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Word Gems What is a man but the sum of his
thoughts?
Chemistry, Biology, Physics
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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.
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Freeman Dyson
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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."

This spectacular image of the large spiral
galaxy NGC 1232 was obtained on September 21, 1998. The central
areas contain older stars of reddish colour, while the spiral arms
are populated by young, blue stars and many star-forming regions.
Note the distorted companion galaxy on the left
side.
The distance from
Earth is about 100 million light-years. NGC 1232 is about 200,000
light-years across, or about twice the size of the Milky Way galaxy.
The results of tilted-ring analyses indicate that the disk is
significantly warped; the derived rotation curve suggests the
presence of a large component of dark matter in this galaxy.
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.'"
Richard Feynman,
speaking of the Double-Slit Experiment: "We choose to examine a
phenomenon which is impossible to explain in any classical way, and
which has in it the heart of quantum
mechanics. In reality, it contains the
only mystery."
Niels
Bohr: "The common sense view of the
world, in terms of objects that really exist 'out
there' independently of our observations, totally collapses in the face of the quantum
factor."
Niels Bohr: "An independent reality, in the ordinary
physical sense, can neither be ascribed to the
phenomena nor to the agencies of observation."
Werner Heisenberg:
"If one wants to give a description of the elementary particle, the
only thing that can be written down as description is a probability
function. But then one sees that not even the
quality of being belongs to what is described."
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