Quantum Life Science

A Subtle Revolution

'Ultimately, the science of the 20th century destroyed belief in a predictable universe.  The seminal work of Henri Poincare 
(a President of the French Academy of Sciences), Ed Lorenz (ForMemRS) and Robert May (FRS), showed that even in classical mechanics [ ... ] determinism became replaced
by that of chaotic evolution ... '

'In the 21st century we are still coming to terms
with this radical paradigm shift.' 

(Taken from the Royal Society webpage 'Uncertainty in Science') (30.11.2010).

A signature lack of definition

Whose revolution is it anyway?  There are a number of competing perspectives that might claim it - Fractal, Chaotic and Complex being the main players.  Complexity arises in the bounding of Fractally structured dynamic systems which are Chaotically driven, so they are all conceptual schemas, in truth, which are both manifestly and manifoldly embedded within each other.  Emerging naturally, i.e., logically, from these principles comes subtlety, an effect of scaling within manifold phenomenological systems, i.e., the 'butterfly effect' as it is now commonly understood. 

For science the veridical status of structured or deterministic chaos as being sufficient to claim the 'radical paradigm shift' that is required to declare revolution cannot by any science today be denied or remain unacknowledged, especially when this has been institutionally confirmed for UK science (at least) by the Royal Society, as quoted above.

That there is a scientific revolution in process is not in question here in so far as Fractal Geometry and Chaos Theory - which together constitute Complexity Theory - today inform all the sciences.  What is still in question, strangely, is the real scale of the revolution and, somewhat more importantly, what it is ultimately going to mean, for science and, indeed, for us all.

Johnson (2007) spells this out in his exploration of the early work in complexity theory:  ' ... Complexity, an emerging science which looks set to trigger the next great wave of advances in everything from medicine and biology through to economics and sociology.'  He goes on to readily acknowledge the lack of definition:  'We don't yet have a fully-fledged "theory" of Complexity ... ' 'Complexity Science is still being developed ... '.  With the first decade of this century as the main period of wider disciplinary development in this field, he goes on to explain that naturally 'Some of the territory is only just beginning to be explored, with very few answers available for the questions being posed.  From the perspective of other scientific revolutions throughout history this might seem to be par for the course.' 

Indeed Johnson (2007), in the first chapter of his book on complexity, opens with the question of definition and explains:  'Complexity is not easy to define.  Worse still, it can mean different things to different people.  Even among scientists, there is no unique definition ...'.  By the end of his book (p. 211), Johnson reports that for this emerging and seemingly fundamental and profound science, it is still our most fundamental discipline that has yet to fully come to terms, where ' ... the answer to building a true Theory of Complexity is currently a bridge too far for Physics.'  

He goes on to offer his own working definition:  ' ... Complexity Science can be seen as the study of the phenomena which emerge from a collection of interacting objects.'  That, it has to be said, is possibly the barest and most minimal description that might be offered.  Others would suggest that Complexity automatically requires Fractal structuralism, Chaotic driving and feedback loops that enable the emergence of a sensitive and responsive - and, therefore, complex - system.     

What is interesting about the emergent behaviours of complex systems is the natural cross-over with cybernetic interest:  'This represents a universal feature of Complex Systems:  emergent phenomena can arise without the need for an "invisible hand".  Instead, the collection of objects is able to self-organise itself in such a way that the phenomenon appears all by itself ...'.  Invisible 'steersmanship' is what cybernetics, theoretically, is all about.

Johnson (2007) briefly discusses the meaning of complexity for fundamental science, fundamental physics in particular:  'When you get down to the level of atoms, the range of emergent phenomena is simple breathtaking.  Electrons are negatively charged particles which typically orbit the nucleus in an atom.  However, if you put together a large collection of such electrons, you will uncover a wealth of exotic crowd effects:  from superconductivity through to effects such as the so-called Fractional Quantum Hall Effect and Quantum Phase Transitions.'  He goes on to point out that just such 'quantum crowd effect' phenomena underpin the developmental promise of quantum computing.   

'Complexity Science is a double-edged sword in the best possible sense.  It is truly "big science" in that it embodies some of the hardest, most fundamental and most challenging open problems in academia.'  Johnson (2007) then goes on to give a relatively simple example of complexity in action that is in fact the three body problem or three-system parallel processing.  [Worth noting that whilst this is proving taxing for our theorists, modelling the cell will in fact require five-system parallel processing.  So some way to go in terms of the main research frontier that could help here.]

Chaotic Life

For the life sciences, identifying the telomere as a qubit might at first seem somewhat shocking, but of course it is no more than a logical resultant when working with the possibility of a cosmological philosophy wherein the universe itself, as a totality, is understood as a computational system, such as is proposed by Vlatko Vedral and Seth Lloyd, for instance.  As such, all systems within are then too, necessarily, also computational systems, living systems included. 

Various eminent universities around the world are currently involved in quantum computing research and seek to progress by building huge, relatively clumsy and expensive machines to capture, trap and control a single atom.  Whilst almost every discipline you can think of is invited to contribute, you will in fact find very few biologists on such teams and it seems they have overlooked the fact that in living systems nature has to begin - and continue - working at the atomic or quantum scale.

It is unfair perhaps to upbraid the 'hard' disciplines for this oversight when, of course, the biologists have done little or nothing to generate a physical understanding of living systems phenomenology.  The simplest way to make clear what is meant here is that whilst the life sciences use analytical techniques such as gel electrophoresis to process cellular components, e.g., proteins, by means of their signature charge/mass relations, there is still no established accompanying biological theory that recognises that fact as being fundamental to the existence and working of living systems. 

Work is a word owned by physics and we cannot hope to understand how living systems work until the biologists accept that fact.  Living systems are emergent phenomena and as such can only be understood by examining the embedding realm that gave rise to them.  Truly we are evolved within the crucible of the earth's physics.  We have to transcend the discipline somehow, i.e., you cannot understand biology by doing biology.  Currently biology continues as a naming of parts, with prizes given solely for the identification of the characters and an outline of the plot.  The 'action' or motive forces of each player, however, are - by most - allowed to remain a mystery.

The shock of suggesting that living systems have foundation in quantum computing rests mostly in our limited experience and knowledge of the latter.  This is matched by the physicist's limited experience and knowledge of living systems and, more profoundly, limited experience and knowledge of living systems as physical systems.

Happily, and as has long been expected in the absence of movement from the biological community, the physicists are concertedly turning their attention to living systems analysis and it is the opening of this perspective that might be called revolutionary.  

[* As a measure for the lifetime of ideas in academe we can use a rule of thumb time step of ~ 15 years as this serves well to map the life history any career scientist:  the first 15 years after qualification is spent earning research and establishing identity as a player; the next 15 years are spent earning establishment status, whether this be by agreement with the mainstream or by offering challenge; the final 15 years of the average career are then spent in hopefully Emeritus Professorhood, offering up an overview of the field and finding wider context, establishment perspective or not.]