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SUBSISTING BLIND SPOTS

Arthur M. Young

Quantum Versus Molar Physics  

Because single entities such as atoms, nuclear particles and photons cannot be predicted, whereas molar objects - made up of millions of atoms or molecules - obey the laws of determinism and therefore can be predicted, science divides its province into the quantum world and the molar world. Quantum theory applies to the quantum world, relativity and classical physics to the molar world.

An unquestioned assumption is that living creatures, being made up of billions of molecules, are molar objects and obey classical determinism. This implies no free will, and, because there is no scientific basis for it, no consciousness.

In light of what we know about living creatures, this is certainly a thoughtless and superficial assumption. In the first place all living creatures start as a single fertilized cell, itself constructed by DNA, the single complex molecule created by the union of the DNA of its two parents. This DNA orchestrates the growth of the organism to maturity and its self-maintenance. The DNA itself is activated by molecular bonds, which are in turn activated by quanta of action (low-energy photons). Like all photons, these photons are not observable except by their effects, and together with the DNA they activate, belong in the quantum world.

Life can only occur in a temperature range from freezing to the so-called pasteurizing temperature, somewhat above 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Only within such a temperature range can the metabolism or chemical activity of life occur, because in this temperature range there is a bath of free energy to fuel the photons whose activity can direct this energy. The metabolism of cold-blooded animals is quite dependent on temperature of environment and time of day, and that of vegetation on the seasons. Warm-blooded animals, mammals and birds, have evolved internal temperature regulation that widens their habitat. We don't find alligators in the polar regions.

Though all metabolism depends on photon exchange, not all the self-regulation of living things, plants and animals, need be quantum-regulated. Much of it can be conducted by subsystems within the organism. Thus threat or pursuit releases adrenalin in the blood, pheromones stimulate sexual impulse, and other semi-autonomous responses are similarly elicited. The point is that these subsystems, plus the hierarchy of the body itself - chemicals activate nerves, nerves control muscles, muscles produce movement - have been constructed by the organism much as a business organization grows and creates different departments for different functions - management, sales, production, public relations, etc. These departments, created by and for the organization itself, remain under central management.

 

The Trigger Effect

But there is a complementary principle on which the organization of systems and subsystems depends, namely the trigger effect, by which a small energy can control a large energy. Thus when we drive a car we are controlling some 50-200 horsepower and 3000 pounds of matter at practically finger touch. Power steering, power brakes, or the butterfly valve of the carburetor trigger energy much greater than is required from the driver. It is not a different form of energy, as vitalism is interpreted to imply, but rather control of energy that makes this possible. In no case is there any violation of the laws of nature. Such control is only possible because of such laws and their control by the third derivative. (see part 1)  

Evidence for this is the plant's control of its own metabolism or the animal's control of digestion and voluntary motion. Even if we ignore man himself, we have evidence of control in the vast quantity of tools and machines, vehicles, devices for communication and regulation of temperature which technology makes available to him. Even the metaphor used to dismiss free will and purpose, which likens man to a machine, loses its force when we pull off its wrapping and look inside. There never was a machine that didn't have a purpose; and as I said elsewhere, there never was a purpose that didn't require a machine to carry it out.

Why this universal reluctance of modern enlightenment to recognize the very function that most characterizes us as human - our control of our environment (including our destruction of it)? We can't blame it all on scientists. The fealty the scientist once swore to experimental fact has been replaced by the more intellectually satisfying doctrine of determinism, with its promise of ultimate certainty. This is scientific ideal, right or wrong, and does not justify our making an idol of determinism. Is it because the use of control is so universal, like water to the fish, that we don't see it? Is it because we don't want to admit control because it would imply responsibility? Or is it because if we were to admit control, then this would imply the freedom of others to control us?

It is not the purpose of this essay to answer these questions of value judgment. I mention them only to call attention to an error in science, which is especially important because the meaning of science - which we have made a religion - would be quite different if these errors were corrected.

There remains an important link, perhaps the keystone of my whole argument. We can be certain there is a third derivative, and the evidence shows that life uses this third derivative to control the laws of nature, not all at once, but in steps. The first step is that made by plants of storing energy and moving against entropy. Entropy is the tendency of energy in molar matter to become more distributed, more unavailable - the tendency of stones to roll downhill, hot objects to cool, and everything to average out. It is the concentration of energy in water under pressure, in fossil fuel, in food, that supplies the fuel for machines and for living creatures. The next step is the control of this energy by animals.

But what is it that uses this energy? How do we answer the scientist who says there is no evidence for anything that could use such control?

Here we return to the quantum of action. Recall that I said at the beginning of part III that the reason for the importance of Planck's discovery is that it was science itself that established that activity is more basic than matter. The quantum of action uses the control. It is "spirit."

We might expect that a non-scientist, a spiritual teacher or a philosopher, would emphasize that spirit was prior to matter, or that consciousness was the origin of all. But the discovery by science that activity precedes matter, or is more basic than matter - like "man bites dog!" - is news. Again the quantum of action, while unpredictable and intangible, is a definite formulation, a distinct function with explanatory power. It cannot be dismissed as sentiment and morality, sermonized, idolized, and a source of hypocrisy.

Of course the quantum of action is not just an isolated fact; it was the core finding that created quantum physics, a major revolution in science whose implications beyond that field are yet to be felt.

This brings us to the crucial step. Granted the third derivative, and granted that the quantum of action is responsible for all chemical interaction as well as the creation of protons and electrons, can we turn ourselves around and, instead of thinking of the quantum of action as the uncertainty of the observer, think of it as the spontaneous (hence unpredictable) origin of the acts of the observed?

Objection: The quantum of action involves much too minute an energy to do anything to bodies larger than atoms, or rather than electrons within atoms.

Answer: The hierarchy of living organisms, together with the trigger effect, makes possible the control of large energies by the minute energy of the quantum.

Objection: Even so, how can this unpredictable action, indistinguishable from random activity, perform the precise functions necessary to life?

Answer: Because photons have a precise frequency, each photon has a precise function. Other factors are necessary, such as the free bath of energy at the temperatures in which life operates, but this energy is directed by the quantum of action.

Objection: Why does the random nature of all motion at this temperature not cancel the performance of any definite function? This bath of random energies would produce noise, not a bath of free energy.

Answer: The random movement of molecules, involving an energy of about 1/40 of an electron volt, provides a source of energy for the making and breaking of bonds in DNA and the proteins it creates. The DNA with its superconductive core, agitated by this random energy, resonates at its own precise frequencies, much as a wind instrument or organ pipe uses the movement of air to produce its own frequency, and like a radio oscillator can entrain the DNA in adjacent cells to coordinate their metabolism and growth.

Objection: These are speculations and do not conform to the well-founded principle that everything has a natural and objective cause.

Answer: It is just this principle that is under scrutiny. It does not hold in quantum phenomena, and should not be expected to hold for life, because, as was said, life Starts at the quantum level. The spontaneity of the quantum of action, alias uncertainty, may be a source of irritation to the scientist as accountant, but without it there would be no activity in the universe. In fact, since light creates particles, there would be no universe.  

 

Summary

Looking back we can now see that it was at the very beginning of modern science, with the failure to recognize the third derivative, that things went wrong. The discovery of the laws of motion was indeed a great step, and made possible the unique contribution of modern science, but this blinded us to the gift of freedom that the knowledge gave us and the responsibility that goes with it. Scientific discovery, continually pressured to strive for complete objectivity, and realizing that to learn the laws of nature one must stand aside and make no effort to interfere with the outcome of an experiment, inevitably led to a picture of nature as a structure frozen in time and space. Like the surface of a pond freezing into ice, it gradually closed in on man himself and left him a helpless prisoner. Like the activity of the particles he studied, his actions were the result of causes not his own. He too was an object.

This was of course before Planck's discovery of the quantum of action and the realization that it introduced a germ of uncertainty which could provide a loophole in the law, but still this "soft determinism" was not for the strong of heart. In this parade of fortitude - in the name of perfected science - no one thought to look back at where it all began, with the derivatives which had launched this grand undertaking. And no one thought to attend to the message of the third derivative - that the laws of nature were not a barrier to free will, but the very thing that made free will possible.

Now it is ironic, if not strange, that all the time, without admitting it to himself, man has been using control - benefiting from the body's control of its own metabolism, learning to stand up, to walk, and to drive automobiles, controlling machines and controlling nature - and always without violating nature's laws but by using them. Yet the mind of man, like a mirror in which you cannot see the back of your head, did not reveal this truth. The world is not just objects, it is a place for man to grow, to grow up.

 

Mathematics, Physics & Reality

 

Mindfire