Darwin’s theory of evolution was conceived in the age of classical physics and it is an expression of the materialist-mechanistic worldview of its time. Like Newton’s mechanics, Darwin’s theory describes the visible surface of things, but it misses out on important phenomena at the molecular basis (Joseph, 2009). As a consequence, modern evolution theory, which is largely based on Darwinian ideas, is completely left out of the current paradigms of physics and chemistry, even though biology is based on their laws. It is the purpose of this paper to describe this inconsistency and some of its consequences.

2. The Ontology of Quantum Theory

Our new understanding of natural sciences is based on quantum theory. According to the standard interpretation of this theory a transempirical domain of reality exists, which does not consist of material things but of transmaterial forms. Even though these forms are transempirical, they are real, because they have the potential – Aristotelian potentiality – to manifest themselves in the empirical world. Thus, physical reality appears to us in two domains: potentiality and actuality. Physics posits that the forms in the realm of potentiality are waves – potentiality waves (Villars, 1987). Since the waves are contiguous, the nature of reality is that of an indivisible Wholeness, in which all things are interconnected.

The claim that a transempirical part of physical reality exists seems at first sight self-contradictory. However, it is suggested by numerous empirical phenomena. Since I have given detailed descriptions elsewhere (Schäfer 1997, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009; Schäfer, Valadas-Ponte und Roy, 2009a,b), only a short summary shall be presented here.

3. Potentiality Waves

The concept of Aristotelian potentiality was first introduced into the description of quantum reality by Werner Heisenberg (([1958] 2000; 1962). This view suggests that the quantum mechanical state vector represents a network of potentialities governed by Schrödinger dynamics. Accordingly, a microphysical object can exist in a state that is not a state of actuality, but potentiality, where the state vector introduces something "standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event" (Heisenberg 1962, 41). In such a state a particular property of a system, such as the position in space, does not have a single actual value but a multiplicity of potential values (Villars 1984, 1987). The actuality emerges out of the potentiality by controlled or uncontrolled acts of measurement – that is, irreversible interactions of a microphysical potentiality state with a macroscopic object or environment. As Heisenberg described it (1962, 54): "The observation … selects of all possible events the actual one that has taken place. … Therefore, the transition from the 'possible' to the 'actual' takes place during the act of observation." Thus, in the act of observation a transition is made between two different modalities of being; i.e., from potentiality to actuality. Since, in the very act needed to observe it, a state of potentiality ceases to exist, it follows that potentiality states are transempirical.

As an example, consider the state of an electron in a double-slit single-particle interference experiment immediately prior to its detection by a position sensitive detector, say a photodiode array. In this state, the electron has a certain freedom of choice, where to hit the detector, so that its position on the detector has many potential values. Villars' terminology (1987) can be applied, stating that this electron is a "potentiality wave", that is, "microphysical objects are waves of potential observation interactions" (Villars 1987, 148). When the measurement is actually performed, one of the potential observation interactions contained in the potentiality wave becomes the actual one; the particle appears in a specific channel, and the potentiality wave has ceased to exist.

The principle that actuality emerges out of potentiality by interactions of potentiality states with the environment applies to everything: The visible world is an actualization out of a realm of potentiality that exists in physical reality. That is, reality appears to us in two domains: potentiality and actuality.

4. Virtual States.

Another class of transempirical entities is found in the empty states of material systems. Under normal conditions, atoms and molecules exist in stationary states. Quantum theory posits that every system consists not only of the state that it occupies when it is observed, but also of countless other states that are empty. Quantum chemists call empty states virtual. When a given atom or molecule is in its ground state, the higher states also exist, but not as empirical entities, because they are empty: there is nothing there to see. They exist in the sense that their mathematical order is part of the constitution of the system, contains its empirical possibilities, and is a priori predictable. Virtual states are mathematical forms, patterns of information, but they are more than mere formulae, because they have the potential to manifest themselves in the empirical world.

I will not enter into the discussion here, as to whether or not virtual states are real, since I have presented a detailed analysis elsewhere (Schäfer, 2008). In short, it can be proposed that virtual states are real because they participate in and control empirical phenomena – such as spectroscopic transitions and chemical reactions – before they are actual states. Thus, even though they are transempirical, virtual states are real and elements of the realm of potentiality in physical reality.

5. Transempirical, Transmaterial and Transpersonal Wholeness.

The nature of the entities of the realm of potentiality cannot be known to us, because they are transempirical, like Kant’s noumena. We have to rely on intuitions that arise from various constellations in quantum physics, in order to contemplate, what the realm of potentiality might be like. Important indications derive, for example, from quantum chemistry, where Schrödinger’s mechanics is currently the only quantum formalism that allows one to calculate the properties of polyatomic molecules. In Schrödinger’s mechanics, the electrons in atoms and molecules are not material particles, but standing waves. The nature of these waves is that of potentiality waves and their squared magnitudes determine probabilities of presence. For this reason Heisenberg ([1958] 2000, 78) has called them "probability functions". Probability functions are empty; carry no matter or energy, just information on numerical relations. Thus, if one pursues the nature of matter to its roots, at the level of atoms and molecules all of a sudden one finds oneself in a realm of mathematical forms where the notion of matter begins to be lost and actuality turns into potentiality. In this way one is led to the view that transempirical reality is also transmaterial.

The non-classical coherence of states in the realm of potentiality suggests that the nature of reality is that of indivisible Wholeness. Everything that comes out of the Wholeness belongs to the Wholeness, including our consciousness. This aspect of physical reality has led countless physicists, among them Arthur Stanley Eddington (1929, 276; 1939, 151), James Jeans (1931, 158), David Bohm ([1980] 1981, 11), Menas Kafatos and Robert Nadeau (1990), Hans-Peter Dürr (2000, 18; 2004, 102), Hans-Jürgen Fischbeck (2005), and others, to the conclusion that spirit or consciousness is a cosmic property. "Matter is not made up of matter," writes Hans-Peter Dürr, long-time coworker of Werner Heisenberg, "basically there is only spirit" (Dürr 2000, 18). If one adopts this view, it follows that transempirical and transmaterial wholeness is also transpersonal; transcending, that is, our personal consciousness.

From the nature of reality, as it appears to us in the quantum phenomena, several conclusions follow for the nature of life and its evolution, which contradict basic hypotheses of modern neo-Darwinian evolution theory. Here I refer specifically to a complex of neo-Darwinian principles, which can be summarized in the following way: New species emerge gradually in the accumulation of small genetic changes in existing life forms, and never in jumps (Darwin, 1859, 1971). Genetic changes are random; that is, driven by chance, and neither an organism nor factors outside of it exert any control over what kind of mutation is made, and when it is made. Genetic changes are tested by natural selection, which is based on segregative principles, such as selfishness and competition, as primary principles of processes in which the struggle for survival among competing genes, individuals and species leads to the marginalization or extinction of the less successful participants. Finally, the central dogma (Crick 1970) of molecular biology holds, which states that the character of an organism is the result of the actions of its genes.

6. The Importance of Virtual States.

From the summary given above it is apparent that physics and chemistry are undergoing a paradigm change. In this situation it is puzzling that biology, which is based on the laws of physics and chemistry, completely excuses itself from this process. For example, even though quantum theory has shown that a mechanistic and materialistic description of reality is impossible, biologist Kenneth R. Miller writes in the context of a discussion of the theses of Douglas Futuyama (1999, 168): "Science, by this analysis, is mechanism and materialism. And all that Darwin did was to show that mechanism and materialism applied to biology, too. As I hope the preceding chapters have shown, there is something very right about this."

The basis of life is molecular, molecules are quantum systems, they exist in quantum states and their chemical reactions involve transitions from occupied states to empty states. Important aspects are missed when such simple conditions are disregarded. For example, when Richard Dawkins writes that "mutations are caused by definite physical events; they don’t just spontaneously happen" (Dawkins [1986] 1996, 306), he omits an important degree of freedom that molecules have; i.e., the ability to undergo spontaneous changes of state.

Mutations that are caused by mutagens – material or energetic factors – can be called stimulated. But the quantum properties of molecules show that there must also be mutations not caused by such factors, in which a group of nucleotides populates one of their virtual states for no empirically discernible reason. We call such a process spontaneous, meaning that it is not caused by a factor in the empirical domain of reality. The important aspect here is that, when mutations depend on the properties of virtual states, the center of biological evolution is shifted away from the realm of material objects, i.e., the genes, to the transmaterial realm of potentiality, where entirely new possibilities arise. Nobody can state a priori that such factors are not relevant for biology.

In his paper, Three Levels of Emergent Phenomena, Terrence Deakon writes (2001, 4): "Biological evolution presents us with some of the most dramatic cases of … spontaneous order from chaos." Similarly (2001, 8): "Creating something from nothing is an important part of what the universe is about, and some of the most intriguing examples of this curious process are what define us as living thinking beings."

Such views are widely accepted among neo-Darwinians, but they neglect completely the fact that molecular systems cannot jump out of an occupied state into nothing, but only into other, already existing virtual states. Thus, the emergence of complex order in the biosphere is not out of nothing, but due to the actualization of a virtual order that already exists before it is manifested as an empirical order.

In his paper, The Unknown, the Unknowable, and Free Will as a Religious Obligation, Robert Pollack writes (2001, 7): "Facts from science tell us … that our species – with all our appreciation of ourselves as unique individuals – is not the creation of design, but the result of accumulated errors." In contrast to this view is the fact that, in living cells, the synthesis of genes – DNA molecules – is a quantum process; that is, the outcome of a particular event is unpredictable. Thus, when a particular stretch of DNA is synthesized, the probability may be overwhelming that the product is the same as the starting material, but this outcome is not necessary. If the product is different than expected, this does not mean that an error was made. Jacques Monod’s characterization of the process, in terms of chance and necessity (Monod, 1972), is completely off the mark: in the synthesis of a single molecule there is no necessity.

7. The Evolution of Life in a holistic Reality

Life is not evolving in a vacuum but within the order of the universe. Thus, it is a manifestation of universal order and not a violation of it. Specifically, if the nature of reality is that of an indivisible Wholeness, it is unlikely that the evolution of life is driven by segregative principles, such as competition and selfishness, as primary principles in processes of marginalization and extinction (Joseph, 2009). In this regard, too, the neo-Darwinian worldview is unrealistic.

Indeed, details are increasingly becoming known (Bauer, 2008; Lipton, 2005; Woese 2002), which show that the evolution of complex life forms is based on symbiotic principles, such as communication and biological cooperativity (Joseph, 2009). Not the ploys of "selfish genes" come into play, as Richard Dawkins claims (Dawkins [1976] 1999), but the fundamental biological principles of the genome are "cooperativity, communication, and creativity" (Bauer, 2008, 17).

The driving force in early cellular evolution was not the rivalry of "replicators", as Dawkins claims – "There was a struggle for existence among replicator varieties. … These proto-carnivores simultaneously obtained food and removed competing rivals." (Dawkins [1976] 1999, 19) –, but different systems shared information in gene transfer processes (Joseph, 2009). Innovation was not the achievement of a few ruthless operators, which eliminated the competition, but a communal project. "The high level of novelty required to evolve cell designs is a product of communal invention, of the universal HGT (horizontal gene transfer) field, not intralineage variation. It is the community as a whole, the ecosystem, which evolves" (Woese, 2002, 8742).

In all advances of the complexity of life, cooperativity and the sharing of resources were the primary principles, not strife and combat among cannibals. For example, eukaryotes evolved from Archaean Cells, when the latter accepted prokaryotic bacteria inside their system as organelles (mitochondria and chloroplasts) in order to cope with the rising oxygen content of the atmosphere (Bauer, 2008, 52). In this process both, respiratory (oxygen consuming) and photosynthetic (oxygen producing) organisms were formed. Thus, this development was not that of "lone warriors (neither lone-warrior individuals, nor lone-warrior species)," as the neo-Darwinians claim, but it was the development "of biological systems" (Bauer, 2008, 54). Cooperativity and the willingness to share were in all developments of complexity necessarily involved; for example, when multicellular organisms evolved from single cells, and when individuals formed social groups. And we will need these principles even more intensely, when we want to establish on this planet a truly globalized social order.

It is true that Darwinism and its modern versions do not deny the importance of cooperativity and altruism. But, in Darwinism, altruism is not the primary principle of a holistic reality, but it evolves in secondary processes as "optimized strategies in the struggle for survival" (Bauer, 2008, 15). As Richard Dawkins writes ([1982] 1999, 291) on altruism: "Biologists use the word in a restricted (some would say misleadingly so) sense, only superficially related to common usage. An entity, such as a baboon or a gene, is said to be altruistic if it has the effect (not purpose) of promoting the welfare of another entity, at the expense of its own welfare."

The coherence of natural phenomena in a holistic reality is also apparent from the fact that mutations are not entirely random and driven by chance – that is, disconnected from any coherent order – but "cells may have mechanisms for choosing which mutations will occur" (Cairns, Overbeck and Miller, 1988, 142). The experiments of Barbara McClintock revealed "programmed responses to threats that are initiated within the genome itself," indicating that "a genome may reorganize itself when faced with a difficulty for which it is unprepared" (McClintock, 1983, 180). Therefore, the evolution of life does not proceed by way of gradual, stepwise, and completely random mutations, whose accumulation leads to new species in a linear process, but it proceeds in "surges" (Bauer 2008, 16) – quantum leaps (Gould, 2002), as it were – in which "the self-modification of organisms follows identifiable principles, which are laid out in the biological system itself" (Bauer, 2008, 66), and not in randomness and chance. "Species formations are the work of an inherent dynamic, which is laid out in a given genome. Living systems are not just victims of evolution, but they act in it" (Bauer, 2008, 188).

In this context Bauer (2008, 72) characterizes biological processes in a way, that is reminiscent of quantum processes: "On the one hand, biological processes are subject to laws … On the other, all biological systems display considerable tolerance – within the limited bandwidth set by the structure of a given species – so that processes in the single case can take a varied course." These are exactly the properties of quantum processes. On the one hand, quantum leaps, for example, are subject to certain lawfulness; on the other, they depend on chance in the sense that they can occur without any actual causes that exist in the empirical world. As a consequence, the outcome of a single quantum event is unpredictable, but the appearance of a multiplicity of repeated events follows a quasi-deterministic, pre-determined order. The quantum indeterminacy of single molecular processes – like the synthesis of a gene – allows precisely the "tolerance" which seems a characteristic of the evolution of life.

The behavior of material particles in a double-slit experiment can serve as an instructive example. When an electron passes a double-slit, it has a certain freedom of choice as to where it will impact a position sensitive detector: the position of a single, specific impact is unpredictable. Nevertheless, the seemingly random and unpredictable single impacts are not completely arbitrary, because they follow a hidden order that demands for a multiplicity of them the buildup of an interference pattern. Even though apparently isolated, the single impacts are connected in a hidden order.

In the same way, each one of us appears in the pattern of life as an isolated dot with a certain freedom and individuality, apparently unaffected by countless other, unrelated appearances. But, perhaps, the seemingly unrelated appearances of many individuals, too, are somehow connected in a hidden order. In that case, the intrinsic laws by which cells can change their genome have to be seen in a cosmic context. Even though single mutations in different individuals seem completely disconnected from each other, they may be coherent in a hidden order that demands for a multiplicity of them a quasi-deterministic pattern, like the interference pattern in single-particle double slit experiments. The progression of evolution towards higher complexity and mentallization may be the manifestation of such an order.

The connection of a life form with the entire biological system is also suggested by the fact that the chemistry of cells is not determined by its genes, but by the interaction of a cell with its environment. Although the central dogma of molecular biology (Crick 1970) dictates that by controlling the synthesis of proteins, genes determine the character of an organism, it has been shown by epigenetics that while the biochemistry of cells is controlled by the genes, the genes are controlled by the reactions of a cell to signals which it receives from its environment (Joseph, 2009).

8. The Interplay of Potentiality and Actuality

From considerations of the kind presented above one conclusion that follows is easy: neo-Darwinian theory is, like Newton’s mechanics, an incomplete description of reality. A second conclusion is more difficult to accept: a completely new approach is needed to understand the nature of life, which will bring transempirical and transmaterial aspects into play, which seem to violate the very basis of science.

In section 5 I have described, how the quantum phenomena have led a number of physicists to propose that consciousness is a cosmic principle. The reaction to such a hypothesis should not be to shrug it off as a sign of sloppy thinking, but to try to explore what it would mean for the evolution of life, if such a principle really existed.

Potentiality and actuality are two different modalities of being in the wholeness of reality. The distinctive character of living organisms lies in their ability to be simultaneously active in both domains. For example, one of the characteristic properties of living cells is their intelligence. Even single cells are endowed with the ability of a planning control or intelligence, which is reminiscent of the intentionality of a self-conscious mind. "Each cell is an intelligent being that can survive on its own" writes cell biologist Bruce Lipton (2005, 7). And Barbara McClintock writes about cells (1983, 184): "They make wise decisions and act upon them." The science of Epigenetics shows that the decisions of cells are essentially reactions to chemical or physical signals in their environment, which lead to regulations of the activities of the genes (Joseph, 2009). If a realm of potentiality in physical reality exists, we have to consider the possibility that the receptors in cell walls are sensitive not only to chemical and physical signals, but also to signals emanating out of the realm of potentiality, in the same way in which a measuring instrument in physics is sensitive to microphysical objects in a potentiality state. Perhaps this sensitivity is at the basis of the ability of organisms to construct themselves.

Informatics engineer Karl Goser views such processes as the defining difference between machines and biological systems: "Machines cannot receive information from a transcendent world" (Goser, 2005, 2007).

9. Conclusion

The hopelessness of a meaningless life in a mechanistic-materialistic-Darwinian universe has often been described. "Man must at last wake out of his millenary dream," writes Jacques Monod (1972, 160) "and discover his total solitude, his fundamental isolation. He must realize that, like a gypsy, he lives on the boundary of an alien world; a world that is deaf to his music, and as indifferent to his hopes as it is to his suffering or his crimes." And Richard Dawkins writes about replicators and the rationale of our existence: "They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines" (Dawkins [1976] 1999: 20).

In this situation the appearance, in physics, of a transempirical part to physical reality is of utmost significance. We live in this physical reality which is a wholeness, its nature is our nature, and it makes a difference whether our humanity is an accidental emanation of complex material structures, or perhaps it is rooted in a deeper order.

In his book, "For a civil society," Hans-Peter Dürr (2000) describes how the awareness of quantum reality can help us build a kinder world and a more humane society, whose order is based on community, not adversity; on cooperation, not competition (2000, 29). Indeed, the point can be made that even the understanding of ethics depends on our understanding of reality, so that the wrong view of the world can easily lead to the wrong life (Schäfer, Valadas Ponte, and Roy, 2009).

The phenomenon of epigenetics shows that the behavior of a living organism can change without concomitant changes in its genome, because a cell’s interaction with its environment affects its biochemistry. Within the framework of psychosomatic medicine Hanne Seemann (1988) has described the same effect for human beings: our perceptions of the world affect the physiology of our bodies to the extent that errors in our perceptions can lead to psychosomatic disorders. The primary motivation of human beings is not the repression and annihilation of others, but "the search for social acceptance and bonding" (Bauer, 2008, 154). Acceptance and bonding with other human beings will lead to a different body chemistry than the constant engagement in conflict and the readiness to aggression. Similarly, the belief to live in a purely materialistic world will give the cells in our body different signals than the belief that a higher order exists in a transempirical reality.

The Darwinian world view and that of its modern syntheses has become untenable as a metaphysic of human values. The time has come to restore a realistic view of life and to arrange human order in accordance with the nature of reality.

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