Quantum Evolution, Johnjoe McFadden. Chapter 1

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Quantum Evolution - Chapter 1 - What is Life?

‘The dawn of what we might call the rational approach to understanding our world is usually attributed to the intellectual revolution of the sixth and fifth centuries BC in the Eastern Mediterranean that gave rise to the ancient Greek civilisation. One of the earliest philosophers of whom we have any knowledge is Thales (born about 600bc). Although his writings have been lost, a number of his sayings have survived, including, ‘the lodestone has life, or soul, as it is able to move iron’. This short phrase implies a complex set of beliefs. Firstly, that the ability to initiate movement is a key attribute of life. This is a concept that we will be returning to as, in a modern molecular interpretation, it forms one of the cornerstones of this book. Secondly, that this ability to initiate movement betrays the presence of a ‘soul’. Like the mythographers before him, Thales apparently considered that the phenomenon of life betrayed the presence of supernatural forces. Finally, the equation: ability to initiate movement = life = soul, seems to have been taken to the extreme of attributing the property of life to a variety of inanimate objects, such as a magnet (lodestone). This reflects a widespread tradition of panzoism in the ancient world. As the 3rd century Roman chronicler, Diogenes Laertius puts it, ‘the world was animate and full of divinities’.

The greatest biologist of the ancient world was undoubtedly Aristotle. Sadly, our image of our first great scientist is clouded by those chalk-white busts of venerable bearded philosophers who stare with stone-cold eyes into a perfect world of spheres and equilateral triangles. But Aristotle’s vision was far more earth-bound. Like Heraclitus before him he believed that ‘knowledge enters through the door of the senses’ and as a young man he spent several years living on the Greek island of Lesbos, studying marine life. His biological writings betray the acute observation and attention to detail that is the hallmark of all great naturalists.

“Animals also which fly and those which swim, fly by straightening and bending their wings and swim with their fins, some fish having four fins and others, mainly those which are of a more elongated form (eels for example), having two fins. The latter accomplish the rest of their movement by bending themselves in the rest of their body, as a substitute for the second pair of fins. Flatfish use their two fins and the flat part of their body, instead of the second pair. “

Instead of the venerable sage, we should instead imagine a younger Aristotle diving into the clear waters of the Aegean to retrieve starfish, crabs and anemones, to study their form or observe their behaviour.

“The sea-urchin has a better defence system than any of them: he has a good thick shell all round him fortified by a palisade of spines”

Any lover of seaside rock-pools (another hallmark of the true naturalist) will recognise an ally in Aristotle’s writing. But the scientist in Aristotle was not content to describe nature; he needed to explain it. Perhaps, later in the day, he would set light to a store of driftwood to cook his catch and ponder on the ephemeral quality that he roasted out of the living flesh. Like Thales before him, Aristotle considered that the essential quality of living creatures was that they possessed their own internal will and this allowed creatures to initiate independent movement.

“For nature is in the same genus as potency; for it is a principle of movement - not however in something else but the thing itself.

To Aristotle, living creatures were distinct by their ability to move themselves. Aristotle’s concept of movement was a great deal more subtle than simple locomotion - he had not spent those years on Lesbos without noticing that clams, anemones, or indeed simple seaweed moved very little (except when pulled by the waves and the tide), but were still very much alive. To Aristotle, there were six forms of movement: generation, destruction, increase, diminution, alteration and change of place. This broader conception of movement actually reflects a broader meaning of the verb, to move, than our modern usage, one that remains apparent when we say that we found a particular piece of music to be deeply moving, or when a motion is passed by a debating society. Our modern usage is rooted in Newtonian mechanics and a better translation of Aristotle’s concept of movement, would be the term action, a word with a precise and useful meaning in modern physics, to which we will be returning. The essential point of Aristotle’s argument is that all living organisms possessed an internal will that allowed them to initiate and perform actions such as growth, regeneration, procreation and movement. Like Thales before him, Aristotle ascribed this internal will - the cause of independent action - to the eidos, the soul or psyche: “The soul creates movement”

It would be a mistake to equate Aristotle’s eidos too closely with the Christian soul. Aristotle believed all animals and plants were endowed with a ‘soul’ that was capable of initiating movement. To Aristotle, this soul was clearly a much more functional entity than the Christian moral guardian. However, only man possessed the highest form of soul: the source of reasoning and moral judgement.

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‘We cannot account for life with classical science alone. In particular, we cannot account for how living creatures are able to direct their actions according to their own internal agenda. For higher animals, including ourselves, we call this ability, our will. The ability to will actions is a profoundly puzzling aspect of living organisms that appears to contradict scientific determinism. There is no role for will in determinism; we do not have choices. Every action that we perform should be determined, not by any decision we make, but by the precise molecular configuration of our bodies at the time preceding our action.

So can living creatures will actions? In subsequent chapters, we will explore how all actions, at a molecular level involve the motion of fundamental particles. Different actions will involve entirely different sets of movements of these particles. For a bird to decide to soar into the air, it must change the direction of motion of billions of particles within its body. This capability to direct motion in response to an internal will, appears to escape classical determinism and is why biological systems are so unpredictable. Its influence may even be carried over into our interactions with our surroundings. The stick of dynamite would become just as unpredictable as the pigeon, if a man was standing close by, armed with a length of lighted touch-paper. Our directed actions cause movement of particles both within our bodies and in our surroundings.

I should emphasise at the outset that I will not be invoking any mysterious forces to account for our will, only the known laws of physics and chemistry. I am not promoting any return to vitalism. Over the coming chapters we will explore how all biological phenomena - mobility, metabolism, respiration, photosynthesis, replication and evolution – involves the motion of fundamental particles. We will examine how these dynamics are governed, not by classical physics, but by the non-deterministic laws of quantum mechanics. At its most fundamental level, life is a quantum phenomenon. We will go on to explore the implications of this realisation for our understanding of the origin of life, its nature, evolution and consciousness. By the end of this book, I hope you will have a new and exciting insight into what it means to be alive.