Quantum Evolution: Life in the Multiverse

McFadden begins with a discussion of what defines life. He concludes that "directed action" is a key notion. This is something analogous to the appearance of "will" in humans or higher animals. Moreover this directed action takes place all the way down to the microscopic level within organisms. Organisms are characterized by order via directed action at scales large and small.Prior to presenting the core arguments for quantum effects in life, McFadden reviews evolution and DNA replication. He also looks at the different theories for the origin of life. On his way toward providing his own answer, McFadden next takes a closer look at biochemistry, showing that as you drill down into particular biological functions you find they are driven by directed movements of individual protons or electrons via the electromagnetic force. This puts us squarely in the domain of physics, specifically quantum physics.McFadden presents his own very readable summary of QM, leaning heavily on the two-slit experiment as a heuristic device. His strategy is to show that quantum measurements are happening at the micro-level in living systems. He gives an example of an enzyme action that ultimately depends on a single proton, which we know must be in a superposition of states absent measurement. So, a living system must be measuring itself. His view is that the classical world depends generally on continual measurement for its manifestation. This discussion leads to the next key tool McFadden wants to use: the quantum Zeno effect (and inverse Zeno effect). This, he speculates, is what is responsible for directed action at the micro-level.With the review of QM in hand, he returns to a discussion of the origin of life and the question of how the first replicator was assembled (given the extreme improbability of it happening by chance). He theorizes that quantum superpositions could allow exploration of a large space of possibilities at the scale of an amino acid peptide chain. But the chances still seem small of making the self-replicator. However, harnessing the (inverse) Zeno effect could increase the probability. And, once you have a self-replicator, can we assume natural selection can do the rest of the job? No, there is still a big challenge here in getting a simple replicator to build the complex machinery of a cell. Moreover, in computer simulations, replicators tend to generate simpler systems, not more complex ones.McFadden speculates that if a system on the edge of the classical frontier repeatedly fell back into quantum superposition and took advantage of the inverse quantum Zeno effect, this could have added complexity. Still, we haven't been able to do anything like this in the lab.And yet, the case seems relatively more compelling that non-trivial quantum effects are being exhibited in living cells (even if they are difficult or impossible to directly detect). To give credence to the existence of these effects one can estimate that decoherence times would be lengthy enough for them to occur in the relevant context. Also, important to note is that it is only coherent systems are sensitive enough to be affected by the weak electromagnetic fields which are known to exist in the cellular realm. McFadden concludes the quantum/classical barrier exists at the sub-cellular level of biology, and that organisms are comprised of "quantum cells".Getting back once again to the definition of life, McFadden says the cell's ability to "capture" low entropy states to maintain order at the microscopic level via (internal) quantum measurements and the quantum Zeno effect is responsible for the distinctive directed action which characterizes life.In the final chapters, McFadden first reprises the discussion of the role of quantum effects in DNA mutation and adaptive evolution. Then, he closes with his theory of how quantum effects in the brain may be linked to human will and consciousness.On the one hand, this book consists of speculation stacked on speculation. On the other hand, each step progresses from features of physics or biochemistry that we know to be true. Between the spheres of quantum physics and the human mind lies the world of biology: I continue to look for arguments and evidence that biological systems have features that can bridge these realms. This book was a fine effort along this line.

JohnJoe McFadden, professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey, England identifies four major problems with Darwinian evolutionary theory. The first, and most well-known, is the gaps in the fossil record. These are often explained as simply an incomplete fossil record, however, as McFadden states: "... recent exhaustive studies of well-preserved species, such as marine snails, tend to support the view that, generally, evolution seems to hop and jump, rather than crawl." McFadden points out that some paleontologists such as Stephen Gould and Niles Eldridge have come up with a more compatible hypothesis called "punctuated equilibrium" which coincides more closely with the fossil record, however, many prominent evolutionary biologists including Richard Dawkins sees little in the way of a mechanism to account for these large jumps in the evolutionary tree. The second problem is the lack of precursors for the approximately one thousand protein families. McFadden states: "New protein families must have arisen from existing proteins by some kind of mutational process but how their sequence traversed this vast empty sequence space devoid of Darwinian intermediates is a mystery." The third problem is the irreducibility of metabolic pathways. McFadden gives the example of AMP (adenosine monophosphate) which is a precursor of ATP. Thirteen different enzymes are needed to synthesize AMP, yet there exist no evidence of advantageous precursors of this biochemical in other organisms. How these sequences happened within the present Darwinian theory of gradualism is difficult to explain. Finally, there is the problem of directionality of random mutations. Mutations happen blindly with no regard as to whether the mutation will be harmful or beneficial. Present evolutionary theory accounts for adaptive changes in the organisms through the process of natural selection. Those mutations which turn out to be advantageous to an organism will survive, and they will pass their genes onto the next generation. This is the bottom-up idea, in which changes happen randomly in the DNA. But there could possibly be something like a Lamarckian or top-down process as well. McFadden sites an experiment which lends credence to this idea: John Cairns of the Harvard School of Public Health incubated two cultures of E. coli. ("A" and "B"). Both cultures were deficient in an enzyme needed to metabolize lactose. He fed culture A only lactose, and he fed culture B a yeast extract that does not require the missing enzyme for metabolism. He was investigating whether or not there would be a difference in the rate of gene mutation between the two groups. Culture A went into a latent phase and grew very slowly as expected, and culture B thrived. To his surprise, the stressed culture A produced many more mutations for the specific gene responsible for the enzyme needed to metabolize lactose than culture B. The rate of mutation for other genes not related to the lactose enzyme were the same in both cultures, which suggests that there must have been a specific signal from the environment with caused a top down change in the DNA. These finding have been supported in other epigenetic research. McFadden believes that quantum theory could help fill in the gaps of evolutionary theory as well as explain how life originated. He readily admits the possibility that life originated by pure chance no matter how unlikely. If this is the case, then we would expect that we were the only life in the universe--a depressing proposition according to McFadden. Of course it is possible that life could have arisen only once in another part of the universe and our planet was "seeded" by a comet or some other means. This was one of the most successful attempts to unite quantum theory and biology.This review by David kreiter author of: "Confronting the Quantum Enigma: Albert, Niels, and John." (Avialable on Amazon)

The book is well-written and easy to understand. The author shows adaptive mutation to be very promising, but pays far too much homage to Darwin. You get the feeling though that the homage is made under duress of the academic tyranny, especially when he invokes the strong anthropic view to justify the absurd probabilities of random mutation and natural selection. The author would do better to say things like, human beings can perform genetic engineering, so isn't it rather arrogant to assume a living organism cannot apart from consciousness. And to those who say there is no mechanism to go from protein to the DNA, ask them how an ant colony works.

Un excellent ouvrage pour comprendre l'intime fonctionnement de la cellule .Une passionnante quête vers l’infiniment petit du vivant,si troublant,si difficile à saisir et à observer.

Keeps the reader engaged and enthralled by the gradual build up towards the fascinating propositions of the quantum world. Provides a different perspective to and a view on life.

You really get two books for the price of one. In each case, the author, a practicing scientist, has chosen to present the ideas in a popular science book rather than a published paper. We the readers are privileged to see cutting edge science in action.The first idea is to do with evolution. There are a few points where standard neo-Darwinian theory struggles, not least how self-replicating molecules such as RNA got started in the beginning. The standard response of neo-Darwinians is that we do not yet know the details of these steps, but they will fall into place just as other steps that used to seem difficult have become clear. The standard response of creationists and their less radical siblings is that God is required to explain these steps. For example, the previously atheist philosopher Anthony Flew came to believe in a kind of God in order to explain the initial step of evolution.In this book, Johnjoe McFadden puts forward a quantum mechanical extension to neo-Darwinian theory, which successfully explains these difficult steps. Just as a quantum computer can try out vast numbers of possible solutions to a maths problem that would be beyond the scope of any normal computer, so too quantum mechanics can try out vast numbers of possible self-replicators, or any of the other difficult steps in neo-Darwinism.To me, his arguments seem quite plausible, though it would be good to see them presented more mathematically and with less hand-waving. Certainly, they are worth considering seriously, as they have profound effects on evolution, theology, and the probability of finding life elsewhere in the universe. I think that some of the ideas, particularly around directed evolution of antibiotic resistance, sound as if they would be fairly easy to test scientifically.The second big idea in the book is to do with consciousness. McFadden puts forward an argument that the human brain is effectively a quantum computer, and that the quantum mechanical side of the brain is what generates consciousness. For me, this idea is weaker than his ideas around evolution. The mechanism he postulates for quantum computing in the brain is very heuristic and not very plausible. Moreover, I think he has misunderstood consciousness (admittedly rather an easy thing to do). Would a quantum computer be conscious? What about a simulation of a quantum computer on a classical computer? He relies very heavily on introspection, so thinks that there must be a single 'cartesian theatre' (my words not his) as that is how it feels to him, even though experiments tell a contrary much more parallel view. In my opinion, the chapter on consciousness should have been in a different book, and split more clearly into two separate ideas: that the brain works to some extent as a quantum computer; and that consciousness is a separate physical process in the brain.The first part of the book is much better, and certainly deserves five stars (I'd give more if I could). There are a few minor points where I think it could be improved.The presentation of the Youngs slits experiment as viewed by a frog is incorrect. If the frog were able to tell which slit the photon came from there would be no interference. This does not affect the argument as a whole, but it would be good to correct the error in a subsequent edition.The Kindle version is pretty unreadable because it has no pictures or figures. Also, some of the characters are represented in a weird way -- for example TB is called T?At the start of the book, McFadden tries to be kind to non-scientists by avoiding scientific notation. Planck's constant is written out as 0.0...06, for example. By the end of the book, he has given up on this. Much better to be consistent all the way through, and maybe explain the notation.Hard bits of science, such as quantum mechanics or the action of enzymes, are presented in passing as a digression in whichever chapter uses them first. This is rather charming, but I think the brevity of the explanations would leave non-scientists reeling. I would not recommend this book as your first introduction to quantum mechanics or chemistry.The presentation of the evolutionary ideas uses many worlds theory plus the anthropic principle. I can see that this works for steps directly leading to human intelligence, but I don't think it is appropriate for unrelated steps, such as antibiotic resistance or cancer. McFadden states that his ideas also work in other interpretations of quantum mechanics, but his explanations using the quantum zeno effect do not feel very rigorous.Finally I note that the first few chapters of this book are reproduced almost word for word in the later book 'Cosmo Sapiens' by John Hands. If I were the publisher of this book, I'd be looking carefully at the possibility of plagiarism.--------- edits following further investigation of the ideas contained in the bookThere is a detailed critique of the use of quantum mechanics, particularly the quantum zeno effect, in the later chapters of the book in a paper by Matthew J. Donald available on arxiv number 0101019, and a reply by Johnjoe and Jim Al-Khalili number 0110083. Both critique and response are well-written and investigate in far more depth the more hand-wavy parts of Quantum Evolution. Between them, they address many of my criticisms of the book, and are worth reading after you have read the book itself. They are freely available online, and you can skip the more technical parts without losing the gist of the argument.

Excellent book, very up to date and comprehensive, covering a wide range of scientific subjects related to the biological in physical explanation of what is life.

Simple and easy to understandWell written , wish to read more from author on this new frontier of quantum biology