Quantum coherence in biology:facts, fiction and challenges

K. Birgitta Whaley

Nicolaos E. Mavromatos, A. Keith Powell

Erhard Bieberich

D.O. Walter

Fictions are well established in the theory and practice of civil law; similar importance is here claimed for fictions in the theory and application of scientific law. A puzzle from quantum mechanics, previously referred to in this Journal [Am. J. Physiol. 238 (Regulatory Integrative Comp. Physiol. 7(: R277-R290, 1980], is reinterpreted by suggesting quantum logic as a source of relevant fictions, which indicate a solution to that puzzle. Another physiological application of quantum theory suggests that the concept of "the state of the brain" may, in its usual classical sense, not be useful for an individual brain--but may well be suggestively modeled by a quantum state. The notion of "myths," usually only pejoratively applied in positivistic writings, is suggested for rehabilitation, in view of their helpful function (often unnoticed) even in positivistic thinking. Finally, an example of a biological simulation (of a tumor by a cell culture) is presented, to show that its multilayered fictionalizations illustrate the surprising fact that a simulation that is insulated from the system being simulated can be logically more powerful than any uninsulated simulation.

Howard F. Gallup

Neil David Theise, Jack A. Tuszyński

Founders of quantum mechanics (QM) anticipated that revisions to classical physics due to strange elements of quantum reality, would necessitate similar changes in biology. Complexity theory, systems biology and quantum biology provide possible solutions indicating that subject/object separation is a useful fiction for reductive science. Direct correlates to such QM observational/measurement issues as Complementarity and Uncertainty may justify the introduction of an analog of Heisenberg's uncertainty and the Planck constant for living systems. The phase space of "adjacent possibles" for biological systems from which one "actual" is selected resembles the collapse of the QM wave function. Since biological systems are hierarchical, this occurs across organizational scales resulting in biological coherence. The location of a quantum/classical boundary is unclear due to complexity. Whether biological systems' characteristics arise directly from QM or are of a different origin remains unsettled. To combine non-linear with quantum properties across biological scales we propose the Method of Coherent Structures (MCS), developed for quantum many-body systems. In MCS, a higher-level scale provides a classical envelope for quantum fluctuations at the lower scale. It yields a seamless transition from non-linear classical fields to quantum excitations and accounts for the emergence of complexity by incorporating metabolic energy supply.