Recent Advances in Post-Quantum Physics

Newton's mechanics in the 17th Century increased the lethality of artillery. Thermodynamics in the 19th led to the steam-powered Industrial Revolution in the UK. Maxwell's unification of electricity, magnetism and light gave us electrical power, the telegraph, radio and television. The discovery of quantum mechanics in the 20th century by Planck, Bohr, Einstein, Schrodinger, Heisenberg led to the creation of the atomic and hydrogen bomb as well as computer chips and the world-wide-web and Silicon Valley's multi-billion dollar corporations. The lesson is that breakthroughs in fundamental physics, both theoretical and experimental have always led to profound technological wealth-creating new industries and will continue to do so. There is now a new revolution brewing in quantum mechanics that can be divided into three periods. The first quantum revolution was from 1900 to about 1975. The second quantum information/computer revolution was from about 1975 to 2015. The early part of this story is told by MIT Professor David Kaiser in his award-winning book how a small group of Berkeley/San Francisco physicists triggered that second revolution. The third quantum revolution is how an extension of quantum mechanics has led to the understanding of consciousness as a natural physical phenomenon that can emerge in many material substrates not only in our carbon-based biochemistry. In particular, this new post-quantum mechanics will lead to naturally conscious artificial intelligence in nano-electronic machines as well as extending human life spans to hundreds of years and more. This development is not far off and is fraught with opportunities and dangers, just like nuclear power and genetic engineering

Information and symmetry: Adumbrating the abstract core of complex systems

Information and symmetry are essential theoretical concepts that underlie the scientific explanation of a variety of complex systems. In spite of clear-cut developments around both concepts, their intersection is really problematic, either in fields related to mathematics, physics, and chemistry, or even more in those pertaining to biology, neurosciences, and social sciences. The present Special Issue explores recent developments, both theoretical and applied, in most of these disciplines

Some resonances between Eastern thought and Integral Biomathics in the framework of the WLIMES formalism for modelling living systems

Forty-two years ago, Capra published “The Tao of Physics” (Capra, 1975). In this book (page 17) he writes: “The exploration of the atomic and subatomic world in the twentieth century has …. necessitated a radical revision of many of our basic concepts” and that, unlike ‘classical’ physics, the sub-atomic and quantum “modern physics” shows resonances with Eastern thoughts and “leads us to a view of the world which is very similar to the views held by mystics of all ages and traditions.“ This article stresses an analogous situation in biology with respect to a new theoretical approach for studying living systems, Integral Biomathics (IB), which also exhibits some resonances with Eastern thought. Stepping on earlier research in cybernetics1 and theoretical biology,2 IB has been developed since 2011 by over 100 scientists from a number of disciplines who have been exploring a substantial set of theoretical frameworks. From that effort, the need for a robust core model utilizing advanced mathematics and computation adequate for understanding the behavior of organisms as dynamic wholes was identified. At this end, the authors of this article have proposed WLIMES (Ehresmann and Simeonov, 2012), a formal theory for modeling living systems integrating both the Memory Evolutive Systems (Ehresmann and Vanbremeersch, 2007) and the Wandering Logic Intelligence (Simeonov, 2002b). Its principles will be recalled here with respect to their resonances to Eastern thought

Dreaming Consciousness Explored

OneiromanticsTM-the symbolic language of dreams-involves a process of decoding and classifying dream imagery appearing in an entangled state.  Oneiromantics, generated in a dream series, enfolded a body of scientific data which exceeded the dreamer's waking knowledge. The series of dreams spanning over two decades of study and translation were based on Intuitive Logic, the author's practice for unifying conceptual representations of mind and matter. Formed within the subconscious structure of visual associative recognition memory, the practice of Intuitive Logic yields a web of interrelated associations germane to aspects of David Bohm's Implicate Order. From the perspective of Bohm's quantum interconnectedness, this study consists of synergistic aspects of dreams and waking relevant to constructing the "whole." Bohm's implicate order of wholeness, illustrated in this study as a Collective Unconscious network, includes geological insights and Claudius Galen's pneumatic theory on visual perception. The hard problem of consciousness emerges, concluding in Complex Systems that integrate mental and physical functions within dreaming and waking consciousness. The following study explores the nature of consciousness as derived from the application of intuitive logic-which I suggest is an aspect of quantum cognition. The quantum implications of multiple symbols in the overall dream series transcended this author's waking knowledge. The precision of certain images and their correlation to actual scientifically recorded events may serve as a catalyst to experts in those areas

The negative way to sentience

While the materialist paradigm is credited for the incredible success of science in describing the world, to some scientists and philosophers there seems to be something about subjective experience that is left out, in an apparently irreconcilable way. I show that indeed a scientific description of reality faces a serious limitation, which explains this position. On the other hand, to remain in the realm of science, I explore the problem of sentient experience in an indirect way, through its possible physical correlates. This can only be done in a negative way, which consists in the falsification of various hypotheses and the derivation of no-go results. The general approach I use here is based on simple mathematical proofs about dynamical systems, which I then particularize to several types of physical theories and interpretations of quantum mechanics. Despite choosing this scientifically-prudent approach, it turns out that various possibilities to consider sentience as fundamental make empirical predictions, ranging from some that can only be verified on a subjective basis to some about the physical correlates of sentience, which are independently falsifiable by objective means

Self-Organizing Biopsychosocial Dynamics and the Patient-Healer Relationship

The patient-healer relationship has an increasing area of interest for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) researchers. This focus on the interpersonal context of treatment is not surprising as dismantling studies, clinical trials and other linear research designs continually point toward the critical role of context and the broadband biopsychosocial nature of therapeutic responses to CAM. Unfortunately, the same traditional research models and methods that fail to find simple and specific treatment-outcome relations are similarly failing to find simple and specific mechanisms to explain how interpersonal processes influence patient outcomes. This paper presents an overview of some of the key models and methods from nonlinear dynamical systems that are better equipped for empirical testing of CAM outcomes on broadband biopsychosocial processes. Suggestions are made for CAM researchers to assist in modeling the interactions among key process dynamics interacting across biopsychosocial scales: empathy, intra-psychic conflict, physiological arousal, and leukocyte telomerase activity. Finally, some speculations are made regarding the possibility for deeper cross-scale information exchange involving quantum temporal nonlocality

Maxwell's demon and impossibility statements: Einstein on perpetuum mobile of the second kind

This paper discusses Maxwell's demon thought experiment. In recent years, there has been extensive research on Maxwell's demon. I first provide a detailed overview of important historical milestones of Maxwell's demon thought experiment. Einstein would often write about both relativity and thermodynamics. In this paper, I first argue that: 1. Einstein spoke of Perpetuum mobile of the second kind (a Maxwell's demon) in the context of the discovery of his relativity theory, the famous chasing a light beam thought experiment, and the contraction of lengths. 2. He would often compare relativity with thermodynamics. 3. When doing so, he would say that perpetual motion machines cannot exist. In the same category, no signal transmission faster than light is possible. 4. Einstein's approach in speaking of the principles of thermodynamics and relativity suggests that he was occupied with "impossibility statements". After discussing the essential aspects of Maxwell's demon and the different ways of excorcising the demon, I examine the role of "impossibility statements" in Maxwell's demon thought experiment

The negative way to sentience

While the materialist paradigm is credited for the incredible success of science in describing the world, to some scientists and philosophers there seems to be something about subjective experience that is left out, in an apparently irreconcilable way. I show that indeed a scientific description of reality faces a serious limitation, which explains this position. On the other hand, to remain in the realm of science, I explore the problem of sentient experience in an indirect way, through its possible physical correlates. This can only be done in a negative way, which consists in the falsification of various hypotheses and the derivation of no-go results. The general approach I use here is based on simple mathematical proofs about dynamical systems, which I then particularize to several types of physical theories and interpretations of quantum mechanics. Despite choosing this scientifically-prudent approach, it turns out that various possibilities to consider sentience as fundamental make empirical predictions, ranging from some that can only be verified on a subjective basis to some about the physical correlates of sentience, which are independently falsifiable by objective means