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Word Gems
What is a man but the sum of his thoughts?

Chemistry, Biology, Physics

"Thirty-one years ago, Dick Feynman told me about his 'sum over histories' version of quantum mechanics. 'The electron does anything it likes,' he said. 'It just goes in any direction, at any speed, forward or backward in time, however it likes, and then you add up the amplitudes and it gives you the wave function.' I said to him 'You're crazy.' But he isn't."

                                                  Freeman Dyson

• Nick Herbert: Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics

• Light

• Michael Talbot, Holographic Universe: "Our brains mathematically construct objective reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately projections from another dimension, a deeper order of existence that is beyond time and space: The brain is a hologram enfolded in a holographic universe... What is 'out there' is a vast ocean of waves and frequencies, and reality looks concrete to us only because our brains are able to to take this holographic blur and convert it into the sticks and stones ... that make up our world... When a [china teacup] is filtered through the lens of our brain it manifests as a cup. But if we could get rid of our lenses, we'd experience is as an interference pattern... we even construct space and time."

• David Moser: "Quantum particles: the dreams that stuff is made of."

• Niels Bohr: "Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum mechanics cannot possibly have understood it."

• Max Planck, father of quantum physics: "All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force … We must assume behind this force is the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter."

• Ernest Rutherford: "All of physics is either impossible or trivial. It is impossible until you understand it, and then it becomes trivial."

• Hermann Joseph Muller: "To say that a man is made up of certain chemical elements is a satisfactory description only for those who intend to use him as a fertilizer."

• Richard Davisson: "There are no physicists in the hottest parts of hell, because the existence of a 'hottest' part implies a temperature difference, and any marginally competent physicist would immediately use this to run a heat engine and make some other part of hell comfortably cool. This is obviously impossible."

• Mike Adams: "Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon compounds. Biochemistry is the study of carbon compounds that crawl."

• Anonymous: "Theoretical physicist: a physicist whose existence is postulated, to make the numbers balance, but who is never actually observed in the laboratory."

• Anonymous: "Heisenberg might have slept here."

• Erwin Schrödinger, on quantum mechanics: "I don't like it, and I'm sorry I ever had anything to do with it."

• Democritus: "Nothing exists but atoms and the void."

• John A. Wheeler: "No point is more central than this, that empty space is not empty. It is the seat of the most violent physics."

• Dr. Gary E. Schwartz, Univ. of Arizona, The AfterLife Experiments: "Years ago, when I was a professor at Yale, I stumbled on a hypothesis about how systems store information... it had led me ... to recognize the possibility that consciousness might survive after death... All systems, in the process of becoming and remaining whole, store information dynamically. Systems are composed of component parts that share information and energy -- from atoms and chemicals, through cells and organisms, to planets, galaxies, and the universe as a whole... Mathematical logic leads to the conclusion not only that all systems are 'alive' to various degrees, but also that this information continues as a living, evolving energy system after the physical structure has ceased to exist. Following the logical line of reasoning, everything I knew about physics and psychology forced me to entertain the hypothesis of living info-energy systems."

• Sylvia Mader, Biology: "There are various levels of biological organization. At each higher level, properties emerge that cannot be explained by the sum of the parts."

• Kathleen & Arthur Talaro, Microbiology: "In the fall of 2000, scientists ... were able to isolate and grow a living bacterium that had been lying dormant and protected in a salt crystal for about 250 million years. This creature was alive even before the time of the dinosaurs... Its source was deep in an underground cavern near Carlsbad, New Mexico."

• Isaac Asimov, The Genetic Code: "The Pattern of Protein... [amino acid] side chains [in conjunction with the 'glycine backbone'] present a varied spectrum of properties. Some, like those of tyrosine and tryptophan, are large and bulky, while others, like those of alanine and serine, are small. Some side chains, like that of threonine, carry a hydroxyl group, others do not; some like those of aspartic acid and glutamic acid, ordinarily carry a negative electric charge, others, like those of lysine and arginine, carry a positive electric charge. Most carry no electric charge. The result is that a particular protein molecule can bristle with a pattern of side chains that may concentrate bulkiness here and not there, that may distribute negative electric charges here and positive ones there and none at all yonder. One can picture, from this standpoint, how an antibody might work. A protein could be constructed with a side-chain pattern which would just fit the side-chain pattern on a foreign protein, or on a virus or on a key spot on a bacterial surface. The fit may be one in which a negative electric charge on the antibody meets a positive one on the invading molecule, with mutual attraction; or a bulky collection of atoms on one molecule may just fit a recess on the other. In either case, antibody and prey join tightly, and the combination then becomes harmless to the body. Of course, a particular antibody with a pattern just suited to one particular sort of molecule will fit no other (or at any rate will only fit others that are extremely similar to the one for which it is suited). One can also picture how an enzyme might work. A particular enzyme could have a pattern of side chains such that two reacting chemicals will just fit conveniently into adjoining niches. Brought together by a middleman, so to speak, they will react with each other and leave, vacating the spot for another set of reactants, so that the reaction as a whole will then proceed at a far more rapid rate than it would if the enzyme were absent. Naturally, an enzyme just made to fit one set of reactants will not fit another... The number of different proteins that can be built up out of twenty-two amino acids is, for all practical purposes, unlimited. The amino acid side chains are quite enough to account for all the variety found in proteins; they are sufficient to form the basis for a phenomenon even as complex and subtle as life. In fact, they are, if anything, more than enough. Out of 40,320 possible vasopressin combinations, the body chooses just one. Out of eight octillion possible combinations of the insulin polypeptides, the body chooses just one. The question is no longer where the body finds the variety it needs, but how it controls the possible variety and keeps it within bounds."

• Isaac Asimov, The Genetic Code: "The only bodies within the cell that do replicate are the chromosomes, and each individual begins life with chromosomes only. It must follow then that, within their own structure, the chromosomes possess the 'blueprint' for the manufacture of protein. This had been more or less the assumption ever since the chromosome theory of inheritance was adopted back in the early years of the twentieth century, and the assumption strengthened with the years. It was easy enough to talk of a 'gene for blue eyes,' but the gene itself didn't have blue eyes, and it didn't make blue eyes. It could only give the instructions for the production of a particular polypeptide chain that would then become the specific enzyme that would catalyze the production of a certain pigment that would give eyes a blue color. The end product might be a 'physical characteristic,' but the immediate job of the gene was to produce a particular protein."

• Isaac Asimov, The Chemicals of Life: Enzymes, Vitamins, Hormones: "Antibiotics are not effective against virus diseases such as measles, mumps, chicken pox or the common cold. Bacteria have enzymes of their own which can be attacked separately. Viruses, however, live inside the body's cells and use the cells' enzymes for their own purposes. To stop the enzymes which serve viruses, you must therefore stop the cells' own enzymes. That, obviously, would kill the patient."

• Dale Short, on author Lee Baumann: "The larger implications of light's metaphysical shenanigans are even more mind-boggling. In God at the Speed of Light, Baumann introduces the concept with an analogy from physicist Nick Herbert: One of the main quantum facts of life is that we radically change whatever we observe. Legendary King Midas never knew the feel of silk or a human hand after everything he touched turned to gold. Humans are stuck in a similar Midas-like predicament: we can't directly experience the true texture of reality because everything we touch turns to matter. In other words, our everyday lives are technically an illusion. The objects and surfaces that we perceive as real are only the temporary intersection of our consciousness with the 'true' universe, made entirely of energy. 'Which raises the question of this wooden floor,' Baumann adds, tapping it with his heel. 'If we weren't here looking at it, would this floor still exist? Well, it would, but it exists only as a nebulous, ill-defined mass of wave forms. It's not until some type of measurement or observation occurs, and you have what's called "the collapse of the wave function," that the nebulous mass of waves solidify into concrete, particulate matter.'"
  

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