This article originally published at the HatchardReport.com addresses some of the most profound philosophical and spiritual questions that we ask as we seek to understand our existence. It challenges some popular notions that have been derived from the discoveries of Darwin and modern genetics, from the perspective of an interdisciplinary comprehensive scientific understanding.
On June 5 a paper was published by the prestigious journal Cell entitled “Replaying germinal center evolution on a quantified affinity landscape“. It describes how a specific type of stem cell operating in germinal centres (GCs) tackle the process of generating and selecting appropriate antibodies that are suited to tackle novel pathogens. According to the paper, which is couched in terminology that is unfamiliar and therefore inaccessible to the casual lay reader, germinal centres rapidly generate a large number of antibody types through random hyper genetic mutation and then monitor the multiplicity of types to ‘select’ those that have the greatest ‘affinity’ or specific ability to recognise and bind to an invading pathogen.
The study leads the authors to conclude that this natural process is not as efficient as it could be (???). Our germinal centres (GCs) miss a great many antibodies with high affinity due to what the authors describe as limitations of the GC’s own genetic make up. However, because a very large number of mutations of differing types are being continuously generated by GCs, these limitations are bypassed through the continuing repetition of mutational processes over time. This yields the very high success rate of our immune system in generating appropriate responses to disease.
Through genetic modification the authors produced around 100 identical B cells operating in the GCs of 24 mice. The mice were then injected with a pathogen in order to stimulate a race to produce an efficient immune response. The study followed the GC production in the mice of a total of 17,500 antibodies of great variety over a 20 day period. GC production sequences involved both bursts of large numbers of similar B cell types and highly mutated branched topological evolutionary B cell lineages. These sequences and types were scanned to evaluate the evolutionary outcomes over time. The study found that identically engineered GCs do not produce the same sequences of antibodies. The authors propose this is best described as a random Darwinian evolutionary process, whereby the fittest genetic mutations are suited (or in evolutionary language selected) to survive.
Based on their research, the authors constructed a quantified model of cellular ‘deep mutational scanning’ (DMS) which they believe may be used to develop new antibody medicines and vaccines. They propose this may allow the design of effective immune responses which in the natural course of events might have been discarded or overlooked by natural cell-based immune processes. In other words, through the application of computer or AI based DMS models, the prolific antibody production of genetically modified GCs might be rapidly and accurately predicted to reveal novel medicines and vaccines paired to specific diseases, which can then be produced in a laboratory through genetic modification.
There is a subtext in this paper, laboratory experiments aimed at developing vaccines and antibody medicines which initiate and analyse random genetic mutations on a large scale are OK because that is essentially an entirely natural process. What could possibly go wrong?
Darwin and the perspective of biophysics
The conception and import of the word ‘random’ as used in this study appears to be deficient. The process of B cell generation being investigated is described as a ‘local’ process. In other words, cells are regarded as autonomous entities whose internal processes can be treated as stand alone events which culminate in a specific outcome, in much the same way as we think of the spin of a roulette wheel. Hence the appeal to Darwin, but does this stand up to scrutiny? Are the findings of the study a killer argument to settle any debate about the existence of a designed universe or God, or are they merely being interpreted superficially?
Our readers will realise that the appeal to Darwinian evolution is generally interpreted as a win for an atheist perspective. Darwin himself famously lost his faith as a result of his discoveries. Prof. Richard Dawkins will be visiting NZ in November to speak on his particular view of the world—the belief that the universe and our human body are standalone systems that leave little room for spiritual or theistic notions.
Dawkins goes to great lengths to find scientific arguments that he believes render any belief in God unscientific. Delving into his understanding of the genetic code—DNA, in his book The Greatest Show on Earth Dawkins presents one argument for atheism based on invariance.
“Just as the vertebrate skeleton is invariant across all vertebrates…so the DNA code is invariant across all living creatures while the genes themselves vary….which shows more clearly than anything else that all living creatures are descended from a single ancestor.”
In other words, Dawkins believes that a single random event or sequence of events led to the accidental creation of life. Realising that proponents of both a Godless world and creationists will each interpret invariance as evidence for their ideas. Dawkins offers the additional idea that evolution is a strictly ‘local’ process:
“Embryology is all done by local rules, at various levels, but especially the level of the single cell. No choreographer. No conductor of the orchestra. No central planning. No architect. In the field of development, or manufacture, the equivalent of this kind of programming is self-assembly.”
Dawkins, feeling the obvious lack of actual examples of processes that are not in practice designed, goes on to draw an analogy between embryology and an imagined but clearly non-existent art of self-folding origami. Immediately Dawkins places his interpretation of evolutionary theory in direct conflict with physics. If there is one thing we know for certain from the highly verified results of Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, reality is non-local and must involve a holistic consciousness. To a physicist, the argument that evolution is entirely local is immediately suspect, the pervasive reality of fields, the emergence of local laws from universal laws is fundamental to modern physics.
However it is not necessary to appeal to the physical unity of life to overturn Dawkins’ arguments based on locality and the invariance of genetic code. There is another sense in which modern genetics has begun to overturn locality and also change our understanding of the genetic code.
Let us resort to the popular applications of genetic testing to illustrate this. For a few dollars, DNA testing companies will analyse your saliva and give you a breakdown of your ethnic make-up. Test results could identify the father’s ancestry as English 48%, Celtic 25%, Scandinavian 22%, and Jewish 5%. The mother’s results could be Celtic 58%, Scandinavian 38%, and Italian 4%. The daughter’s however could be Scandinavian 50%, Celtic 32%, Spanish 14%, Italian 2%, Jewish 1%, Nigerian 1%. Any child’s DNA is 50% made up of bits of the mother’s and 50% of the father’s DNA, yet in our example the father and mother have no Spanish and Nigerian, and the daughter has no English unlike the father. That’s impossible right? Something must have gone wrong.
Almost everyone who has had genetic tests becomes puzzled by similar results, so much so that many people feel genetic testing is commercial hocus-pocus. In reality, DNA test interpretation is a highly scientific process. Companies like Ancestry and MyHeritage have access to huge databases of genetic information extending to tens of millions of people. To sell their products in a competitive market they have had to refine their research methodologies and analysis. Have they got it right? Yes, largely they have. The rearrangement of genes throws up novel characteristics. The answer to this puzzle lies in understanding that the genetic code is in fact non-linear and non-local. Contrary to the popular conception that the genetic code is written in a linear sequence as a book is; in fact, the spatially separate (and therefore non-local) arrangement of genetic information within the spiral helix is crucial to the way an individual’s DNA expresses itself. The DNA molecule has non-local field-like properties.
The universe is non-local
Evolutionary processes are imagined to be the result of a huge number of local interactions, but are they? Is there a model that would describe the same apparently local processes but with a captain at the helm? Yes, and the idea is found in many cultural traditions. Ancient Vedic science for example proposes that an omnipresent value of Wholeness guides evolution. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who expressed a modern day re-evaluation of Vedic wisdom as a science, discusses the value of Wholeness with reference to Natural Law. Natural Law always has two values—holistic and specific. For example the growth of a crystal structure can be likened to the process of completing a jigsaw. Pieces must not only fit together, but also the local or specific interlocking process must conform to a global or holistic picture.
Just as Dawkins describes evolution, crystal growth was formerly understood as a purely local or ‘on-site’ process where a limited number of shapes can only be joined in specific ways, these repeated patterns then generate the exterior crystal shape; but in 1974 physicist Roger Penrose discovered a pseudo five-fold symmetry which was later found in an aluminium-manganese crystal alloy. This crystal has a non-repeating pattern which can only grow if the local pieces have a knowledge of a complex global structure as in the jigsaw. The specific rules governing the behaviour and orientation of incoming atomic groups in the crystal formation process have to be non-local or holistic. Penrose has since formulated a notion of space-time in which each local region has encoded or enfolded some aspect of a more general order. Quantum physics indicates that such non-local or holistic laws are fundamental to physical reality.
Maharishi draws upon his Vedic Science to discuss these holistic and specific values as silence and dynamism. He explains their coexistence is universal in Nature from cycles of rest and activity to the need for a quiet level of administration to guide a dynamic organisation. On a more abstract level, in particle theory the global symmetry represented in the gauge field guarantees the uniform dynamical behaviour of local symmetry groups, but itself remains uninvolved (silent value) in the dynamic physical processes. Gauge fields adjust the whole universe to maintain symmetry when localised changes occur. They coordinate everything, ensuring unbroken symmetry and consistency. In general, the coexistence of dynamism and silence within a unified Wholeness is a cornerstone of consistent unified field theories of physics. Hence the notion that evolution is purely local is untenable.
Our human body is an enterprise on an unimaginable scale whose full potential is cosmic.
We have 37 trillion cells that are mysteriously linked together to form a single individual. Every germinal centre gives rise to countless B cells over a lifetime, eventually producing a total pool of about 300 billion mature B cells. However, one B cell can multiply into thousands of identical plasma cells, (white blood cells) each of which produce a staggering 2,000 antibodies per second. Therefore our daily existence and continued health is predicated upon the birth of more than a quadrillion new immune cell workers every second. Enough to put any man made economic system to shame. Our human life is continuing as if on the surface of a vast physiological autonomic universe.
As we have discussed in our legacy Substack articles The Sacred Cell and Conscious Genes and The Structure of Consciousness the autonomic operation of our nervous system is connected with the self-referral unified level of consciousness. Every part of our body is awake and connected to the wholeness of consciousness. Consciousness is the glue of the body that holds our 37 trillion cells together as an individual, just as universal consciousness is the glue of the universe.
As the most extended interpretation of measurement theory shows, nothing material manifests from the virtual multidimensional Hilbert space without an observer. Moreover it is not only reasonable, but in the absence of arguments to the contrary, necessary to regard quantum entanglement as a fundamental property of the universe. Since the beginning of time (if there was one) the sequence of events has been threading everything together into a network of mutual relationships which are the indicators of wholeness. In religious terms, although we may not have seen God, we have seen the signs of his existence—the hand of God; and we can aspire to know God more fully. As Psalm 19 says “The Heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”
Vedic Science expresses the growth of experiences of wholeness in human awareness in a sequence of verses known as the Brahma Sutras—short expressions of totality. One foundational expression (1.4) contrasts the specific with the universal saying Tat Tu Samanvayat—Truth is the weaving together of evenness. In other words, the whole universe operates by virtue of connectedness. This is the missing element in our understanding of genetics, life is not random in its essence, it is connected into the wholeness of universal consciousness which is eternally balanced and omnipresent. Some know this as God and others sense the intelligence that guides the universe. This is the final truth of existence which can be fully known in the deepest most awake experience of self-referral consciousness, whereby individual consciousness is realised as universal consciousness.
Time is a relative concept. It is relative to consciousness. In the dreaming state it is imaginary and in deep sleep it doesn't exist. In the transcendent it stands still. From this perspective time is concept to measure infinity
Hi, if you look back to previous post you will see I discuss quantum cosmology which views the emergence of space time as the result of the self interaction in the unified level of natural law.