Quantum Evolution, Johnjoe McFadden. Chapter 13

‘ … On July 18^th, 1897, The Seattle Daily Times ran the headline, “At 3 o'clock this morning the steamer Portland from St. Michael for Seattle, passed up the sound with more than a ton of solid gold on board...”. The news flashed around the world and within days, the greatest gold-rush the world has ever seen, headed for the Klondike.

The late 1890’s had seen one of the deepest global depressions of modern times. Millions of men were laid off work; thousands of families were evicted from their lands and the homeless were left to starve in the streets. And then the SS Portland, steamed into Seattle harbour with its cargo of bright gold. Tales of snow covered fields sprinkled with gold dust, swept across the world and within days, tens of thousands of men and women sold what possessions they had, to book passage to the Klondike.

Most were not professional prospectors but unemployed bank clerks, farm labourers, dentists, anyone young enough and desperate enough to chance their luck. Few had any knowledge of gold prospecting, or the fact that they would have to face one of the most arduous journeys in the world, before reaching the Klondike. Many headed north to the Southeast Alaska town of Dyea and the start of the 32-mile long Chilkoot Trail, their first and harshest test. Prospectors had to carry a year’s supply of food for the journey, which together with their equipment, weighed about a ton. The first stage was a 3,550 feet climb up the mountainside, with each man having to make as many as twenty successive trips to haul all their load. And that was only the beginning of their journey. Before they reached the Klondike they would have to travel for months across snow-capped mountains, frozen lakes and crevasse-laced glaciers, and endure temperatures that dropped to fifty degrees below freezing. Many became so physically exhausted that they sold or abandoned their goods and turned back. Many others died on the trail, having fallen into crevasses, been buried under avalanches or been murdered by bandits. Those that did make it founded the town of Dawson that still stands today on the banks of the Klondike. Though today a sober and respectable town, in the 1890’s it was a notorious northerly outpost of the Wild West lifestyle where most prospectors lost their remaining money and possessions to a host of thieves, gamblers and con-men.

The above picture, by Asahel Curtis, is one of the most striking images to depict the power of the human will. The whole history of man’s struggle to impose himself on a hostile environment seems to be written in that thin black trail of humanity trudging over the Chilkoot Pass. Our will – our ability to make decisions and direct our own actions - has surely been our most valuable and dangerous asset in that long road from the primeval forests to our modern cities. Without it, we would never have fashioned tools, planted crops, tended herds, built cities or forged weapons to destroy crops, herds, cities and people. There would be no civilisation, no lofty buildings, no beautiful paintings, no sublime music and no books about the origin of all these things. Each of these achievements takes some effort against the tide of inevitability. Our will is surely the most striking manifestation of life’s ability to perform directed actions. But where does it come from?

Consider the scene in the picture as it might have been witnessed by the imaginary alien spacecraft that we met in the first chapter. At daybreak it would spot a thousand tons of amorphous material – perhaps a mass of ‘rock’ (though in reality people and supplies) - lying at the foot of a mountainside. By dusk, that same material would have been elevated by several thousand feet. The spacecraft would have been left with a problem: how to explain that this mass of rock managed to increase its potential energy so enormously as to elevate itself up the mountainside. It would have first looked for some external agency acting upon the rocks, capable of raising them several thousands of feet against the force of gravity; but it would have found none. It would next have attempted to account for the feat in terms of the internal dynamics of the system, perhaps as some spontaneous physiochemical reaction. As we discovered in Chapter 5, Newtonian mechanics and its statistical cousin, thermodynamics, govern the motion of inanimate material. To account for the Chilkoot climb in purely mechanical or thermodynamic terms, the alien spacecraft would have had to suppose that all of the molecules in the rocks and their surroundings were so arranged that their random bumping and jostling (which is of course, all there is to thermodynamics) caused the entire rocky mass to ascend spontaneously up the mountainside. Is such a view tenable? Could random mechanical and thermodynamic forces have accounted for the climb over the Chilkoot Pass?’

‘ … The philosopher, Karl Popper, proposed in 1993 that consciousness was a manifestation of some kind of force field in the brain and the idea was further developed and extended by Lindahl and Århem (1994). Popper pointed out that many of the properties of mind were also properties of forces (mind is incorporeal yet capable of being influenced by matter and also capable of influencing matter – so are forces). He proposed that the mind is a three layered structure. The neurones with their action potentials represent the bottom layer that interact directly with the body. The next layer, the “electromagnetic wave fields (produced by neural activities)…. represent the unconscious part of our mind”. This unconscious field would interact with neuronal activity via the forces it generates. Lastly, the “conscious mind – our conscious mental intensities, our conscious experiences – are capable of interacting with these unconscious physical force fields”.

Popper’s suggestion of mind as a wave phenomenon has a lot of resonance with, at least my own, subjective experience of consciousness. The representation of thoughts and ideas as waves that ebb and flow throughout the brain seems to describe my state of consciousness far better than any neuronal firing model. However, Popper’s proposal still leaves our conscious mind somewhere out there – in the third layer - not really part of the physical brain but communicating with it via the (unconscious) em-field. What this conscious layer is made up of, and how it communicates with the unconscious em-field, is left undefined.

The neurobiologist Benjamin Libet (who performed the neuronal initiation experiments that I described above) proposed an alternative field theory of mind with two, rather than Popper’s three layers (Figure 12.4). The brain with its action potentials still represent the bottom layer but above this is the conscious mental field (CMF) that generates “.. a unified or unitary subjective experience”. The CMF would have a “causal ability to affect or alter neuronal function” and thereby provides the veto or reinforcing role on unconsciously initiated actions, that Libet proposed for his volition experiment. Libet’s CMF is more economical than Popper’s model (having only two rather than three layers); but its nature remains mysterious. Libet states that the CMF “would not be a category of known physical fields, such as electromagnetic, gravitational, etc. The conscious mental field would be in a phenomenologically independent category; it is not describable in terms of any externally observable physical events or any known physical theory as presently constituted.” However, a field that is affected by the electrical activity in the brain and is in turn able to modify that electrical activity seems to me to be virtually indistinguishable from the conventional electromagnetic field of the brain. Rigorous application of Occam’s razor would leave just a single entity: the conscious electromagnetic field or the Cem-field.

All electrical activity induces an em-field (as in a radio transmitter) and the induced field modifies that electrical activity (as in a radio receiver). Neuronal electrical activity in the brain will induce an em-field and that field must in turn modify neural electrical activity (whether it causes changes in firing patterns is a more difficult question that I will be returning to). It therefore makes much more physical sense to me, to simply equate the conscious mental field with the induced em-field of the brain: the Cem-field.

It may seem peculiar to ascribe the reality of our thoughts to something as ephemeral as an electromagnetic field, but it isn’t. We tend to be impressed with matter as representing the ultimate corporeal reality but it is in fact no more real than radiation. Einstein’s famous equation (E = mc²) tells us that matter and energy are two manifestations of the same thing: a kind of matter-energy. Indeed, our exploration of the source of motion in Chapter 6, demonstrated that all the interactions that we see between objects around us (such as the kicking of a football) are really conducted through em-field’s. It is the electromagnetic field of our boot, rather than the boot itself that moves the football. So why can’t the thought, kick, be an em-field within our brain, which initiates the neuronal firing that leads to that kick?

The concept of information encoded within em-fields is also very familiar to us. Most of my thoughts seem to be composed of words and images, but this kind of visual and auditory information is routinely transmitted through space to our TV screens by em-fields. When our TV receiver picks up the waves, they are converted to electrical activity to make sound and the pictures on the screen. Similarly, our brain may be the receiver that picks up the auditory and visual information, held within the em-field of our conscious thoughts. When we think, ‘rock’, the concept rock may be held in our brain – not as a specific pattern of neuronal firing – but as a complex em wave induced by the firing of many neurones concerned with its colour, shape, texture etc. Each neurone contributing to the thought will generate its own em-field but these fields will superimpose – with appropriate reinforcements and interferences – to form the complex wave that corresponds to ‘rock’ inside our mind.

But is there any evidence for this? It may all sound a bit far fetched but it requires just three propositions to be true. The first is that our brain generates an em-field that encompasses a significant fraction of its neurones. The second is that our consciousness is a product of the em-field generated by our brain. The third is that the conscious em-field of the brain influences neuronal firing. If each of these propositions is shown to be true then a conscious em-field is inevitable. Fortunately, they are all testable.’

‘…As in the previous chapters, we will look to decoherence to provide an answer. Let us first imagine first that the relevant ion channel is in a resting neurone – one that hasn’t a hope of firing unless thousands of its channels open. If the channel remains closed then nothing much will happen. However, even if the channel opens, then nothing much will again happen. A few ions may travel through the pore but after only about one millisecond the channel will spontaneously close/a>. Under these circumstances, there will be minimal environmental entanglement and so decoherence will be suppressed. To put it another way, the opening/closing of the channel will be invisible to the neurone, which will be unable to measure the state of the channel. The interaction between the Cem-field and the channel may therefore remain at the quantum level.

If instead the voltage gate that absorbs the photon is in a neurone that is already committed to firing (thousands of gates are already open) then the absorption event will similarly make no macroscopic difference to the cell or to the brain (since the neurone will fire anyway) and the interaction may once again remain at the quantum level. However, now consider that the channel is a critical channel in a neurone poised on the brink of an action potential. The superposition ({photon absorbed and channel open (+/-) photon not absorbed and channel closed}) will now become a larger entanglement: {photon absorbed and channel open and neurone fired (+/-) photon not absorbed and channel closed and neurone not fired}. The alternative states of the channel (open or closed) will be associated with very different fates for the neurone: firing or not firing. The quantum event will now make a difference to the neurone, the brain and potentially the life of the owner of the brain. Under these circumstances of maximum environmental entanglement, decoherence will be instantaneous. At this point the photon, as a quantum component of the Cem-field, must make a choice - to be absorbed or not - and a quantum measurement will be made.

At these decisive junctures, the photons that make up the Cem-field will be subject to the same kind of conditional quantum measurement that I highlighted in the previous chapters. The brain’s network of neurones and their trillions of em-field-sensitive ion channels, will act as a quantum measuring device to collapse the quantum states of the Cem-field but only when it makes a difference in terms of neuronal firing. When neurones are poised on the brink of an action potential, then quantum measurement may make decisions to perform directed actions and provide us with what we call our free will.

The Cem field will roam through the neuronal pathways of the prospector’s brain nudging and twitching various neurones; but these nudges and twitches will remain at the quantum level unless they actually trigger neuronal firing and make a decision. Many of these interactions between the Cem-field and the brain will involve not only a single neurone firing but a network of neuronal firing in different regions of the brain to generate a particular motor action. The network that initiates a particular action may be only one possible combination of neuronal firings amongst billions of alternative firing states. But now we are back in the familiar territory of our multidimensional quantum landscape with the power of the inverse quantum Zeno effect to pave a path of quantum measurement towards a particular action.

However, I’m sure your Cem-field has had its fill of photons and ion gates so let us finish our story with a happy ending. The components of the Cem-field that lit up a path of quantum measurement in our gold prospector’s brain were the images of his wife and children with happy faces. It is these that crashed his Cem-field out of its superposition of indecision states and led his mind along a photon-collapsing path towards a decision. That decision fired the decisive neurone that propelled him up the mountain and on to the Klondike. He struck gold and returned home to his wife and family with a fortune in his pockets. What makes the story even more heart-warming is that the man made his own decision. His conscious mind had a role to play in his actions.

Man is not an automaton. Our conscious electromagnetic field exploits quantum measurement to move particles within our brain, and provide us with that phenomenon we call our free will. Consciousness drives free will. This quantum level control – a control lacking in unconscious robots – gives us an edge in our interactions with the outside world. It propels men and women to drag tons of supplies up frozen mountainsides. It may sometimes (though at a more primitive level) be the driving force that causes a bird to soar into the air or a salmon to leap a waterfall. I believe it also lies at the heart of that most extraordinary of human abilities: creative thinking. Great ideas are not pulled out of the air; they are pulled out of the quantum multiverse. In a sense, our minds have recaptured the same process of quantum evolution that I believe propelled life through its origin billions of years ago and drove the evolution of living organisms towards increasing complexity. Although that process may be alive and well inside microbes, its influence on the lives of multicellular creatures may now be buried within our bodies or restricted to negative effects like infectious disease and cancer. Yet, by nurturing sensitivity to the electromagnetic field of the brain, animals, and particularly man, have recaptured entanglement with a quantum mechanical entity – the conscious mind - and once again harnessed quantum measurement to perform directed actions. We call those directed actions, our free will. ‘

[i] Voltage-gated channels in neurones have a loop of protein that acts like a kind of automatic plug that swings into place to close the channel after it has it has been open for about one millisecond.