Advances in Quantum Chemistry : Quantum Boundaries of Life

• The boundaries between organic and live matter are sites of the most significant interactions and transformations in science from biology through chemistry and physics. In this volume, we are happy to present our readers with a unique thematic volume 82 of the Advances in Quantum Chemistry devoted to the theme Quantum Boundaries of Life. We present a transdisciplinary exploration of the quantum boundaries relating to a molecular basis of life and consciousness, where the integration process begins at the molecular level, grounded on the research agenda, concepts, and shared values of quantum chemistry. There is a boundary to the integration process, but it provides the reality of a deeper foundation that is the quintessential mechanism of life where reality isomorphically aligns with consciousness.The evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr contended three principal classes of scientific reduction in biology, i.e., the ontological, the epistemological, and the methodological. Molecular catalysis is central in molecular evolution, like all other teleological phenomena, advanced by Darwin's theory of evolution. Hence, it follows that molecular reductionism provides the ground level for the most straightforward kind of life, based on the evolution of the prokaryotic to the more complex eukaryotic cell, where the wire-like flow of charges, protons, ions, and other molecular constituents of the microenvironment, including elements of the cytoskeleton, extends to the cellular membrane itself representing the quantum machinery of life and consciousness. However, as all quantum physicists know, the reading of “Pioneering Quantum Mechanics” contains, among all versions, the von Neumann-Wigner interpretation “consciousness causes collapse of the wave function.” Irrespective of the copiousness of these views, the reduction argument spirals back to fundamental biological concepts within the life sciences.The present volume editors represent the fields of biological applications of quantum chemistry in the broadest sense. First, it is important to recognize the subtle difference between quantum physics and quantum chemistry. The former is strictly reductionistic, using quantum mechanics and field theory to hierarchically formulate the fundamental subsystems of nature, whereas the latter attempts to use the “quantum platform” to build more complex systems while setting fundamental goals for the discipline. Second, to take the step from quantum chemistry to quantum biology, one must permeate a crucial barrier, namely how to account for functionality. This functional interaction is nonlocal and across scale as opposed to the classical concept of levels, which is a continuous notion. So, microscale, mesoscale, and macroscale assume level continuity—a kind of biological nonlocality. Third, we have two types of demarcations: (1) the quantum boundaries of life, e.g., when quantum chemistry becomes quantum biology and (2) the often-discussed quantum-classical interface. The quantum-classical boundary has, for a long time, been the concern of theoretical physics and will only indirectly be connected with the quantum boundary of life. Physicists suggest that the quantum-classical transition should be linked with John Wheeler's quantum foam or spacetime fluctuations. At the same time, chemically oriented scientists believe that the interface hides in the process of decoherence, and hence the quantum boundary of life must be of thermoquantal origin, derived from the entropy-temperature duality.How do we go about this boundary, this demarcation sector or frontier zone? What will we find? Life should, first of all, always be inside such a boundary—or as is suggested in the final contribution that it is more relevant to view Life as a quantum phenomenon intrinsic to Nature—such as all biological organisms that have acquired an intrinsic function. Teleological notions in biology adumbrate that living organisms have intrinsic purposes that begin with simple physical interactions between entities of what we denote as nonliving matter evolving into more complex correlative communicative exchanges of anticipation and information. What are the physical attributes of such intrinsicality? One should remember that the mechanisms of teleological causation are “hidden”; we fail to perceive reality as a conjugate link between matter and experience. As mathematicians, biologists, and chemists, including ourselves, scientists seek to discover the isomorphic connection between matter, life, and consciousness.Several fundamental stumbling blocks need to be unraveled. The most striking one is how to handle the threat of decoherence, destroying molecular wave interferences due to incoherent scattering between atomic, ionic, and molecular constituents, ubiquitous aqueous solutions, etc. in the wet and hot environment of a human brain. The thermal noise, about 0.025 eV at 310 K, might wash away subtle quantum effects making the latter seemingly obsolete. In other words, quantum decoherence becomes an unavoidable obstacle in the organization of energy to maintain order and overcoming entropy production in living systems. Another difficulty relates to the notion of energy-time scales, conjugated through the uncertainty principle, with the consequence that integrated information, as a synergy of emerging information, becomes impossible. This is so due to the irreducible character of the degenerate physical representation that derives from the law of self-reference suggesting a holistic view, i.e., an informational holarchy, which to some extent reminds of Arthur Koestler's intemperate critique of the classical citadel of orthodoxy culminating in his contentious notion of holons. Accordingly, our present conception is founded on an interrelation-informational structure, where the whole is nonsynergistically affected by nonintegrated information. This relationalism provides the key to understanding how nonintegrated information holistically subsumes concrescence while conferring negentropic information as a transformation process of quantum nature.As a consequence of the above, temperature dependencies must be addressed in a serious quantum-theoretical formulation of life processes that should concern systems evolving far from equilibrium, with the latter dissipating energy and entropy to the environment. Our warm brain is an example of this, suggesting that neural processes are thermal and, therefore, claimed to be nonquantum. However, there is a disparity between bound quantum states and quantum effects associated with the continuum and rigorous extensions to open system quantum dynamics. The chapters will deal with various situations and circumstances related to quantum theory in the broadest sense, such as tunneling and resonance formation, including density matrices and associated generalizations.Assuming that animate and inanimate systems are subject to the same physical principles, one might wonder what sets them apart at the quantum boundary? To answer this question, one cannot avoid appealing to a teleological notion of function, which, according to Jacques Monod, constitutes “a profound epistemological contradiction” effectively exhibiting a central problem in biology. We are left with the question of etiology, and it is here where the quantum boundaries of life are espoused. The formulation must also include the macroscopic scale to encompass the teleological functions from quantum chemistry to quantum biology. However, as ventilated above, quantum effects, asserted to be essential for life processes, cannot survive as eigenfunctions to the Schrödinger equation, i.e., will not be coherent in the thermal medium, since its wave properties cannot resist decoherence by thermal perturbations. The density matrix provides a more general representation of the state of a quantum system, reflecting upon its nonlocality, impending localization, like classical particles in a biological medium, such as the microstructure of neurons.Although modern quantum chemistry goals are to accumulate chemical data from, e.g., the physical constants and atomic numbers employing the Schrödinger equation and its Liouville generalizations, its base is quantum physics, for instance, treating momentum-space and energy-time as fundamental conjugate variables-operators. Imbricating chemical physics adds fundamental technological capabilities facing the atomic and molecular levels that will restrict the concept of a quantum boundary of life toward quantum delocalization and long-range correlative information. In what follows, the invited authors have examined various problems related to their expertise in the stride to uncover the gap between the function of the cells, such as neurons, in a living organism—the easy problem—and the conscious experience, how it is like to be—the hard problem. Cognitivism mistakes consciousness for mindless neural network computations. As is the case with naive realism, i.e., with its primary focus on visual perception and a total lack of a self-referential basis, it does not work when dealing with the hard problem of consciousness.The first chapter complements this Preface, answering the question already posed by Erwin Schrödinger, “What is Life?” The conclusion is that life is a quantum phenomenon to be further explicated in what follows. The next contribution presents an interesting confronting view that pioneering quantum mechanics is incapable of formulating emotive mental states (feelings). While admitting that quantum mechanical concepts may have different meanings for each discipline, the authors review several unsolvable problems for the consideration of transcendental mental states rationalizing cognitive abilities such as memory. In response, they develop a tripartite neural mechanism with molecular underpinnings, fusing psychology with biochemistry. An appealing conclusion is a suggestion that the encod

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NATURVETENSKAP  -- Kemi -- Teoretisk kemi (hsv//swe)

NATURAL SCIENCES  -- Chemical Sciences -- Theoretical Chemistry (hsv//eng)

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