Biologic relativity: Who is the observer and what is observed?

Abstract

When quantum physics and biological phenomena are analogously explored, it emerges that biologic causation must also be understood independently of its overt appearance. This is similar to the manner in which Bohm characterized the explicate versus the implicate order as overlapping frames of ambiguity. Placed in this context, the variables affecting epigenetic inheritance can be properly assessed as a key mechanistic principle of evolution that significantly alters our understanding of homeostasis, pleiotropy, and heterochrony, and the purposes of sexual reproduction. Each of these become differing manifestations of a new biological relativity in which biologic space-time becomes its own frame. In such relativistic cellular contexts, it is proper to question exactly who has observer status, and who and what are being observed. Consideration within this frame reduces biology to cellular information sharing through cell-cell communication to resolve ambiguities at every scope and scale. In consequence, it becomes implicit that eukaryotic evolution derives from the unicellular state, remaining consistently adherent to it in a continuous evolutionary arc based upon elemental, non-stochastic physiologic first principles. Furthermore, the entire cell including its cytoskeletal apparatus and membranes that participate in the resolution of biological uncertainties must be considered as having equivalent primacy with genomes in evolutionary terms.

Revisiting Burr and Northrop’s “The Electro-Dynamic Theory of Life” (1935)

“…Burr weaves in concepts from physics, discussing the bidirectional feedback between field and particle. This paper (and Burr's overall body of work) is focused on bioelectric fields as a specific example, but this is (as I'm sure he realized) a much bigger issue, currently playing out in state-of-the-art discussions about agent-based models and downward causation from global "virtual governors" and global, distributed dynamics that emerge from relatively simple local rules governing proteins, subcellular structures, cells, and tissues (Pezzulo and Levin 2016;Torday and Miller 2016;Walker et al 2016;Albantakis et al 2017;Flack 2017;Ashikaga et al 2018;Juel et al 2019).…”

Evolution, the ‘Mechanism’ of Big History: The Grande Synthesis

“…Furthermore, it offers the opportunity to understand interrelationships that transcend the mere existence of life in the Cosmos, reaching into the interstices to gain fundamental understanding of the process . Such analysis lends itself to finding common ground between eastern and western philosophy (Torday and Miller, 2016b), tearing down the silos of contemporary knowledge to maximize the accounting of Big History (Rodrigue et al, 2016).…”

Reappraising the exteriorization of the mammalian testes through evolutionary physiology

“…In the past, this process would have been framed within the context of endless rounds of selection pressures by which an organism stumbles towards phenotypic adjustment. It is instead argued that a differing framework can be justified based within the now recognized capacity of cells as individual problem-solving agencies to act together as a consortia to mitigate stress [70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77]. The complex pathway to endothermy is just such an example, wherein, localized tissue ecologies, be they lung or adrenal, successfully reached new setpoints, each meeting stress in its own way.…”

“…Each of the individual constituents of any localized tissue ecology is attempting to maintain its own homeostatic balance since this is the process that sustains them [25,[70][71][72][75][76][77]80]. That balance point must lie within a bandwidth of acceptable flux deviations [72].…”