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Nonphysical.org
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The Issues
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Dedicated to a Revolution in Biological Theory Biologists Ignore the Revolution of Modern Physics
Might science's purely material theory of life be on the verge of a profound revolution? Not so long ago, in the early Twentieth Century, the framework of "classical" physics appeared near completion. Up until that time, physicists viewed reality as an enormous collection of independent particles that bounced against each other in the rigid confines of time and bounded by three-dimensional space. Based on Newton's laws of motion established in the 1600's, nearly all phenomena of the nonliving world, from the rates of chemical reactions to the boiler efficiencies of steam engines, could be described with mathematical precision. Physicists of the time had great confidence that the robust framework of Newtonian physics would explain the few mysteries that remained. But with nearly everything so neatly tied up, cracks in the classical theory of physics started to emerge. First, there were lingering questions such as the cause of gravity. And then, new experiments revealed a number of phenomena, such as the photoelectric effect and black body radiation, that could not be explained within the framework of classical physics no matter how one tried to twist it about. It became clear that the fundamental framework of physics, that had proven so robust for three hundred years, had to be completely rethought. The new theories of modern physics presented a bizarre reality. Initially, many of the great minds of the time angrily rejected the new ideas. They argued that Einstein's theory of relativity invoked the occult concept of the fourth dimension. They complained that quantum mechanics tried to replace the certainty of classical physics with a reality that never could be precisely determined. What was this nonsense the skeptics demanded? Physics was the concrete study of the material world defined by Newton's laws of motion, they insisted. Occult speculation of higher dimensions and mystical interpretations of reality had no place in scientific study. But in time, the radical, new theories of physics prevailed. Erwin Schrodinger's equation dissolved the solidity of electrons into probabilistic wave functions of infinite dimensions. Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty equation suggested that one cannot even say that matter, as defined by Schrodinger's wave functions, even exists outside its interaction with the conscious observer. And Albert Einstein further stretched human imagination. Time, Einstein asserted, was not a forever transient state like we experience it. Instead, his theory of relativity explained that time is actually thick like a dimension of space. There is no essential difference between time and space, Einstein proposed. Only the limitations of the human experience causes us to view the two differently. Yet, however strange these new view of reality initially appeared, the theories soon formed the basis of modern physics and were found to provide a far more encompassing understanding of our universe. Despite such a profound revolution in physics, the life sciences remain firmly routed in the classical framework of the past. The mechanistic framework of biology has little changed in the four hundred years since it was first proposed by Rene Descartes. Using Newton's physics, biologists attempt to explain life simply as a bouncing collection of independent atoms and molecules isolated in space and time. Conventional scientists rigidly assert that there is no evidence that a mysterious, global field directs the assembly of atoms and molecules into the construction and operation of plants and animals. They assert that the molecular substance of an egg cell contains all of life's information. Genes, they assert, directs the astronomic series of molecular events that produce the growth, structures, and behaviors of each living creature. Scientists point to the great advancements of genetics and molecular biology. Soon, the entire molecular structure of the cell will be known. Biologist sustain the sincere belief that a full understanding of life's molecular mechanics will finally dispel any possibility that a mysterious, nonphysical force directs molecular motion to assemble into the forms of plants and animals. Yet this research has brought us no closer to explaining what actually organizes the overall dynamic of life. It cannot not provided answers to the fundamental questions such as what organizes molecular motion into the form and activity of the living organism or how human memory is stored and accessed. Today, modern biology faces the same earth shaking revolution that shook the foundation of classical physics. It is time for science to clearly acknowledge to the intrinsic limitations of existing theory. Overall, no one can propose a tangible conceptual mechanism, however crazy or imaginative, by which the reactive forces of the nonliving world become organized into the highly directed activity of life and the mind. The mystery has nothing to do with a failure of human imagination. The problem is that rigid, choreographed chronology of life's material motion is not the nature of nonliving world. It is impossible to put pen to paper to sketch out why life's molecular motions, by themselves, should remain perpetually organized. Exactly what causes an egg cell's tiny organized dynamic expand by trillions of times into the astronomically organized physiology of a living creature? How might a microscopic amount of matter of an egg cell's DNA assemble the random molecular motion of the environment into the body's fluid physiology that is trillions of times larger in size? How can DNA place instinctive memory in the brain of an organism to direct its rigid chronology of instinctive behaviors over its life cycle? It is time for modern science to consider a new theory of life. However, the revolution facing modern biology will have a profound affect on our modern self perception. The new frontiers of speculation will vastly exceed the mysteries presented by the bizarre theories of modern physics. In the end, science will have to acknowledge that life cannot be separate from the mysterious vastness of the vital dimension--the dimension of universal consciousness.
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