By Deepak Chopra, MD, FACP, Menas Kafatos, Ph.D., Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor in Computational Physics, Chapman University, and Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy Professor of Neurology at Harvard University, and Director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).<\/p>\n
A breakthrough has occurred in explaining our universe that hasn\u2019t yet become mainstream. This is the concept of a living cosmos that did not need to evolve to produce life on Earth. Rather, all the elements characteristic of life were already present. They didn\u2019t become apparent until human beings developed self-aware minds. Humans have assumed that the constituents of life did not exist until some time in the history of our planet, which arbitrarily gave birth to life.
\nAn agreed upon theory of a living universe hasn\u2019t been formulated yet. That\u2019s what we\u2019ve started to do in this series of posts. However, as you explore the scientific literature in which speculative thinkers muse on the links that bind reality at every level, common patterns emerge. One that links different aspects of the cosmos to everyday life is what we term a trinity: Quarks, Quanta, and Qualia. It maps out a progression from the physical to the mental.
\nThe quantum revealed that the appearance of a solid, stable physical universe was not fundamental; at the finest level, creation is based upon invisible packets of energy, and a revolutionary theory, quantum mechanics, made it possible to better understand three out of the four fundamental forces in Nature with astonishing precision (the fourth being gravity, which is still elusive).
\nQuanta formed the bridge between what used to be thought of as completely different and opposite aspects of the universe, namely matter and energy. Subatomic particles exist at the transition between the vacuum state, and invisible domain of infinite potential, and visible creation. Quanta are themselves energy and matter. Quarks eventually emerged from quantum field theory (the successor to the original quantum theory) as the building blocks of the nucleus of the atom, what constitute matter itself. Even though quarks are quanta, for our purposes we can consider them as being more \u201csolid\u201d, while still acting as messengers of the fundamental forces.
\nTo date, quanta and quarks define the outlines of how the universe emerged, although there are other theories, such as General Relativity, needed to complete the picture. For a scientist working in the scheme of \u201cphysicalism,\u201d which holds that all phenomena can be explained through the interactions of matter and energy, the future consists of refining and unifying the findings of quantum physics.
\nThe Three-in-One State
\nMatter and energy aren\u2019t enough to explain the universe. We propose that a third element must be added \u2013 Qualia \u2013 before anything approaching a unified description of reality will ever be possible. Efforts to devise the so-called Theory of Everything will come up woefully short if the third part of the trinity, consciousness, is left out. While the old quantum theory opened the door to consciousness, it is now time to make better sense of the unified whole, and consciousness does that.
\nPhysicalists take consciousness as a given. They have no explanation for the emergence of mind; the transformation of atoms and molecules into mental events \u2013 feelings, sensations, wishes, dreams, scientific theories \u2013 goes unexplained. Mental events can be unified as Qualia, a term for all subjective perception. It is undeniable that we know the universe through subjective experience. Science itself is a subjective experience, despite the attempt to isolate and reduce objective facts and expel subjectivity.
\nIt\u2019s time to realize that subjectivity is the elephant in the room. It must be taken into account. Setting aside any other argument, the most basic reason for Qualia science is that, in the words of the late physicist John Wheeler, we live in a participatory universe. What does our participation consist of? Three things: observer, observed, and the process of observation. Quantum theory has wrestled with the latter two for a century, ever since it became invalid to treat waves and particles as fixed things \u201cout there,\u201d apart from the observer effect. The observer changes what he observes. That\u2019s been undeniable in quantum mechanics for many decades. But the observer effect is often brushed aside as a minor glitch or as a factor that can be worked around.
\nWe propose a three-in-one model that unites observer, observed, and process of observation. Their unity exists naturally, in our own experience. Hard as it is for physicalists to accept, there is no sunset, cloud, mountain, electron, or galaxy independent of a unified state that must include an observer and the process of observation. The total inadmissibility of this idea is a mark of how necessary it is. Science doesn\u2019t describe reality (even Stephen Hawking has attested to this), it describes phenomena that fit various theories. It\u2019s the map, not the territory.
\nThe territory is reality, which is one and only, an undivided wholeness. What humans experience constitutes reality, since by definition whatever we can\u2019t experience is inconceivable. We aren\u2019t referring only to the five senses. As Peter Wilberg, one of the most astute and gifted qualia theorists, has explained, we don\u2019t see because we have eyes. Eyes are physical organs that evolved to serve the mind\u2019s desire to see. Mind comes first. It reaches out to experience reality through qualia, which embrace the five senses along with sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts in the mind.
\nAs alien as it sounds to put mind first, one\u2019s sense of strangeness reflects our habitual view of things. As long as materialism dominates, physicalists will always agree that the eye precedes sight, the brain the mind, and so on. It\u2019s in the nature of new theories, when they are truly revolutionary, to overturn the existing paradigm. In his groundbreaking writing on perception, cognitive scientist Donald D. Hoffman has offered a model of perception that places the individual mind, which he calls a \u201cconscious agent,\u201d at the center of the reality. That is, he begins with experience as the measure of what exists. Wilberg takes perception even further, asserting that when we feel that something around us reflects a certain mood (the optimism of dawn, the cheerfulness of spring, the gloom of a dark, low-hanging clouds), it isn\u2019t possible to claim that the mood belongs only to the observer or that it is separate from the thing being observed. The founders of quantum theory intuitively felt the same way, as attested by Schr\u00f6dinger, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli. Later on, Eugene Wigner and John von Neumann went even further – they claimed that consciousness was necessary to resolve the fundamental quantum measurement problem (i.e., the problem of how to account for the way that an observer effects what he observes.)
\nWhen qualia are fully understood, reality is three-in-one. The progression of quarks-quanta-qualia reflects the history of science. Discoveries unfolded in a line from the more inert and physical to the more subjective. But this should be reversed to qualia-quanta-quarks, which recognizes the undeniable fusion of observer-observed-process of observation. This reversal maps the natural way in which the universe becomes aware.
\nFor anyone who can loosen their loyalties to the current scientific paradigm, the three-in-one model of nature isn\u2019t opposed to current science; it\u2019s more expanded and inclusive. Therefore, we consider it the natural next step. For example, in Nature it is self-evident that there is creation and destruction. The new cannot come about unless the old gives way. But creation and destruction are not isolated opposites randomly crashing into each other. They are connected. Through their connection, an emerging new thing takes into account information from the old thing. You can see this as you read a sentence. As one word passes out of sight and a new one appears, there is a stream of connection, known as meaning. The first word looks to the second word, and the second looks back at the first. \u201cThe-black-bear-is-climbing-a-tree. \u201c \u201cThe\u201d tells you that a noun is coming. \u201cBlack tells you that the noun hasn\u2019t arrived yet, but since \u201cthe\u201d is still in mind, you await the noun, which arrives with \u201cbear\u201d and completes the phrase.
\nThe point isn\u2019t that one word has to follow another in a linear sentence. The point is that the appearance of new words, following on the disappearance of old words, builds a self-organized structure. From this simple example we see how the human brain is organized as an evolving organ. It operates as a feedback loop that integrates past, present, and future experiences. They form a dynamic process that keeps consuming itself and expanding into new life. This process occurs physically in the brain structures studied by neuroscientists. But without a mind to organize everything, the brain has no reason or ability to evolve. The passage of time is irrelevant; the same blue-green algae that emerged at the beginning of life have remained unchanged for billions of years.
\nYet even one-celled organisms respond to the world by breathing, eating, dividing, heading for the light, and so on. Those responses were the first links in the feedback loop that eventually gave rise to the physical brain. Every experience is qualia, including the experience of blue-green algae. Thus we have a common link that can unify all phenomena that the mind can conceive of. Qualia medicine could one day explain spontaneous remission of cancer, for example. Cancer is marked by numerous changes at the genetic level, including complex changes in the \u201cjunk DNA\u201d (formally known as \u201cnon-coding DNA\u201d) that comprises over 96% of the human genome. Genes respond to the environment around them, which includes all the incoming information that passes from the bloodstream through the cell membrane. That information is controlled by the brain, and the brain is the processing center for all thoughts, feelings, sensations, and images \u2013 qualia. The feedback loop closes in a dynamic, ever-changing circle that includes qualia at every level. Medical science has taken thirty years to accept the validity of the mind-body connection. Once it takes the next step into qualia, the difference between disease and wellness can be understood with the inclusion of personal experience. Present mind-body phenomena like the placebo effect, or the increased risk of illness caused by depression, will expand. Instead of being peripheral to \u201creal\u201d medicine (i.e., drugs and surgery), the mind-body connection will be central to prevention and wellness.
\nWe\u2019ve presented here only a sketch of the possibilities. A living universe must be considered as a strong possibility. It already is among far-seeing scientists. The library of books about a self-organizing cosmos is growing. Consciousness is no longer a taboo subject at scientific conferences. What\u2019s lacking is a unifying model for the countless things that remain unexplained by physicalism. It may sound incredible that the entire universe is the product of mind, whether we are speaking metaphorically as Einstein did (\u201cI want to know the mind of God\u2019 everything else is just details\u201d) or literally, as qualia theory does. But science proceeds by accepting the simplest hypothesis that fits what needs to be explained. As a three-in-one state, reality can be explained far more simply, we claim, than using random chance and bouncing particles to explain the emergence of the mind\u2019s richness, creativity, and intelligence.<\/p>\n