Planting New Seeds in Quantum Fields

	Book review on Life as energy: Opening the mind to a new science of life by Alexis Mari Pietak (2011) Reviewed by Martin Lockley, 2011 published in Network Review No 106
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This interesting and innovative book has much to offer.  Author and biophysicist Alexis Mari Pietak challenges us to adopt different mindsets in her attempts to apply the principles of quantum mechanics to leaf growth, and generalise her physics thinking to ideas of thermodynamically optimal ecosystems and the central notion of Life as Energy. Few of us are simultaneously experts in quantum physics and plant morphogenesis, so in places the discourse is a little abstract and perhaps difficult for the non-specialist.  Moreover, we cannot directly observe quantum field energy the way we actually see plants grow into visible form. Thus, while intuitively satisfying, to infer that energy fields have 'structure' or organisation that correlates with the intricate form of growing plants and other complex organisms, there is still a conceptual gap between the intangible, invisible domain of energy fields and the tangible world of botanical growth which we humans have exploited since the start of the agricultural revolution. Ostensibly therefore, biology has yet to make the energetic quantum leap to a new field of thinking, despite a few pioneers whose sparsely published works have too often been overlooked.

Pietak's early chapter generalisations point out the currently deficient status of the life sciences and science in general. Quoting Brian Goodwin, Rupert Sheldrake (SMN members), and other like-minded biologists, we are reminded, in her words,  that biology remains in the constraining, even sterilising and devastating,  grip of three '-isms' (materialism, mechanism and reductionism) which have more or less ignored or denigrated the idea of vitalism, energy fields, morphic resonance, emergent properties etc.  [Pietak's 'New Science of Life' subtitle is evidently a tribute to Sheldrake's landmark, but controversial book]. Clearly the life sciences could benefit from new holistic mindsets such as the blend of imagination and rationality described as imaginative rationality (Pietak's italics) "used all the time in physics [as] a viable alternative to the thinking habits that have taken over the life sciences."  However, this subtle, but perhaps justified, dig at the life sciences may oversimplify the problem. If life is an emergent phenomenon, might it not require other, emergent species of imaginative rationality subtly different from those that have advanced physics from the mechanistic to the quantum paradigm? [As I shall suggest below, anthroposophical biology has something pertinent to offer this discussion]. Rather late in the book Pietak introduces the notion of emergent energy, characteristic of certain types of closed organic systems (organisms), at the same time giving us pertinent, citations for seminal Life as Energy studies.  The general science reader is probably aware that such 'vital' emergent energy ostensibly 'defies' the second law of thermodynamics by demonstrating how life's remarkable growth abilities resist, at least locally and temporarily,  the trend towards entropy or dissipative, lowest-energy states  (sometimes referred to as "heat death"). Life does this by creating what might be called islands or fields of entropy-resisting disequilibrium. 

Quantum thinking requires abstract mindsets appropriate to microscopic, subatomic scales, whereas thermodynamic thinking applies to macroscopic and universal scales. In her poetically titled chapter (3) A Swim in the Ocean of Thought, Pietak reminds us that science is riddled with "conceptual metaphors" and that we can use several to good advantage.  For example, 'heat' can be conceived as the subatomic excitation of atoms, or as the flow of heat on macroscopic scales. In her lengthy and technical middle chapters Pietak attempts to apply the tenets of both these physical disciplines to organic systems.  In chapter 4,  A Walk in the Mind Garden, she runs through quantum energy states, fields and the difference between 'stuff-based' and 'stuffless' waves, showing how higher energy wave states generate increased complexity.  Although we intuitively know this applies to the structure and behavior of higher organisms, it is helpful to have Pietak point out scientific, quantum correlates.  The thrust of chapter 5,  Organic Mechanics, [although  the title is something of a semantic oxymoron] builds a case for the role of various energy fields in the morphogenesis of leaves, which she divides into four morphological categories from linear to sub circular (needle, blade, fishbone and rotator) each inferred to have been generated by increasingly complex energy fields.  Here I was impressed by the similarity between these categories and those identified by anthroposophical biologists who recognise the sprouting (blade-like), segmenting, swelling (circular) and stemming phases of leaf development, identified through detailed studies of generations of actual plant growth (see Network, 102 &103, for review of Metamorphosis and references therein). While the anthroposophists do not explain morphogenesis in terms of quantum field states, their diagrams really are like complex phase diagrams, showing how leaf development fits coherently into dynamic organisational fields, in which each leaf is itself an energetic expression, with its anterior and posterior polarities and expansion and contraction dynamics.  Conversely, while Pietak infers fields and polarities that could account for leaf morphogenesis, her examples are taken rather randomly from the botanical world and the correlations between leaf and likely field characteristics appear inferred and intuitive, rather than empirically derived.

It would be quite wonderful to integrate these two approaches- these two conceptual metaphors! An example might serve to suggest the potential. The anthroposophists have shown that in typical herbaceous flowering plant, only the first formed leaves reach the full stemming stage: subsequent leaves, express in reverse order, only attaining the swelling, then segmenting and finally only the sprouting phase, before the flower and seed stages. Thus, each leaf in the whole plant sequence is progressively less-developed (more juvenile). This is a function of timing (heterochrony) which presumably physicists can also address.  In Pietak's scheme each leaf in this reverse sequence would represent a simpler, less complex energy state. Thus, by her definition, the first leaves express higher energy states while the later ones express progressively lower energy states, leading, incidentally, to the seed and its stored or conserved energy. In this regard I submit that Pietak has the opportunity to apply her 'imaginative' ideas to plant studies where the leaves are already understood as expressions of coherent, morphogenetic energy regimes. Pietak knows this intuitively and scientifically when she points out that "the plant is a discrete state of emergent energy" within "a collective of plants ...seen as the emergent system-of systems" or what she calls the great conceptual fractal.  I would only add that the anthroposophists have already worked out (empirically charted) a large number of the aforementioned conceptual fractals pertaining to the growth of leaves and leaf sequences within the plant, and in examples of ecological plant succession. 

So the potential for integration of these different conceptual (metaphoric) approaches does not end here. Like Pietak, the anthroposophists have already understood much about plant community succession, biodynamic agriculture and so forth. By understanding plant morphogenesis in different environmental settings one may understand the health of the environment as Pietak independently proposes in her later chapters.  Again Pietak's novel contribution is to sketch the energetics of plant communities in different stages of development. As plant or organic systems become more complex they develop emergent properties, which include the ability to store energy (heat) that is not immediately dissipated by thermodynamic forces (entropy), which ultimately leads to death. She calls this emergature (a combination of emergence and temperature)!  While there may be no meter to read the emergature of a plant community with absolute precision, Pietak's "imaginatively rational" understanding of biophysics suggests she is on the right track. No doubt many SMN members will recall the similar work of Mae-Wan Ho on coherence and stored energy in organic systems. 

Ultimately I share Pietak's hope that "this work will provide a new paradigm" not only for understanding Life as Energy, but also for a more "sustainable integration of human activities with the natural world."  Pietak's work parallels many studies by SMN members (Goodwin, Ho, Sheldrake) and shares with these the desire to promote a new holistic and organic science of life that dethrones and reinvents the old '-isms.' Like Ho, Pietak goes deep into the quantum and thermodynamics underpinnings of the energetics of living systems, and she is surely right that an adequate understanding of life cannot ignore modern physics, with all its dynamic implications.  In conclusion Life as Energy is a bold, ambitious and visionary attempt to again shake biology out of the materialistic doldrums. Pietak is not the first to suggest the need for a New Science of Life, but she is definitely among a rather small community of pioneers, and her contributions in this book are innovative, important  and 'imaginative' in the best sense of the word.  The quantum paradigm is conceptually popular, especially in consciousness studies.  It is high time these quantum seeds bore fruit in the garden of the life sciences.

Professor Martin Lockley teaches palaentology and consciousness studies at the University of Colorado and is author of How Humanity Came into Being: the Evolution of Consciousness.

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