphysical forces participate in our human reality or they do not. The answer defines the nature of reality and the limits of the human mind. And should an unknown force direct the form and function of life, is it not the duty of science to recognize this force?
René Descartes, the father of the scientific method, began from the premise, “Doubt all that can be doubted.” In this spirit, we may ask, has science actually disproved the action of nonphysical forces in life? Or has science simply ignored evidence of nonphysical forces? When we look closely at the facts provided by scientific discovery, do we discover, lurking behind the gears and apparatuses of mechanistic theory, the shadow of a vast, unacknowledged Vital Dimension?
The Western view of reality has changed dramatically over the last several thousand years. In former times, few would have doubted that human life is part of a vast nonphysical dimension. When we trace the evolution of Western beliefs back to the ancient Egyptians, we find they viewed reality very differently from us. The Egyptians lived in a supernatural realm in which magic and dreams intimately flowed together. Material substance of the waking world was not viewed as the insensate substance we know today; rather it was the body of the vast, nonphysical dimension of the gods. All things, the Sun, stars, rocks, earth, and living creatures were embodied with spirits. The world was saturated with meaning for events directly related to the supernatural drama that sustained existence.
Water was not the mere insensate, molecular composition that we know it to be today. For the Egyptians, water was a living, supernatural fluid. In this land without rain, the liquid body of the living Nile sprouted into a lush ribbon of green reeds, trees and moving creatures along its borders. Its mystical body snaked hundreds of miles down narrow mountain valleys and spread out across the broad delta. Life flowered and then withered as the Nile, once pregnant in flood, dwindled to a thin stream at the season’s end. Beyond the Nile’s magical body, in a line as sharp as if cut by a knife, laid an ocean of desert so dead and dry that not a single weed grew.
The Egyptians viewed their bodies to be composed of ethereal substance; a view far different from the insensate matter that we tend to see ourselves today. The Egyptians understood themselves to be composed of several layers of nonphysical souls. The sense of self-perception, the ‘ka,’ resided in the heart. Here was the center of being, the source of the body’s magic fluids, the power of life, and the source of good and evil. It was the human heart that was weighed on the scale of the gods to determine the worthiness of the deceased, rather than the brain, which contained little fluid. “The ‘ka’ was an abstract personality that had an absolute independent existence from the physical body. It could separate from the body and return, and move freely from place on earth in astral travel, or visit with the gods in heaven” (Gregory, The Oxford Companion to the Mind p. 212). When a pharaoh died, statues were carved of him so that his ‘ka’ would reside in the stone and sustain his presence and guide future generations.
And quite unlike the material orientation of modern science, Egyptian science and technology were acts of worship. By the manipulation of matter, humans gained the magical powers of the gods. Priests reproduced the brilliant patterns of stars in the cloudless desert sky on the temple ceilings to bring the powers of the heavens to earth. Among the greatest magical acts was the construction of the pyramids. The massive tetrahedrons loomed over the shifting desert sands to focus the supreme order of the Gods upon the earth. In the Valley of the Kings, tombs were dug deep into rock to hold nobles’ spirits in the material dimension of man. Bodies were placed in sarcophagi and surrounded by beautifully crafted furniture, jars of food and the objects to sustain their afterlife. So long as the physical substance of the pharaohs existed, their spiritual presence would be maintained. And in these ghostly time capsules, the pharaohs passed into the modern age.
The Greeks initiated true scientific inquiry that has come to define the modern view of the world. Exposed to the many diverse cultures bordering the Mediterranean, the Greeks learned from the peoples of North Africa, Europe, and western Asia. The democratic ideals of the Greeks empowered the individual. Greek statues were carved with photographic realness that celebrated the Greek’s objective vision of the world. In the theater, Greek playwrights posed the questions of man’s role in the Universe and the conflicts between duty to oneself and society that we ask today.
The universities of Athens of the fifth century B.C. established the foundations of modern science, philosophy and mathematics. Pythagoras developed sophisticated theories of geometry. Socrates pressed his students to accept nothing at face value and to question all existing belief in search of fundamental truth. Early scientists such as Aristotle sought to objectively categorize natural phenomena. His treaties became the standard of reference for biological information for the next one thousand years.
The supernatural realm of the Greeks reflected the Greek focus on the human state. The Egyptian deities were strongly allied with the natural world of animal spirits as seen in the Sun god, Ra, who was portrayed with the head of a hawk and the body of a man. But the Greek gods and goddesses, and subsequently those of the Romans, were human characters that personified the entire spectrum of human passions. Zeus was the ruler and lawgiver who rewarded the good and punished the evil. But Zeus was no remote, sanctimonious judge; he a very human deity who loved the goddesses and flaunted his affairs. The goddess, Athena, was a warrior, virginally pure, yet worshipped for fertility and wisdom. Beautiful and stately, her breastplate armor was bordered with snakes and embossed with the head of Medusa. She protected the armies, the cities, and hence was the giver of peace. The god, Dionysus, embodied the primal, animalistic sexuality of man. Sometimes portrayed as a bearded man, sometimes a beast, sometimes a delicate, effeminate youth, he walked on earth with an entourage of satyrs and nymphs. His cults celebrated drunken orgies with ecstatic frenzies of dancing, music, and the eating of raw flesh as they became possessed and merged with his divine, natural creativity.
With the rise of Christianity and the disintegration of the Roman Empire, Western man’s view of himself and understanding of the nonphysical dimension radically changed. The diversity of gods and goddesses with their turbulent passions were swept away by the power of a single god––the monolithic entity, God the Almighty. The supernatural realm became rigidly polarized into the forces of good and evil. God was the source of purity and order while the former gods such as Dionysus and Pan who reveled in mans’ carnal passions became identified with evil and Satan. Undoubtedly, the brutality of Roman culture and the chronic wars between feudal kingdoms contributed to the new Christian worldview. God the Almighty offered salvation to those who obeyed him and stern judgment for those who disobeyed. Truth gained the binary nature of right and wrong. Each human soul was destined for the eternal bliss of Heaven or the perpetual torment of Hell.
In the theology of Christianity, the natural world became more separate from the nonphysical dimension of God for it contained the raw, animal passions of beasts. Further, the view that biological being is just a process of matter is suggested by Genesis which states that God created the plants and animals from the substance of earth: “And God said, ’Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds’” (Genesis 1:24). Some theologians asserted the text is proof that plants and animals are material constructions and that only man has a true soul. Genesis explains that man stands unique among all life for God created man in God’s own likeness with knowledge of good and evil: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him” (Genesis 1:27).
Humans too, were set apart from the supernatural kingdom of God for mankind is tainted with the “original sin” of Adam and Eve that caused their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Genesis explains that when God saw what mankind had wrought, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.” (Genesis 6:7). In this view, humans are not only separated from God at birth, but humans must to separate from their earthly lust and savagery to reconnect with God.
In the following thousand years that extended through the Middle Ages, Western man remained deeply immersed in spiritual concerns. Truths were revealed through inspiration and scripture as opposed to what was observed through the senses. There was little room for idle speculation that might undermine the authority of the kings or the Church. Heretics were burned at the stake. Science stagnated and scholars relied on theories and observations that had been made by the Greeks centuries earlier. Describing the journey of Western thought, the physicist, Werner Heisenberg wrote, “This immediate connection with God happens within the human soul, not in the world, and this was the problem that occupied human thought more than anything else in the two thousand years following Plato. In this period the eyes of the philosophers were directed toward the human soul and its relation to God, to the problems of ethics, and to the interpretation of the revelation but not to the outer world. It was only in the time of the Italian Renaissance that again a gradual change of the human mind could be seen, which resulted finally in a revival of the interest in nature” (Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy, pg 409).
It is interesting, that upon the subsequent resurgence of scientific inquiry, Western man’s view of his fundamental isolation in the Universe would grow far deeper. The material explanation of mechanistic science would fully remove life from the nonphysical dimension and set man apart from other life. The theory that the human mind emerges from the highly evolved complexity of the human brain suggests that creatures with smaller brains are genetically programmed robots with little or no qualities of mind. One is left with the conclusion that the intelligent, fully conscious mind is unique to the human condition––a view that strongly parallels traditional Christian doctrines.
With the Renaissance, the West gained stability and prosperity and scholars regained their interest in the natural world. But this curiosity ignited a fierce conflict between the fundamental Christian scriptural view of the Universe and the newly evolving theories of science. The battle continues on today. In 1610, Galileo turned the newly invented telescope to the planet Jupiter. In careful observation over successive nights, Galileo noticed that four bright points of light near Jupiter slowly moved their positions. When he plotted this motion, Galileo, to his astonishment, found that the lights were orbiting the Jupiter! Until this time, the Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe around which the Sun and stars rotated in great crystal spheres in line with Aristotle’s teaching. But the motion of these lights about Jupiter indicated to Galileo that Jupiter was also an axis of celestial motion. Perhaps these lights were moons that orbited Jupiter like our Moon orbits the Earth? And if so, perhaps this meant that the Earth was not the axis of universal motion and the Earth likewise rotated about the Sun?
Galileo’s discovery was the first great fracture in the then-held notions about nonphysical reality. Publication of Galileo’s discovery contributed to the first great challenge to Western man’s supernatural reality based on Biblical doctrine. Not only did the axis of the Universe suddenly shift from the Earth to the Sun, Galileo’s theory challenged the foundation of Western beliefs. If the Earth was not the center of the Universe, perhaps the Earth was not the center of God’s attention?
The issue became a test of truth gained by scientific observation against truth gained by revelation. Seen as a blow to the heart of Church authority, in 1633 the Church demanded Galileo appear in Rome. At the threat of death, Galileo recanted his views upon his knees. Immediately Galileo became the symbolic martyr of scientific truth battling the ignorance and intolerance of the Church’s self-serving promotion of supernatural doctrine. And with Galileo, the power of experimental observation became the cornerstone of modern physics and scientific reasoning. Galileo demonstrated the revolutionary possibility that truth was found in the examination of nature as opposed to inspiration received in examination of Biblical text.
Around this time, René Descartes, the French mathematician and philosopher, devised the theory of “mechanism” which has come to define scientific thought and modern self-perception. In a series of dreams in 1619, Descartes saw a revolutionary system whereby truth was revealed from careful, systematic observations of natural processes, rather than by revelation from God. This break with existing intellectual tradition was profound. Heisenberg wrote that Descartes “does not accept revelation as such a basis nor does he want to accept uncritically what is perceived by the senses. So he starts with his method of doubt. He casts his doubt upon that which our senses tell us about the results of our reasoning and finally he arrives at his famous sentence: ‘cogito ergo sum’” (pg 409).
With Descartes’ “Discourse on Method” published in 1637 the material orientation of Western reality rapidly accelerated. Descartes subsequent publications on physics, mathematics and logic provided a rigorous structure for inquiry into all avenues of knowledge, from the body’s physiologic systems, to the nature of God. With his invention of analytic geometry, Descartes provided a framework to lay the universe out as a vast matrix through which moved physical substance. The material realm became defined by quantifiable physical forces that were split with the sharpness of a surgeon’s scalpel from the nonphysical dimension of God and mind.
Yet Descartes held to the ultimate supernatural origin of the Universe. Descartes viewed God as a clever artisan who devised rules and mechanisms by which physical substance becomes animated as organisms. In line with then-prevalent Christian doctrine, Descartes asserted that only humans among all life are endowed with a soul. He maintained that the human body and other animals and plants are automatons, driven solely by the physical properties of matter. The physical dimension of energy-matter Descartes termed res extense—substance which has length, breadth and depth and can therefore be measured and divided. The nonphysical dimension is termed, res cogitans—that which is unextended and indivisible. “Thus the human body—including the brain and entire nervous system—belongs in the first category, while the mind—including all thoughts, desires, and volitions—belongs in the second” (Gregory, Oxford Companion to the Mind, p. 189).
From this arose the famous Cartesian split that continues to haunt Western philosophy and science. If the nonphysical dimension exists, Descartes provided no mechanism for it to interact with matter. And his mechanistic theories provide no means to investigate an ephemeral mental or divine substance that has no physical dimension by which it can be isolated. So we have inherited the “mind-body” problem, the inability to connect the human experience of mind with the insensate mechanism of the body. With time, however, the nonphysical action of God as the Creator was forgotten. The strictly material aspects of Descartes’ theory of mechanism blossomed into the framework that defines the modern understanding of reality.
In 1687, Isaac Newton provided the next great leap out of supernatural reality. Newton demonstrated that the forces of the material dimension are entirely rational and can be explicitly quantified. In combined acts of genius, Newton measured the predictable relationship of force such as gravity on material mass and established the mathematical system of calculus that precisely quantifies it. Newton’s three laws of motion explicitly characterized the behavior of the material universe and became the cornerstone of classical physics. A change in the motion of matter, Newton concluded, was the action of force. Studying the effect of gravity, Newton observed that all objects drop to the ground at the same rate contrary to the “common sense” view that big, heavy things fall faster than small ones. (There is a limit in our ordinary world due to the air resistance on a moving object.) Graphing the motion, Newton found that a falling mass travels each second twice as far as the second before. He defined force as a mass’s change in velocity with time. Inventing calculus to quantify force, Newton was now able to precisely predict the motion of a body through space. Studying the motion of the planets, it was found that gravity proved consistent for all mass, be it little apples or the great movements of the planets through the solar system. Artillery engineers now knew exactly how far their projectiles would travel.
With Newton’s laws, the precision of mathematical formulas far surpassed the explanatory value of supernatural forces. The supernatural, dream-like reality that had permeated human beliefs was now crystallized in the vectors of mathematical equations. Truth was no longer the mystical revelations of God and Church; truth became categorization and quantification of the process of matter. The laws of physics now ascended above those of supernatural doctrine as the underlying principle of reality. With Descartes’ and Newton’s tools, it appeared that with enough information one could explicitly predict the fate of all physical substance in the universe. The universe was becoming a less confusing place; it gained predictable, mathematical regularity. There was great power and great comfort in this new order. A house with a solid, predictable foundation feels far safer than a house sitting on shifting sands of uncertainty swirled by unknown forces.
With a rational system to the physical universe, humans now knew that the stars and planets were fixed in their orbits and would not one day suddenly rain down in the fury of God’s displeasure. From the tranquil beauty of science’s mechanistic view, physical reality was now seen like a grand Swiss clock of serene and predictable motion. The popular science writer, Isaac Asimov described this well when he wrote, “One might picture the universe as consisting of a vast number of parts; each part if moving, affecting those neighboring parts with which it makes contact. This is exactly what we see, for instance, in a machine like an ordinary clock. One part of the clock affects another by the force of an expanding spring; by moving, interlocking gears by levers; in short, by physical interconnections of all kinds. In other machines, such interconnections might consist of endless belts, pulleys, jets of water, and so on. On the submicroscopic scale it is atoms and molecules that are in motion, and these interact by pushing each other when they collide. On the cosmic scale, it is the planets and stars that are in motion, and these interact with each other through gravitational influence. From the vast universe down to the tiniest components thereof, all might be looked on as obeying the same laws of mechanics by physical interaction as do the familiar machines of everyday life,” (Asimov, The History of Physics, pg 242). And soon the new era of scientific discovery would blossom into the technology that has enabled man to gain great mastery over the natural world.
Yet life continued to retain its nonphysical nature, for the complexity of the living organism defied explanation. Staring at a flower, a carrot, or a raw chicken on the cutting board, one might imagine the bewilderment early scientists faced in their attempts to understand the tissues of living organisms. Life was believed to be a “vital” force that “spontaneously” emerged as the mold from food, mosquitoes from swamp water, and frogs from mud. Spontaneous generation could be confirmed by the experimental techniques of the time.
People, without the aid of modern microscopes or knowledge of atoms and genetics, observed that living beings miraculously appeared from apparently nothing. In a bowl of water left in a summer garden, one could observe that there was no life amid the tiny pieces of dirt blown in by the wind. Over the course of days, however, a green slime of algae would appear on the sides. Then one day, tiny moving particles become visible, scooting through the water. Soon these particles grew into small worms that darted to the surface, bending in half to flick themselves through the water. One day, the tip of the worm surfaces on the water and an extraordinary event would occur. A winged mosquito emerges from the skin of the worm and flies away.
The early microscopes used by Galileo and others only deepened the mystery as they revealed mysterious details of cell structure. But although the molecular structure of cells was far beyond the reach of early instruments, science advanced to apply the general principles of physics to living organisms. Subsequent to Joseph Priestley’s discovery of oxygen in 1770, Antoine Lavoisier demonstrated that the body is like a stove that burns fuel and releases energy as heat. The German scientist, Julius Mayer, used thermodynamics––the study of the relationships of heat, work and energy––to show that no “vital force” provided the energy to animate life and revealed that organisms use no more energy than they consume as food. The Frenchman Claude Bernard demonstrated that metabolism in living organisms could be studied as a branch of organic chemistry. As Campbell in the text, “Biology,” described, “The pioneers of organic chemistry helped shift the mainstream of biological thought from vitalism to mechanism, the belief that all natural phenomena, including the processes of life, are governed by physical and chemical laws” (Campbell, Biology, pg 55).
As scientists gradually progressed to the molecular level of life, piece by piece, the mysterious, vital force was exorcised. Campbell continues, “The foundation of organic chemistry is not some intangible life force, but the unique chemical versatility of the element carbon” (Campbell p. 55). First the simple organic compounds of citric, lactic and uric acids were isolated from biological sources by the Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele. Then in 1828, urea, a substance previously known only to living organisms, was created in a laboratory flask by the German chemist Friedrich Wohler. Announcing this triumph over vitalism – the theory that spiritual or nonphysical forces manifest life, Wohler’s quote memorialized this moment, “I must tell you that I can prepare urea without requiring a kidney or an animal, either man or dog.”
For biochemists, this was the turning point. Biochemical reactions were found to be predictable and conform to the laws of physics. Soon more and more organic compounds such as proteins, sugars, and lipids, were created in the laboratory. And as synthetic techniques became more sophisticated, even more complex molecules were designed. The need for vital explanation eroded as it was concluded that anything produced in the laboratory could occur spontaneously in nature without need for mysterious vital forces.
However, vitalism persisted until Louis Pasteur in 1860 rigorously discredited the theory of “spontaneous generation.” Pasteur demonstrated that if a boiled, sterilized broth of vegetables and meat is shielded from air born microbes and spores, the broth does not decay. This conclusively proved microorganisms only grow from the substance of existing microorganisms. Hence, Pasteur proved that organisms only grow from an existing living form. And since living things are composed of the same atoms as nonliving things, it was assumed that, ‘life, at its most basic level, is a biochemical phenomenon”(Voet, Biochemistry, p. 13). By extension, one might conclude that all manifestations of life as plants, animals and bacteria are no more than complex molecular assemblies directed by the known forces of physics.
Life was now reduced to a purely material phenomenon. And physics was seen to provide a unifying explanation for all aspects of the Universe. Explaining how mechanistic theory attempts a material explanation for all phenomena, and even that of the mind, Chapin writes, “Natural monism holds that the natural sciences form a family tree, with physics, chemistry, and the other physical sciences at the roots and with biology, physiology, and psychology branching off at the top. Stated somewhat differently, physics and chemistry deal with matter in its simplest and most fundamental forms, whereas biology and psychology study nature’s most complex organic compounds. If all sciences lie along a single continuum, then according to this point of view, psychology can theoretically be reduced to physiology, and physiology in turn can be reduced to the physics and chemistry of organic compounds. Of course, no one has demonstrated that mental processes are literally reducible to the physics and chemistry of brain matter, but such a hypothesis has led to many interesting discoveries in the area of psychoneural relationships” (Chaplin and Kraweic, Systems and Theories in Psychology, p. 7)
Today, physical explanation has expelled supernatural forces from our modern reality. We know that the Sun is not a god that rides across the Heavens in a chariot; our sun is a blazing nuclear inferno about which the Earth revolves. Earthquakes are not the anger of the gods; they are shifting tectonic plates. Sickness is not the possession of evil spirits; it is caused by the infection of viruses and bacteria. Overall, material explanation displaces nonphysical explanation, for it has proven far more comprehensive and useful. It satisfies our human need for the comfort and security of knowing. The astrophysicist has replaced the astrologer, the weather forecaster has replaced the rainmaker, and medical technology has replaced the cures of faith.
The power of material understanding is ever present in the engineering marvels of the medicines, computers, cars and televisions that enrich our modern world. The material view of life is supported by four centuries of disciplined research. Around the world, universities and medical research centers continually provide new and more detailed insight into the mechanics of life’s molecular processes. Scientific libraries are filled with research papers on an endless variety of topics in genetics, immunology, brain physiology, cytology and embryology, to name but a few disciplines. We know a person’s susceptibility to certain diseases and mental disorders is correlated to genetic structure. We know the molecular structure of the human genome. Active viruses are synthesized in the test tube. Intricate protein structures containing thousands of atoms have been fully characterized and complex biological molecules like DNA are constructed in the laboratory. Within the foreseeable future existing technology will finish characterizing the entire biochemical structure of life.
In accord with this purely material view of life, Arthur Vander in the introduction to my college text, “Human Physiology,” wrote, “The mechanist view of life holds that all phenomena, no matter how complex, are ultimately describable in terms of physical and chemical laws and that no ‘vital force’ distinct from matter and energy is required to explain life. This view has predominated in the twentieth century because virtually all information gathered from observation and experiment has agreed with it. But vitalism, its opposite, is not completely dead, nor is it surprising that it lingers in fields (like brain physiology) where we are almost entirely lacking in hypotheses to explain such phenomena as thought and consciousness in physiochemical terms. We believe that even these areas will ultimately yield to physiochemical analysis, but we also feel that it would be unscientific, on the basis of present knowledge, to dismiss the problem out of hand. Man, then, is a machine—an enormously complex machine, but a machine, nevertheless” (Vander, pg 1).
The Harvard biologist, Ernst Mayr, viewed as one of the greatest influences on biological theory since Charles Darwin, stated with certainty, that science has dispelled all aspects of nonphysical force from life. Mayr wrote, “If one wanted to characterize modern biology in a few words, what would one say? Perhaps the most impressive aspect of current biology is its unification. Virtually all the great controversies of former centuries have been resolved. Vitalism in all of its forms has been totally refuted and has had no serious adherency for several generations” (Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought, p. 131). Mayr further wrote, “Attempts have been made again and again to define “life.” These endeavors are rather futile since it is now quite clear that there is no special substance, object, or force that can be identified with life” (p. 55).
But is the case for the purely material view of life so clear? Are modern biologists such as Mayr unable to precisely define life because they have excluded the basic cause of life, the vital force, from their vocabulary? In fairness to objectivity, we need to note that Pasteur did not disprove the existence of vital forces. He only discredited the theory of spontaneous generation. He proved that living organisms grow from preexisting material structure. Pasteur’s experiments do not address the possibility that nonphysical forces direct the motion of living matter. Pasteur only proved that if life is a vital force, it needs a portal such as the structure of a microbe spore or mosquito egg through which to flow to organize matter as a living being.
On a more mystical level, Friedrich Wohler did not disprove the possibility that vital forces create the complexity of biological structure. He demonstrated that the complex molecules of living matter are constructed from atoms. However, he did not demonstrate that it is a probable course of events for atoms to “spontaneously” assemble in these structures. Rather, Wohler demonstrated that the force of human conscious intent produces these molecules in the highly regulated environment of the chemist’s test tube. Those with a strong mechanistic belief might quickly dismiss this distinction. However, the action of the conscious mind is an essential part of the experiment. The conscious goal of the synthetic chemist carefully orchestrates molecular events isolated in test tubes to produce the improbably complex structures of living matter. Unless one can conclusively prove that the human mind is a process of matter, one has not really removed the shadow of the vital force from life’s complex molecular constructions.
Conventional textbooks on the biological sciences ignore these essential distinctions. Textbooks skip the question and rush the student to the conclusion that life cannot be anything but a construction of matter manifest by the known laws of physics. The modern theory that life “emerges” from the known properties of matter provides a comfortable, tangible explanation for events. Somehow, organized into living form, insensate matter is believed to gain the strange new properties of a living, breathing creature. And likewise, the conscious mind that marvels at its own existence is said to “emerge” from the complex organization of matter in the brain. But can one adequately explain the complex organization of living matter within a purely material framework? Or is there evidence of a mysterious force of organization? And could this force be the action of the nonphysical Mind? Within the holes of conventional theory lie the profound mysteries of the Universe. If we are going to understand the nature of life, we need to look beyond what is known. We need to focus on what cannot be explained.
Chapter 2
The Perplexing Order of Life
Two Physicists’ Doubts
Despite blanket assertions such as Ernst Mayr’s, “Vitalism in all its forms has been totally refuted,” there are significant voices of dissent in the scientific community. But unlike physics, where scientists thrive on conflict and radical new theories, science as a whole avoids critical examination of the material theory of life. Disagreements with the purely material basis of mechanism are rarely aired. Speculation by biologists that life is a nonphysical force or that the nonphysical mind directs animals’ behaviors is religiously avoided.
Like a monk of medieval times searching through monastery libraries for critique of Church doctrine, one needs to dig deep through volumes of scientific literature to discover the dissenting voices. One might suggest it is a conspiracy. But overall, the silencing of dispute is probably due to the inability of the mechanistic mind to fathom nonmaterial explanation. And it may arise from fear of the unknown. To ignore the profound mysteries upon which mechanistic theory flounders, preserves the cozy certainty of material explanation. We do not need to deal with the imponderable strangeness of a nonphysical dimension.
Often, those with a rigidly material attitude assert that belief in the nonphysical dimension supplies an individual’s emotional needs and has nothing to do with a rational examination of the evidence. Yet, there are a number of scientists who have made compelling arguments against the existing material framework of life that are not based on religious beliefs or the need of find personal meaning from the existence of God. They question conventional theory with the contention that the known forces of physics cannot adequately explain the phenomena of life.
Among dissident voices are two great physicists and Nobel Prize Winners, Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger. Both concluded that life is manifest by a mysterious force that is unacknowledged by conventional science. To say that Heisenberg and Schrödinger are well versed in the limits of physical explanation sorely understates their credentials. Independently, Schrödinger and Heisenberg formulated the mathematical equation, now known as the Schrödinger equation, that provides the theoretical foundation of modern chemistry. As described in the college text, “Physical Chemistry,” Castallan wrote, “The Schrödinger equation opened the way to the systematic mathematical treatment of all atomic and molecular phenomena. The predictions of this equation for atoms and molecules have been confirmed without exception. It is therefore the basis for any modern discussion of atomic and molecular structure” (Castellan, Physical Chemistry, p. 469). Heisenberg is also the author of the famous uncertainty principal that defines the limits of physical observation at the atomic level.
In the book, “Physics and Philosophy” which is considered one of the great books of the Western World, Heisenberg questioned the limits of material explanation. He questioned how the physical properties of matter could ever explain the products of human endeavor such as art, literature, history, and sociology. These are the products of the human mind, he asserted, and have structural qualities that are completely unrelated to the properties of inanimate substance.
In considering the evolution of scientific thought, Heisenberg questioned the consequences of René Descartes’ assertion that only humans among all life are endowed with a nonphysical mind. This split remains today. Those who study humans often acknowledge that the mind may be a nonphysical force. But biologists, as a whole, attribute animal behavior to purely material causes. Although one might be willing to attribute a mind to cats and chimpanzees, what of fish, insects or single-celled creatures? Are they mere biochemical machines? At what point does one draw the line? Life falls into an awkward category between the hard and soft sciences without any sense of how the two aspects may be linked. However, as Heisenberg noted, if the qualities of the conscious mind are a common thread that runs though all life, the biologist’s refusal to consider the presence of mind in other life does little to advance understanding of the mind in either humans or other creatures.
Mechanistic theory, Heisenberg observed, has greatly increased the human understanding of things. He noted it provides a cohesive framework by which to understand life and the mind. But, at the same time, purely material theory rigidly restricts our views. What if phenomena fall outside the material realm, Heisenberg wondered? Does it not exist? Or because it lies outside science’s material framework are we oblivious to its presence?
With regard to the human mind, Heisenberg expressed little doubt that the mind is a nonphysical force distinct from the dimension of energy-matter. He wrote, “If we go beyond biology and include psychology in the discussion, then there can scarcely be any doubt but that the concepts of physics, chemistry and evolution together will not be sufficient to describe the facts. On this point the existence of quantum theory has changed our attitude from what was believed in the nineteenth century. During that period some scientists were inclined to think that the psychological phenomena could ultimately be explained on the basis of physics and chemistry of the brain. From the quantum-theoretical point of view there is no reason for such an assumption. We would, in spite of the fact that the physical events in the brain belong to the psychic phenomena, not expect that these could be sufficient to explain them. We would never doubt that the brain acts as a physiochemical mechanism if treated as such; but for an understanding of psychic phenomena we would start from the fact that the human mind enters as object and subject into the scientific process of psychology” (Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy p. 419).
Heisenberg offers no conclusive proof that the mind is nonphysical. However, he asks the deep question that bedevils philosophers, of how the mind is able to stand outside the brain to observe itself as the subject of inquiry. Heisenberg did not answer this question. But could the answer be, as we will consider in later chapters, that the conscious mind looks at the material actions of world from a dimension of memory that extends far past the moment of “now” into the thickness of time?
In contrast to Heisenberg’s philosophical approach, Erwin Schrödinger took an entirely pragmatic approach to life that focuses on its molecular behavior. Schrödinger looked at life from the vantage point of a physical chemist donned in his white laboratory coat to consider the mystery of life at the molecular level. Life is constructed of atoms that are organized into complex molecular sculptures. These enormous molecules construct and operate cells. In hierarchies of organization, atoms compose every aspect of the physical body. So in the behavior of molecules we observe the essence of life.
Schrödinger delivered a series of lectures at Trinity College in Dublin. They were published in 1944 in a thesis entitled, “What is Life?” that is regarded as a classic inquiry into the nature of life. Contemplating the motion of molecules, Schrödinger asked whether there is something special about the behavior of living molecules that is inherently different from the behavior of molecules outside of life. He wrote, “How can the events in space and time which take place within the spatial boundary of a living organism be accounted for by physics and chemistry?” (Schrödinger, What is Life? p. 1).
Schrödinger was fascinated by life because he could not understand it. Molecules in a cell, Schrödinger observed, display continuous, highly regulated motion. But as a physical chemist, he knew that that nonliving matter follows statistical tendencies towards greater disorder. There is a ready explanation for this based on the concept of entropy and the statistical probability of events. Yet for an unknown reason, the molecules in an organism do not move towards greater disorder. Rather, in the growth of an organism, their motion becomes ever more complex and organized. Why should a fluid association of molecules act this way, Schrödinger wondered?
Schrödinger knew that science could not answer the question he posed. Modern biological theory asserts that life “emerges” from the motion of molecules driven by forces familiar to the physicist. But Schrödinger observed that the behavior of living molecules is so incredibly bizarre that it defies any possibility of conventional explanation. Schrödinger, who was intimately familiar with the known forces of physics and chemistry, concluded these forces could not cause the marvelous organization of life. Schrödinger expressed personal dislike for a nonphysical explanation but he could only conclude that the molecular order of life is caused by a force that is unacknowledged by science. In his lectures he wanted to share his wonder with others and to attempt to characterize the action of this mysterious force.
Schrödinger’s analysis of life is of such fundamental importance that we will look at his conclusion in considerable depth. Schrödinger’s conclusion shakes the foundation of the biological sciences. If Schrödinger is correct, the basis of modern biological theory, as voiced by Mayr, “it is now quite clear that there is no special substance, object, or force that can be identified with life” is blatantly untrue. Unless one can logically counter Schrödinger’s conclusion, then the smokescreen provided by the theory of emergence is ripped away and we must confront the true mysteries. Schrödinger presents a clear case that science does not know what manifests life. To accurately portray what is known, textbooks should acknowledge this. Further, if an unidentified force organizes living matter, then every other aspect of the modern mechanistic theory of life comes into question. And if a material framework cannot hold this mysterious force, whatever it may be, we must construct a new, broader theoretical framework by which to understand life.
How do we explain the fantastic organization of the fluid forces of life? One readily observes that life is a state of great order. Within a species of bird, insect, flower and fish, the similarities between individuals are often so strong that they appear to be clones. Within the body of each creature, the physiological structures of skeletons, organs, tissues, cells and molecular machines possess the same astronomic regularity of structures and behaviors. Likewise, the instinctive behaviors of a species display extraordinary uniformity. Species evolve over time but the overall continuity of biological form and function passes through countless generations. Life has sustained molecular organization for billions of years.
The true extent of molecular order within living physiology boggles the mind. Opening a textbook of biochemistry or physiology, one is presented with volumes of detailed structures and functions of living matter. For example, one might read about muscles. Muscle contraction is produced by the contraction of tiny, longitudinal actin-myosin filaments energized by adenosine triphosphate produced by the cell’s highly controlled oxidation of glucose. In a muscle cell, these actin-myosin filaments lay like loaves of French bread in thick, parallel stacks called sarcomeres. A one-micron diameter sarcomere contains about 450 thick myosin filaments bundled within 900 thin actin filaments. The sarcomeres are linked end to end in long strands as myofibrils. The longitudinal contraction of the bundles of actin-myosin fibers causes contraction of the myofibril.
Confronted by such detail, our minds tend to fog over. We tend to skip over the extraordinary intricacy of biological detail without visualizing the significance. Even a diagram would convey little of the actual intricacy of molecular organization. For example, we read, “A single muscle cell, 100 microns in diameter and 1 centimeter long contains about 8,000 myofibrils, each myofibril consisting of about 4,500 sarcomeres, giving a total of 16 billion thick myosin and 64 billion thin actin filaments in a single muscle cell!” (Vander, Human Physiology, pg 212). Numbers with the magnitude of billions have no tangible relevance. But the fact that 64 billion of anything sits in a dynamic, densely ordered array is significant. And this array of 64 billion actin filaments resides in just one cell! When one considers the hundreds of millions of muscle cells in a frog or a human, the number of such arrays in the human organism begins to approach the number of stars in the Universe. This is a big number.
Every aspect of the body contains such detailed structure. To convey any sense of the astronomic complexity of living physiology in a few paragraphs is an impossible task. Perhaps one should merely settle with the fact that every molecule in a living organism is continuously involved in directed, useful activity. And in the human body, there are about 100 trillion cells, each made of about one trillion atoms. By way of comparison, if each atom were the size of an (o) in this sentence, the human body would stand taller than the height of the Earth! The vastness of complexity is so great that it boggles the brain and the complexity becomes reduced to triviality.
To find a material cause of life’s organization, sometimes the growth of crystals is pointed to by way of explanation. In a crystal, a tiny seed crystal grows into a huge, structured form. If a crystal is broken, in the right environment, it will mend analogous to healing in an organism. In observing this phenomenon, Thomson writes, “There is more rapid accretion at the broken surface than elsewhere; the repair is often in proportion. This is very suggestive of the way in which an animal or plant replaces a lost part or repairs an injury. If a crystal be broken into two, each half may form a perfect whole. If a planarian worm or Hydra be cut across, each half usually “regenerates” an entire animal” (Thomson and Geddes, The Riddle of Life, p. 292).
Might a frog or a man similarly grow about the molecular matter of a cell containing strands of DNA? The answer is appealing for it provides an identifiable source for life. We know that an egg cell with its DNA grows into an organism. And if one starts from the preconception that life is solely a process of matter, one concludes that DNA with its genes is the “design and operating system” of life. But is this true? Can little strands of DNA direct the astronomic series of molecular events that produce living physiology? Conventional theory would have us believe that there is no other possibility.
However, when one compares a cell to a crystal, the superficial similarities are overwhelmed by the profound differences. Crystals are solid structures with an unchanging internal geometry. Crystals do not create themselves; the forces of the environment create crystals. For example, in a hot, saturated solution of sodium chloride, the rapidly bouncing water molecules hold salt ions. When the solution is cooled, the water molecules are less energetic and the sodium and chloride atoms preferentially associate with each other. Upon the scaffold of a seed crystal, the atoms join each other in a highly ordered array of the crystal solid. “It is not so much that the crystal grows, as that it is added to by other crystal units” (Thomson and Geddes, p. 292). And crystal growth is unregulated, for it continues as long as super saturation persists.
In contrast, a cell is a fluid association of molecular forces that keep changing and rearranging as a cell grows and develops. In a cell, molecular forces continually build and destroy membranes and metabolic machinery. Nothing in a cell is truly permanent. In the growth of an organism, cells construct an ever-expanding variety of structures. In the growth of each of us, one human egg cell differentiates into the fluid structure of 100 trillion cells as different from each other as red blood cells, neurons, muscles, capillaries, and so on.
The proactive dynamic of life is seen at every level of organization. Life creates itself. Life initiates the directed motion of its molecules. Unlike a crystal that is constructed by its environment, life is not at the mercy of external forces to create it. The ever-moving molecules in a cell mysteriously conspire to construct the walls and structures that house them! Cells selectively pull in food molecules from the environment for energy and construction material. The cells selectively toss out waste and regulate their internal chemistry of ions, amino acids, and sugars. In plants and microorganisms at the bottom of the food chain, a dance of molecular forces directs the Sun’s energy to transform the atoms of water and atmospheric gasses into a myriad of enormous metabolic machines. In fantastic harmony, the fluid forces of these machines build cells, stalks, leaves and flowers. In turn, animals consume these organized plant molecules and direct the energy contained to construct and operate their bodies.
For Schrödinger, life’s complex organization is baffling because the overall trend of the nonliving world is towards greater disorder. In the absence of an active organizing force, all things decay. Schrödinger noted that the non-physicist might be unaware of this trend, “The non-physicist finds it hard to believe that really the ordinary laws of physics, which he regards as the prototype of inviolable precision, should be based on the statistical tendency of matter to go over into disorder” (p. 70).
The physicist’s view of a universe that continually moves towards greater disorder might seem contrary to one’s sense of the world. Everywhere about us we see the organization of matter. Humans construct roads, houses, shopping malls, cars and computers. Life constructs animals, forests and prairies. And in the nonliving world we observe similar organization. The force of gravity organizes the matter of the Universe into great galaxies full of stars and planetary systems. Mountains rise and volcanoes create islands in the oceans. Atmospheric forces create the enormous swirling forms of hurricanes and tornadoes. Waves lapping on the beach create herringbone ripples of sand and sort pebbles into intricate patterns. And as crystals, molecular forces produce the wonderfully intricate crystal lattices such as those of snowflakes.
But in the absence of an organizing force, environmental forces such as chemical erosion, weathering, friction and random thermal vibration destroy complex structures big and small. Things fall apart and scatter with the winds. Mountains wear away and fill the oceans with their sands. In forest fires, the towering polysaccharide monoliths of trees rupture on reaction with the atmosphere to liberate searing energy while they crumble into gas and ash. A plate dropped to the floor does not reform. In each case, entropy increases with the increasing disorder.
Life creates a distinct type of order. Life continually grows, heals and reforms its strangely intricate structures. Life is a unique form of organization that is not found in the nonliving world. When one looks at rocks formed millions of years ago, the fossilized patterns organized by life are easily distinguished from minerals organized by geologic processes. The highly regular form of an ancient fern leaf, the shell of a clam, the footprint of a Tyrannosaurus Rex or the skull of a Brontosaurus are readily distinguished from pebble patterns of river sediments and crystal formations. Living matter posses a regularity of form and complexity of structure found nowhere in the nonliving world.
And in a cell, there is a strange motion of molecules that is so ever present we forget to question why it occurs. Fluid associations of molecules act as though they were imprisoned within the rigid body of a human-constructed machine. When molecules move through a cell’s various metabolic processes they react with certainty. To Erwin Schrödinger, life’s fluid organization of force was entirely inexplicable and presented a profound mystery worthy of solemn inquiry.
The spontaneous movement of the events towards greater disorder is known as “entropy.” The concept underlies the physical chemist’s understanding of molecular processes and exists as the second law of thermodynamics. In the textbook, “Biology,” Campbell writes of this inexorable process, “There is an unstoppable trend toward randomization. In many cases, increased entropy is evident in the physical disintegration of a system’s organized structure. Consider, for example, the degradation of an unmaintained building. Much of the increasing entropy of the universe is less apparent, however, because it takes the form of an increasing amount of heat, which is the energy of random molecular motion” (Campbell, Biology, p. 93). Entropy applies to many things. It describes the tendency of molecular structures, organized forces, and information to become degraded and dispersed in the greater environment.
Those with small children are acutely familiar with the Universe’s natural progression towards greater entropy. In the morning, the toys are sorted and neatly organized in boxes. The state of this organized “system” has low entropy for it is very improbable. By the afternoon, the toys are out of the boxes and mixed into a homogenous mess on the floor. Without adult interference, random actions churn the mess and spread it further and further a field. The entropy of the toys has increased for disorder is a very probable state. There are millions of ways the toys can be randomly arranged in the room while a state of order is a very restricted state. To recreate order and reduce entropy takes work. It takes effort to collect Barbie’s shoes, dresses and blouses, matchbox cars and trucks, building blocks, Tinker Toys, and action figures, and sort them into their appropriate containers. And in this example, the improbable state of organization requires conscious effort to produce.
Entropy is a measure of the probability a state will occur. A system with high entropy has a high probability of occurring. And something that has low entropy is unlikely to spontaneously occur. To visualize the statistical nature of entropy, suppose we take a collection of children’s alphabet blocks and scatter them across a desk. Suppose there is a grid of 100 by 100 small square cups on the desk and there is an equal chance that the blocks can land in any of the cups. If we were to count every possible way the blocks could fall into in this grid, we would find there are 97 million unique arrangements. The random arrangement of the blocks in the grid includes an enormous number of ways the letter-blocks can reside. This state has high entropy because it is very probable.
Now, suppose the four letter-blocks were to sit on the center of the grid so that they adjoin each other as, “L-I-F-E”. These letter-blocks are in a highly ordered state. They have very low entropy because their organization represents a very exclusive arrangement out of all the possible ways they might lie on the desk. In the center of the desk, the order of blocks as “L-I-F-E” represents essentially one state among an innumerable ways they might randomly fall. In general, without an organizing force, the blocks “E”, “I”, “F” and “L” are far more likely to lay scattered about the desk than be assembled in a significant order.
In this simple example we see that disorder contains an enormous number of arrangements of the blocks and hence is very probable state of affairs. A highly ordered arrangement of the blocks will naturally move towards disorder and greater entropy because states of disorder vastly exceed the number of ordered arrangements. If the letter-blocks are organized as “L-I-F-E” on the desk, eventually random forces will appear and send the ordered letter-blocks back into the great swirl of universal disorder.
The entropy of something is a concrete quantity that can be determined like the attributes of length, temperature and mass. The entropy of something is like looking at a snapshot and assessing the possibility that state of order will occur out of all the various possibilities. Of this, Schrödinger wrote, “Entropy is not a hazy concept or idea, but a measurable physical quantity just like the length of a rod, the temperature at any point of a body, the heat of fusion of a given crystal or the specific heat of any given substance. At the absolute zero point of temperature (roughly –273C) the entropy of any substance is zero” (p. 73). (At absolute zero, there is no heat or thermal vibration, so a solid is perfectly ordered in one unique state. Consequently it has no entropy.)
The fact that entropy is a concrete measure of the order of a system is crucial to remember when we consider the astronomic orderliness of life. The amount of entropy something has does not depend on how the order occurred or the amount of time it took to get there. The entropy represented by the letter-block ordered as “L-I-F-E” is the same whether the pattern happened by random coincidence or by conscious intent. It does not matter whether the blocks fell that way when they were tossed on the desk or if I painstakingly assembled the pattern. The same is true for the entropy of molecular systems. We know that the fantastic organization of living physiology is produced by an uncountable number of individual molecular reactions. But in assessing its entropy, the events that lead up to a particular state of order are irrelevant. In accessing the improbability of life, what is important is the amount of order we see in the moment. The entropy is the same whether the order arises from trillions of little steps or arises from one instantaneous act. Nor does time play a part. It makes no difference if a state of order flashes into existence or gradually evolves over billions of years. The entropy is the same. And by all measures, life represents a very improbable structure.
The well-known physics writer, Brian Greene, notes that the presence of great order demands an explanation; “The main lesson of the second law of thermodynamics is that physical systems have an overwhelming tendency to be in high-entropy configurations because there are so many ways such states can be realized. And once in such high-entropy states, physical systems have an overwhelming tendency to stay in them. High entropy is the natural state of being. You should never be surprised by or feel the need to explain why any physical system is in a high-entropy state. Such states are the norm. On the contrary, what does need explaining is why any given physical system is in a state of order, a state of low entropy. These states are not the norm. They can certainly happen. But from the viewpoint of entropy, such ordered states are rare aberrations that cry out for explanation” (Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos, p. 164).
Yet, conventional biological textbooks are quick to assert that the orderliness of life is not so strange and does not violate the laws of entropy. The reason given is that although life increases order, this increase in molecular order is offset by an increase in disorder in the environment. Campbell expresses this view of life when he writes, “this high degree of organization in no way violates the second law, because the entropy of a particular system, such as an organism, may actually decrease, as long as the total entropy of the universe––the system plus its surroundings—increases. Thus, organisms are islands of low entropy in an increasingly random universe” (p. 95). For example, when a bacterium grows in a solution of sugar, it accumulates order and energy in its membrane. The bacterial cell cuts up the little sugar molecules and reorganizes their atoms into the huge metabolic machines that operate it. The order created in the bacterial cell is offset by a decrease in the molecular complexity of its environment. The sugar molecules of the solution are replaced with metabolic waste that has simpler structures and less energy.
But to simply note that the disorder of the Universe has increased hardly explains what causes the accumulation of order in a cell. For example, in human construction, we consume energy when we organize matter to assemble a computer or a house. Suppose I build a cabin in the woods. During the process my muscles burn food and my power saw burns gasoline. As I work, the entropy of the Universe increases. Both the power saw and I consume energy and release disorder as carbon dioxide and heat. But this increase in universal disorder does nothing to explain the design of the cabin. It does not explain how the matter of logs and stones becomes organized into a structure. If I poured a can of gas on the ground and ignited it, I would achieve the same release of energy and increase in entropy as if I use the gas in the saw to build the cabin. The amount of energy consumed or the carbon dioxide that enters the atmosphere tells me nothing of what directed forces to assemble a cabin. In human construction, the conscious mind directs forces of assembly. Houses and machines are not constructed from spontaneous events. Only with the conscious direction of force do I achieve anything constructive.
Like my construction of a cabin, within a cell the molecular matter of the environment is turned into the exquisite design of the cell’s molecular machines. For example, in a muscle cell, food molecules enter the cell and are cut up into individual atoms. The cell then links thousands of these carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen atoms into the enormous assemblies of actin-myosin filaments. We know the general mechanics of what happens. In highly organized molecular processes, the cell combines food molecules of fats, sugars, and amino acids with oxygen and collects the energy. The energy is used by various production lines of highly specialized metabolic machines to assemble atoms into the actin-myosin filaments. But this consumption of energy does not explain what directs assembly of the muscle cell’s exquisite architecture.
The amount of organization in a muscle cell is staggering. Within each cell, tens of billions of actin-myosin filaments are constructed from atoms and organized into great assemblies. This is an extraordinarily large number. Its magnitude can be related to the number of stars in our galaxy. My assembly of a few dozens of logs into a cabin is inconsequential in comparison. But what actually directs the action of all this? What organizes the forces of production? What directs amino acid molecules through the cell’s protoplasm to assemble into the long actin-myosin filaments? And then what organizes tens of billions of these filaments into the titanic assemblies that harmoniously operate as a muscle cell?
Mechanistic biologists assert that there is nothing strange going on. It is asserted that the atoms and molecules of a cell “spontaneously” assemble in this fantastic order. One can point out that when one considers the chemistry of individual molecules, they appear to follow the same laws everywhere. Individual molecules display the same properties in the chemist’s test tube as in a cell. Therefore, it is asserted that there is no reason to conclude that mysterious forces of organization are involved. Advocating this view, the popular biologist, Richard Dawkins, wrote, “There is no reason to think that the laws of physics are violated in living matter. There is nothing supernatural, no ‘life force’ to rival the fundamental forces of physics. It is just that if you try to use the laws of physics, in a naïve way, to understand the behavior of a whole living body, you will find that you don’t get very far. The body is a complex thing with many constituent parts, and to understand its behavior you must apply the laws of physics to its parts, not to the whole. The behavior of the body as a whole will then emerge as a consequence of interactions of the parts” (Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p. 10).
Dawkins’ view certainly reflects the wisdom of the conventional biologists. But who has a naïve understanding? Is it reasonable, as Dawkins suggests, to focus on individual events and to ignore the grand improbability of the whole picture? Suppose we conduct an experiment with a penny. I give you a penny to flip into the air and catch ten times in a row. You repeat this experiment many times and we find that over many sequences of ten flips, the statistical percentage of heads and tails is equal; the penny comes up heads and tails the same number of times. This is what we would expect from the laws of physics, normal probability distributions and common experience.
Now suppose when I take the penny from you and perform the same experiment, a quite mysterious pattern emerges. When I flip the penny ten times in a row, for some unknown reason, the penny comes up heads nine times out of ten. I have not done this on purpose. I have done nothing tricky. I know that there is nothing that prevents this sequence from occurring, but this “state” of nine heads in a row is most improbable. Getting out my calculator, I find that based on the laws of probability, one would expect it to occur less than once in every thousand times.
This highly ordered sequence of events that produces nine heads in a row is very unlikely. So, when I start a second series of ten flips, I hardly expect the pattern to repeat itself. But strangely enough this time, the penny comes up heads eight times out of ten! And in the third series of flips, the penny comes up heads ten times in a row! Clearly something quite mysterious is occurring. And even stranger, when I give the penny back to you, we find it returns to a normal distribution. You flip it many times and we observe an equal number of heads and tails as we would statistically expect.
If we consider each flip of the penny by itself, without considering the bigger picture, one would notice nothing weird going on. But if we step back and look at the overall series of events, it is vividly clear that when I flip the penny the probabilities of events are drastically skewed in one direction. We are no longer viewing a series of random events. The events are highly directed. The penny “reacts” with my finger to land heads every time. The uncertainty of events has been removed.
And as such, there is a great mystery that bears investigation. Since we see that when you flip the penny, it exhibits a normal probability distribution of heads and tails, we can rule out that there is something special about the penny that has affected its behavior. It is neither weighted nor is it a two-headed penny. This means that when I flip the penny, the highly skewed probability must be caused by the action of an unknown force. So, something different about the force of my thumb or some force acting on the penny in flight causes it to land heads almost every time, while when you flip it, this unknown force is absent.
This fantastic improbability of events is exactly what so baffled Schrödinger. In life, apparently random molecular events exhibit phenomenally skewed probability distributions. Molecular events are directed with absolute certainty. In a muscle cell, there is no randomness in the construction of the billions of actin-myosin filaments any more than in my assembly of a log cabin. But outside the living organism, molecules display none of this highly directed motion. Instead, molecules outside of life act like a flipped penny that exhibits a normal probability distribution. There is no certainty to what will occur. Like flipping a penny, a molecule might react with another or it might not. Schrödinger wrote, “Even when the chemist handles a very complicated molecule in vitro he is always faced with an enormous number of like molecules. To them his (statistical) laws apply. He might tell you, for example, that one minute after he has started some particular reaction half of the molecules will have reacted, and after a second minute three-quarters of them will have done so. But whether any particular molecule, supposing you could follow its course, will be among those which have reacted or among those which are still untouched, he could not predict. That is a matter of pure chance” (p. 78).
For this extraordinary state of order in living matter to occur, the statistical uncertainty inherent in molecular behavior must disappear. Molecules cannot meander here and there as they might like. There is no random walk. Rather, molecules are continually channeled in very precise directions. In the growth of a human, a mind-boggling series of molecular reactions march with steadfast resolve to construct the astronomically uniform myriad of tissues and organs of the body—the follicle of a hair, the stirrup and anvil of the ear, cilia in the intestine, and so on. For such precision to occur, molecular events of construction must be highly directed. But the fluid, continuously changing forces and structures of a growing organism are very different from the static forces in a crystal’s rigid body. Life organizes the random forces in the molecular soup of the nonliving world into a fantastic fluid dance that never stops changing
To appreciate the statistical nature of molecular motion, suppose we examine the behavior of falling rice grains. Rice grains are composed of very large sugar molecules. To start the experiment, I place a small amount of these large molecular arrays, about eighty grains, in a measuring cup. I then fill a cooking pot with four inches of water and place it on the counter. Holding the measuring cup two inches above water, I slowly shake out the rice. The polysaccharide grains fall into the water and become scattered on the bottom of the pot. If I repeat the process several times, each time the rice scatters in a different pattern. If I identify five grains by painting them red, there is no way to know where the red grains will land. A specific red grain may end up touching another red grain in the center or scattered by itself at the periphery.
We see that there are a near infinite number of variations in which the grains can fall from the cup. The resulting fate of each grain will vary each time the experiment is repeated. The laws of physics describe the statistical shape of the scatter patterns. But we have no way of predicting if a specific pattern will occur or what will happen to an individual grain of rice. Each pattern of fallen rice molecules is unique. But since we see no particular meaning in most of these patterns, we characterize the patterns as “random.” This is the normal thermodynamic behavior of a nonliving system, be it of rice grains or independent molecules.
Now, suppose we pour out the rice as before, but this time, a most miraculous event occurs. Rather than scattering across the bottom of the pot, the rice grains align side by side in the circle pattern of a bursting daisy! This is a gargantuan improbability. We have made no attempt to create this pattern. Nothing in the procedure has changed. Yet suddenly we confront the extraordinary weirdness of the daisy pattern. Never would I expect such a pattern even if I spent my life pouring rice. But nothing in the laws of physics prohibits a daisy pattern from occurring.
With bewilderment, I might scrape the grains back into the cup, dry them and pour them out again. For a second time, the grains end up arranged in the same circle of daisy petals! The five red grains of rice sit in the center of the circle. I stare dumbfounded. Again and again I might repeat the experiment and every time the same circle pattern appears with the five red grains in the center. The bewilderment will grow, but if I do the experiment enough times, I come to expect the daisy pattern. And now the miracle is gone. I have come to expect this mechanical regularity in the behavior of the rice grain molecules. But what causes it?
The highly ordered state of rice grains in the daisy pattern has very low entropy for it represents a rigidly defined arrangement of grains among all the possibilities. The entropy is quantifiable. The entropy of the daisy pattern reflects the probability the pattern will occur against all the possible ways the rice grains can be arranged on the bottom of the pot. The entropy of the daisy pattern is the same whether the rice fell from the cup or I carefully, consciously placed each grain next to each other in the daisy burst. This state of low entropy will not last. Eventually organized grains of the daisy pattern will become scattered. Were they sitting on the counter, the random motion of a cat’s tail, a child’s hand or the movement of other objects on the counter will destroy the pattern. Inevitably, there is a movement towards greater entropy and greater disorder for this is the most probable state of things.
Seeking to explain the daisy pattern of the rice from the known properties of matter we note that nothing in the behavior of the rice grains violates the laws of physics in any way. Each grain considered on its own behaves perfectly properly. Each grain floated down through the water and came to rest on the bottom of the pan. Since the order of the daisy pattern naturally appeared I may characterize it as a “spontaneous” event. Or lacking any other explanation, I may attribute the daisy pattern to an unknown organizing power of the five red grains in the center of the circle. Or I might conclude some force of organization emerges from the motion of the falling grains to cause them to “spontaneously” associate as a circle. But then, suppose another cup of rice forms a square every time? Or a triangle? Or a mouse? Or a cat? Such is the diversity of life constructed from the differing motions of the same molecular building blocks. As Schrödinger and others have noted, something very strange is occurring. But the order of life is so commonplace and predictable that we see it as the normal state of things and are blind to the mystery. In the living organism, states of astronomic order occur with such mechanical regularity that one might conclude that the certainty of physics must produce it.
One may dismiss our little model of rice grains as utterly simplistic. Perhaps rice grains are too primitive to model true molecular behavior. What if the rice grains possessed the sculpted electromagnetic profiles of complex molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids? What if the rice grains were tiny molecules shaped so that they interlocked with each other as a circle? One may point out that collections of lipid molecules in water naturally form membranes and tiny spheres. And what if our molecular rice grains moved about within the structure of a cell? Would this radically change their behavior? Might they “spontaneously” churn about in wonderfully complex patterns to continuously move and burn food, construct proteins, replicate DNA and perform an endless number of other tasks? And in the growth of an organism, might complex forces between molecular grains astronomically expand to construct the physiology of a creature? Or, as Schrödinger insists, does the fluid order of life represent an organizing force so strange that conventional science is completely blind to its presence?
To get a further sense of the true improbability of living structure, suppose we confine a hollow, blown egg within a small plastic box. The egg fits tightly against the walls of the box so there is only one state that represents the intact egg. This is a highly ordered state and has very low entropy. Now, we insert a slim rod through a tiny hole in the box and crush the eggshell into many pieces. Let’s say we’re in the Space Shuttle so the pieces can float around any way they like. There is a slight air current that keeps the pieces in gentle motion but the pieces remain confined within the box.
What is the chance that the pieces might assemble as an egg? Nothing prevents the eggshell fragments from assembling into any specific form including that of the complete egg. If the broken fragments were to randomly float in the box forever, they would have the chance to visit every possible arrangement. Given an infinite amount of time one could say the pieces would definitely form an egg. But in our human reality, the event of assembly is very unlikely. And the law of entropy tells us why this is so. Voet writes of the tendency towards dispersal, “The laws of random chance cause any system of reasonable size to spontaneously adopt its most probable arrangement, the one in which entropy is a maximum, simply because this state is so overwhelmingly probable” (p. 46). There are a near infinite number of positions the fragments can sit in the box but just about one of these positions makes up the full egg. And it is most unlikely that any of us would live long enough to see assembly spontaneously occur.
If we were to break the eggshell into even more pieces, the probability of assembly would be even less. If we call the particular motion of certain particles as an “event,” the greater number of pieces that are present, the greater number of individual events that must be in harmony for the egg to form. If we ground the shell into dust, by the laws of probability we would expect the shell particles to become evenly dispersed through the space of the box as a fog. Yet, even as a dust, there is a finite probability that the complete egg could form.
Despite the gross improbability, a chicken has no trouble forming an egg once a day. And the chicken’s egg is not assembled from the broken pieces of shell but it is assembled from the minute granularity of atoms dispersed in the environment. Inside the chicken’s body, molecular forces are rigidly directed to deposit calcium atoms into the elegant orb of the shell. What directs these forces? What directs calcium atoms into the geometric elegance of the egg? One might immediately say the ordered forces of the chicken’s physiology are responsible. The chicken is a wondrous machine that manufactures eggs. That is a straightforward answer. But then, what constructs the mechanical precision of the chicken’s body? Well, the egg, of course! Everyone knows that. And then, that brings us back to the chicken.
To explain life, we bounce from the chicken to the egg and back to the chicken. But is this circular explanation sufficient to the astronomic improbability represented by the chicken or the egg? For exquisite order to occur, molecules must move in very precise ways. They cannot randomly wander about. Molecules must move with mechanical predictability to create the form and function of an organism. We take this process for granted and think little of it. It seems natural that an egg forms in the body of a chicken. We see the internal machinery of the mother hen as producing this order. Yet in the end, the hen and the egg are compositions of trillions upon trillions of atoms accumulated from the environment. And some forces have directed their organization to become the hen and egg.
Schrödinger stated his total bewilderment at the organized motion of living matter. In a living organism, the probabilities of molecular events are astronomically skewed. Inordinately improbable events occur with utter certainty. Schrödinger noted that someone not familiar with the statistical nature of physics and chemistry could easily overlook this, writing, “Enough is known about the actual material structures of organisms and about their function to state that, and to tell precisely why, present-day physics and chemistry could not possibly account for what happens in space and time within a living organism. The arrangements of the atoms in the most vital parts of an organism and the interplay of these arrangements differ in a fundamental way from all those arrangements of atoms which physicists and chemists have hitherto made the object of their experimental and theoretical research. Yet the difference which I have just termed fundamental is of such a kind that it might easily appear slight to anyone except a physicist who is thoroughly imbued with the knowledge that the laws of physics and chemistry are statistical throughout. For it is in relation to the statistical point of view that the structure of the vital parts of living organisms differs so entirely from that of any piece of matter that we physicists and chemists have ever handled physically in our laboratories or mentally at our writing desks” (p. 2). What mysteriously removes the statistical uncertainty from life? What mysteriously directs these molecular events? Is the grand director, as conventional science maintains, the “genetic programs” of DNA? Or as Schrödinger insisted, is it a force totally unknown to conventional science?