What is Life?
Erwin Schrodinger
Erwin Schrödinger struggled against the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, which insists on having nothing to say about life, the universe, and everything.7 Instead, he speaks unapologetically of consciousnessandthemeaningoflife.8
Also predicted DNA and molecular coherence of organisms.
**Schrödinger, Erwin. What is Life? (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1944).
Erwin Schrödinger struggled against the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory, which insists on having nothing to say about life, the universe, and everything.7 Instead, he speaks unapologetically of consciousnessandthemeaningoflife.8
Also predicted DNA and molecular coherence of organisms.
**Schrödinger, Erwin. What is Life? (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1944).
By Understanding Life and the "LIFE-FORCE" within us, we can better understand Health.
Gaze up at the night sky and the photons of light enter your eyes to be transmuted by retinal tissue into tiny electric currents that travel along your optic nerves to reach the nervous tissue of your brain. They generate a flickering pattern of nerve firing that you experience as the twinkling star or the silvery moon in the sky above you.
At the same time, tiny pressure variations of less than one-billionth of atmosphere pressure are registered by the hair cell tissue of your inner ear generating nerve signals that inform you that the wind is whistling in the trees. (I have a forest in my back year and the sound of wind traveling through)
A handful of molecules floating into your nose are picked up by specialized olfactory receptors and their chemical identity is relayed to your brain, telling you that the lavender flowers are blossoming. (I have lavendar flowers in my yard and love that smell).
And each tiny movement of your body, as you watch the stars, listen to the wind and sniff the air, is generated by the coordinated action of hundreds of muscles.
Dispite these remarkeable fears
Ants can carry 30x their weight
Cheetahs can run 60 miles per hour or faster
Amazon electric eel can generate 600 volts of electricity
Monarch butterfly can travel 2000 miles and return to the same TREE!
Birds can fly, fish can swim, worms can burrow and monkeys swing through trees.
And for biosynthetic capacity and central to life on earth nothing rivals the green variety on earth that swallows air and water (plus minerals) to make grass, oak tress, seaweed, dandelions, giant redwoods, Ponderosa Pine trees, etc.
But there is one human organ that is unparalled, which is the human brain that still exceeds any computer on the planet and has created the pyramids, Shakespearean literature, General Relativity, the Sistine Chapel, The Great Wall , Beethoven's 9th, Ming Pottery,the computer and smartphone, etc.
What is Life?
Though we don't have the answer yet, because as Richard Feynmann said, you really do not understand something until you make it... And thus far we have not created life from scratch...
The new science of quantum biology is expanding our understanding to exciting new levels.
Because (AS WE WILL SEE) Both Biology and Medicine (until recently) was stuck in a Newtonian and Outdated Scientific Model.
My prediction:
Quantum Biology and Energy Medicine will be to the 21st century what quantum mechanics and relativity was to the 20th century.
[GOAL: By Better Understanding Life, we can Better Understand Health]
----
To discover why we need the hidden world of quantum mechanics to account for the amazing properties of living matter, we need first to embark on a short tour of Science's efforts to understand what is so special about life.
Gaze up at the night sky and the photons of light enter your eyes to be transmuted by retinal tissue into tiny electric currents that travel along your optic nerves to reach the nervous tissue of your brain. They generate a flickering pattern of nerve firing that you experience as the twinkling star or the silvery moon in the sky above you.
At the same time, tiny pressure variations of less than one-billionth of atmosphere pressure are registered by the hair cell tissue of your inner ear generating nerve signals that inform you that the wind is whistling in the trees. (I have a forest in my back year and the sound of wind traveling through)
A handful of molecules floating into your nose are picked up by specialized olfactory receptors and their chemical identity is relayed to your brain, telling you that the lavender flowers are blossoming. (I have lavendar flowers in my yard and love that smell).
And each tiny movement of your body, as you watch the stars, listen to the wind and sniff the air, is generated by the coordinated action of hundreds of muscles.
Dispite these remarkeable fears
Ants can carry 30x their weight
Cheetahs can run 60 miles per hour or faster
Amazon electric eel can generate 600 volts of electricity
Monarch butterfly can travel 2000 miles and return to the same TREE!
Birds can fly, fish can swim, worms can burrow and monkeys swing through trees.
And for biosynthetic capacity and central to life on earth nothing rivals the green variety on earth that swallows air and water (plus minerals) to make grass, oak tress, seaweed, dandelions, giant redwoods, Ponderosa Pine trees, etc.
But there is one human organ that is unparalled, which is the human brain that still exceeds any computer on the planet and has created the pyramids, Shakespearean literature, General Relativity, the Sistine Chapel, The Great Wall , Beethoven's 9th, Ming Pottery,the computer and smartphone, etc.
What is Life?
Though we don't have the answer yet, because as Richard Feynmann said, you really do not understand something until you make it... And thus far we have not created life from scratch...
The new science of quantum biology is expanding our understanding to exciting new levels.
Because (AS WE WILL SEE) Both Biology and Medicine (until recently) was stuck in a Newtonian and Outdated Scientific Model.
My prediction:
Quantum Biology and Energy Medicine will be to the 21st century what quantum mechanics and relativity was to the 20th century.
[GOAL: By Better Understanding Life, we can Better Understand Health]
----
To discover why we need the hidden world of quantum mechanics to account for the amazing properties of living matter, we need first to embark on a short tour of Science's efforts to understand what is so special about life.
Soul and Life Force
Again the central question of Why does matter behave so differently when it makes up a living creature compared to when it is a rock?
The ancient Greeks were among the first to attempt to answer this question.
Aristotle, perhaps the world's first great scientist identified certain properties of inanimate matter that were reliable and predictable: Solid objects fall, whereas vapors and fire rise, celestial objects moved in circular orbits around the earth.
Life was different, less predictable, although animals fell, they also got up and ran, plants grew upwards, and birds even flew around the earth.
According to Socrates, Aristotle and the ancient Greeks, what made life different is that living beings possessed a SOUL, but came in different grades. Lowliest plants, animal souls one rung higher which endowed hosts with feelings and movement; but only human souls had reason and an intellect.
The ancient Chinese similarly believed that living beings were animated by an incorporeal life force they called Qi or Chi that flowed through them.
The concept of a soul would later be incorporated into all of the major world religions.
The ancient Greeks were among the first to attempt to answer this question.
Aristotle, perhaps the world's first great scientist identified certain properties of inanimate matter that were reliable and predictable: Solid objects fall, whereas vapors and fire rise, celestial objects moved in circular orbits around the earth.
Life was different, less predictable, although animals fell, they also got up and ran, plants grew upwards, and birds even flew around the earth.
According to Socrates, Aristotle and the ancient Greeks, what made life different is that living beings possessed a SOUL, but came in different grades. Lowliest plants, animal souls one rung higher which endowed hosts with feelings and movement; but only human souls had reason and an intellect.
The ancient Chinese similarly believed that living beings were animated by an incorporeal life force they called Qi or Chi that flowed through them.
The concept of a soul would later be incorporated into all of the major world religions.
Causes of Motion
The concept of the soul did separate the living from the non-living and allowed early scientists to study the motion of INANIMATE objects which were not burdened by philosophy and religion.
The history of the concept of motion (and Energy) is long complicated and fascinating, let's just take a briefest of tours.
We mentioned Aristotales ideas of objects falling , rising or moving around the earth which he called natural motions. He also recognized that solid object could be pushed, pulled or thrown... all these motions being the result of some kind of "FORCE" provided by another object. Like someone or something "throwing". But what produced the throwing motion? There appeared to be no external cause.
Aristotle claimed that living creates possessed a will and were capable of initiating their OWN motion, and that in this case the cause of the motion was a creatures soul.
Artistotles views on the sources of motion remained predominantly until late into the middle ages. But then something extraordinary happened... Scientists (natural philosophers) began expressing theories of motion of inanimate objects in the language of logic and mathermatics, perhaps beginning with Arab and Persian Scholars, but the trend really took hold in universities of Paris, Italy and Oxford.
The history of the concept of motion (and Energy) is long complicated and fascinating, let's just take a briefest of tours.
We mentioned Aristotales ideas of objects falling , rising or moving around the earth which he called natural motions. He also recognized that solid object could be pushed, pulled or thrown... all these motions being the result of some kind of "FORCE" provided by another object. Like someone or something "throwing". But what produced the throwing motion? There appeared to be no external cause.
Aristotle claimed that living creates possessed a will and were capable of initiating their OWN motion, and that in this case the cause of the motion was a creatures soul.
Artistotles views on the sources of motion remained predominantly until late into the middle ages. But then something extraordinary happened... Scientists (natural philosophers) began expressing theories of motion of inanimate objects in the language of logic and mathermatics, perhaps beginning with Arab and Persian Scholars, but the trend really took hold in universities of Paris, Italy and Oxford.
Whitehead and Bergson
Alfred North Whitehead’s eloquent critique of the static, flat, soundless, and colorless Newtonian Universe in Science and the Modern World is all of a
piece with Henri Bergson’s insistence, in Time and Freewill, that time is multidimensional and heterogeneous, giving unique qualities to our innermost experiences.5,6
Both of them speak from the heart and mind; they invite us to experience the organic world and organic space-time as multidimensional, non-local, mutually entangled and constantly evolving, much in the way a true artist and romantic poet would experience nature. Whitehead argues that we can never really understand nature except as an organism embedded within the super-organism of nature.
. Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK, 1925).
6. Bergson, Henri. (F.L. Pogson, translator.)
Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., New York, NY, 1916).
piece with Henri Bergson’s insistence, in Time and Freewill, that time is multidimensional and heterogeneous, giving unique qualities to our innermost experiences.5,6
Both of them speak from the heart and mind; they invite us to experience the organic world and organic space-time as multidimensional, non-local, mutually entangled and constantly evolving, much in the way a true artist and romantic poet would experience nature. Whitehead argues that we can never really understand nature except as an organism embedded within the super-organism of nature.
. Whitehead, Alfred North. Science and the Modern World (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK, 1925).
6. Bergson, Henri. (F.L. Pogson, translator.)
Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., New York, NY, 1916).