Genesis of Eden
Fig 1: Eden: Hieronymous Bosch The Garden of Earthly
Delights.
While the sabbatical cosmology of Genesis 1 has become a quaint tale in the modern age of science, the apocalypse of Fall from Eden stands in stark commentary as our founding archetypal myth of cultural origin, describing our fall from nature, in a schism between the genders, in the assumption of male dominion and analytic knowledge. Its sources lie much deeper in our socio-biological roots than the Bible, extending back through Sumeria to the first transition from gatherer-hunter society to 'civilization'. The Fall from Eden is more relevant today than at any previous time, because it defines the existential dilemma precipitating bio-apocalypse.
Genesis of Eden is the revelation of 'apocalypsia', or bridal unveiling, the climacteric of the evolutionary epoch, the stream of consciousness, of gender and of nature. This is a transition in cosmological time which will never be repeated in the entire history of Earth, because we only make the transition to human culture and knowledge of the physical world once. Alongside this cosmological bio-apocalypse, religious traditions stand as mere dew on the lawn of time, ephemeral and almost insignificant. Nevertheless all religious traditions point to bio-apocalypse as the primordial revelation or the day of judgement because of a deep awareness in the stream of consciousness of the enormity of our physical and psychic explosion on the arena.
Genesis of Eden is the genesis of biocosmology and our role in free-will in unfolding the history of the living universe. It is the document of requital - our coming of age in the universe. It is the cosmological logos - the physical-existential description of reality, which scientifically brings the prophetic tradition to its visionary end-point - the feminine apocalypse in healing the Fall, the epoch of patriarchal dominion. It is alpha and omega - Genesis and Resolution - the culmination and consummation in quantum non-locality, sociobiology, mythopoetry and visionary illumination.
Cosmological Biogenesis
Traditionally science places a divorce between the quantum world of cosmology and physics and the biological world of evolution. A further divorce occurs between the biological brain and consciousness, an ephemeral subjective condition beyond objective inquiry. The picture that emerges is a nightmare universe, exploding from a big-bang to heat death, full of awesome, terrifying forces, in which life appears to be an irrelevant and impotent phenomenon, of possibly mechanical origin, occasionally assisted by chance mutations of fate which are almost invariably malign. This double divorce is the last stage of the disintegration of the Newtonian fantasy of mechanism in the quantum universe.
The purpose of this logos of biocosmology is to finally shatter this myth and put the ghost back in the cosmic machine by the correct application of quantum physics to biology. In this process, we shall all come alive again, possessing freedom of will in a living universe in which we ourselves are a pivotal part of the cosmological process.
Fig 3: Diagram of cosmogenesis from the big bang
through the inflationary phase to galaxy formation. The biodiversity
chart bottom right emphasizes the fact that life has existed on
Earth for cosmological time-scales.
Modern descriptions of cosmogenesis by inflation conceive of a universe which emerges as a quantum fluctuation. There are four natural forces, gravity, electromagnetism, and the binding and radioactive nuclear forces. Because the forces of nature in our universe have an asymmetric form in their lowest energy state, an empty symmetric universe is supercharged with negative energy and flies apart with an exponential antigravity. When this unstable symmetry collapses, gravity revereses to become attactive and the released latent heat comes out as the hot shower of the big bang. The kinetic and potential energy now add to a massive total instead of cancelling. In some models the inflation is fractal. The process is called symmetry-breaking.
These wave-particle events at the cosmogenic source also give rise to the cosmic evolution of the universe to form galaxies, stars, supernovae and livable planets in an interactive sequence in which the chemical elements are first synthesized in a supernova and then disseminated to a smaller slow-burning sun-like star, where life becomes possible. Although the energy of photosynthesis is much less than a quasar at the core of a galaxy, there is nevertheless a natural fractal cosmic evolution into all these structures because of the non-linear nature of gravitation. Planets are cosmological structures.
Central to quantum reality is the overthrow of mechanical determinism. Quantum entities can be either wave, or particle, but not both at the same time. The wave flows and then the particle appears from somewhere in the wave. Because of this, no quantum prediction gives a certain answer, but only probabilities. Measurements are always intrinsically uncertain for the same reason. In quantum theory, mechanism is interrupted by this seemingly random 'collapse'. To see alternatives as shadow probabilities, even after something has happened, is counter to our subjective experience. Here Schrödinger's quantum cat is either alive or dead, not both. Einstein said in frustration "I can't believe the God is playing dice with the universe". 'Many worlds' physicists try to get around this problem of the collapse by suggesting all possibilities and all probability universes do actually exist. This again is counter-intuitive as it stands, but it does suggest how the solution might actually come about.
This profound concept is the transactional choice principle. The same non-linearity that makes mass become infinite at the speed of light in special relativity causes particles to have two solutions, one travelling in each direction in space-time - forwards and backwards with opposite energies. All the forces are mediated by virtual particles which appear transiently out of the 'fabric' of quantum uncertainty and thus must have both an emitter (creator) and an absorber (annihilator). The transactional principle asserts that all particles, including the real ones which make up radiation and matter, are similarly linked and that a space-time handshaking occurs between emitter and absorber. The essential difference between real and virtual particles is that every possible virtual particle coexists, but only certain real outcomes occur in our experience. In this case, the boundary conditions say only one real interaction out of all the many possibilities can occur. The Feynman diagram and transaction are illustrated in fig 6 centre.
The transactional principle asserts that this choice is made through space-time handshaking and that the apparent 'randomness' of quantum uncertainty may mask a very complex web of such hand-shaking interactions across space-time, in which quantum 'information' is exchanged, both from future to past and from past to future. This principle neatly explains all the known mysteries of quantum non-locality. It may also unearth free-will.
Far from being an accidental irrelevancy in the universe at large, biomolecules are the final interaction in the cosmogenic wave-particle hierarchy, beginning with cosmic symmetry-breaking. The most energetic of these forces interact first to form composites like the proton and then in stars to form the atomic nuclei. These then combine chemically at lower energies (because the electromagnetic force is weaker) to form the next fractal hierarchy of interaction, atoms and molecules and finally at lower energies still to form the global weak bonding associations of large biomelecular assemblies.
Fig 4: Non-linearity of chemical bonding results
in complex fractal molecular structures underlying the origin
of life and living systems. Snowflakes illustrate the unique 'formative'
properties of water as quantum substate. Nucleic acids and proteins
have complex three-dimensional structures with global feedback
(active site purple). Lipid bailer membranes similar in size to
cells generated by co-polymerizing formaldehyde and cyanide.
This is a consequence of cosmic symmetry-breaking. The non-linear nature of chemical bonding causes the resulting structures to form super-fractals, ever larger structures with global energy feedbacks through many weak bonds. To form such molecular assemblages requires the lower energies we find under the negentropic photosynthetic activation of a planetary surface, but this is again part of the cosmic genesis sequence.
Although it is possible that the exact molecular basis of life may vary from planet to planet, life based on an H-CNO interaction stands as a central symmetry-breaking quantum-orbital interaction between the chemical elements. The idea that life arose from RNA, pre-biotic syntheses of RNAs bases and sugars and the polymerization of RNAs on clays gives RNA-based H-CNO life a potentially optimal status. These symmetry-breaking features may extend through dynamical bifurcation to the principal divisions in the genetic code, membrane electrochemistry and the major biochemical pathways.
Evolution has become a traditional place of separation from cosmology because it is deemed to be a matter of random mutation, sexual recombination and selective advantage, which have no bearing on the formative events of the universe at large and no relation to quantum physics. This perspective is fallacious.
Fig 5: The Mandala of Evolution (detail)
The first way this mechanistic view breaks down is in the manner in which evolution responds to major bifurcations and symmetry-breaking in the physical world. While the individual details of genetic sequence have almost unlimited variation, the division of biota into the five kingdoms is as much a reflection of 'catastrophic' bifurcations of the living environment into photosynthetic and various predatory and parasitic forms of energy budget. Similarly, the development of the senses is a direct reaction to the quantum modes of interaction between the single cell and its environment (photons - vision, phonons - hearing, orbital interactions - smell etc.). Despite the apparent complexity of the modern camera eye , animals with camera eyes are inevitable over evolutionary time scales because the eye gives sturctured imformation through a principal quantum mode. Indeed evolutionary 'pit-eye' intermediates abound. It is thus almost inevitable that evolution will lead to animals with the 'five' quantum senses. The true verdancy of cosmology is found in evolution itself - cosmology become genetic.
Hidden within evolutionary history are also emergent universal algorithms which, although they may have evolved using specific genetic sequences, utilize general principles which may be universal to morphogenesis. A key example is provided by the homeotic genes which govern segmental embryogenesis in species as diverse as coelenterates, vertebrates, insects, fungi and maize.
A second universal algorithm in mammals has been the development of the cerebral cortex and limbic system, permitting emotional interactions and generalized cognitive process which have transformed the mamalian sociobiological paradigm and extended the boundaries of kin and reciprocal altruism.
Further universalization of these algorithms in embryogenesis of the brain appear to be at work in the evolution of humanity as a meta-species with maximal adaptability and sensory plasticity, enabling us to adopt an entire culture of evolutionary niches. While it is true that evolution has no deterministic agenda of progress, the Darwinian mechanism is perfectly able to respond to symmetry-breaking, and universality and to induce increasing diversity and complexity over time through edge-of-chaos interactions.
The other way in which evolution is implicitly quantum in nature is in its accidental or adventitious aspects. The correspondence principle states that quantum phenomena converge to the classical description as the repetition of single quantum events becomes large enough so that the statistics of many events takes over. from individual quantum idiosyncrasy. While this is true for many aspects of evolution, it is untrue for other adventitious or accidental occurrences in which one chance mutational change becomes woven into the historical process. Examples abound of very unusual molecules in only one or a few species, such as the chemotherapy agent vincristine found only in Cantharanthus rosea. In these cases there is no chance for classical correspondence because repetitions are made impossible by the watershed of natural selection upon the genetic fabric.
Indeed many historical twists of fate in the macroscopic world associated with chance or chaos are a literal Waterloo for the correspondence principle, because they source ultimately from quantum uncertainty. While it is clear that such events result in the surprise fulfillment of only one course of history (Napoleon's demise) from the many probability universes, twentieth century science has been obtuse in failing to recognize this as a case of non-correspondence.
The hallmark of all chaotic systems is their sensitive dependence arbitrarily small fluctuations, the so-called butterfly catastrophe - that the 'breath' of a butterfly's wings in Hawaii can later, through chaos, become inflated into a tropical cyclone in Polynesia. Such sensitive dependence in the quantum world ultimately sources from the smallest of such fluctuations, quantum uncertainty. This is also just the point where quantum suppression of chaos relaxes into the kinetic world of interacting molecules.
Quantum non-locality may thus manifest in the macroscopic world in a variety of ways from the circumstantial synchronicity of Carl Jung through evolutionary historicity to the very basis of our subjective consciousness. The nature of the subjective condition remains an enigma at the end of the twentieth century, referred to as the 'hard problem' in consciousness research, because, no matter how sophisticated our knowledge of brain physiology during active mental states becomes, there is still no qualitative correspondence between objective features of brain processing and subjective experience. No brain state is red.
Fig 6: Chaos, fractal dynamics and quantum uncertainty
and its relationship to the conscious brain. Left: Turbulence
of a fluid moving past a stick, a portion of the Mandelbrot fractal
illustrates 'frozen' chaos. Centre: Feynman diagram of electron
scattering and quantum transaction illustrate how hand-shaking
can occur across space-time, quantum sensitivity of frog retinas
to single photons, the fractal nature of the neuron linking global
brain dynamics to the molecular level and the emergence of quantum
chaos in molecular kinetics. Right: Modular activation of the
brain in sensory processing is associated with the development
of chaotic strange attractors.
The idea of the brain as a computer fails for a host of reasons. A computer is a deterministic system which has no recourse to subjectivity, relying exclusively on objective algorithms. Computational problems in the open environment are notoriously intractable. Despite having over a million billion synapses the human brain is usually numerically less efficient than a pocket calculator. Neither brain dynamics nor that of single neurons appears to be digital but rather is dynamical in nature in a way which utilizes the transition from chaos to order to produce the 'eureka' of insight.
The meaningful solution to this dilemma is that the conscious brain evolved from the excitable cell by utilizing a form of quantum anticipation emerging from the chaotically-excitable membrane as a universal quantum sense organ. Subjective consciousness thus gains a pragmatic selective advantage in evolution, because consciousness, as an expression of quantum non-locality, complements computational power with a different form of anticipation from logical prediction. The implications for conscious experience and the status of the subjective world are profound. Rather than being a deterministic chemical machine, the brain may utilize quantum non-locality in space-time to evoke the loop-hole we experience as free-will to alter the course of history of the universe.
This brings us back to the cosmological arena. Without investing any deterministic utopian vision into the evolution of humanity, the human brain represents the cosmological pinnacle of the interactive process resulting from the symmetry-breaking at our cosmic inflationary origin. Far from being an irrelevant piece of biological jelly, the conscious brain may be a universal cosmological solution to how the universe interactively becomes aware of its own 'implicate order' subjectively manifest and how its evolutionary history comes to full living fruition. The brain is not just the most delicate and complex organ in the known universe but is sensitive to the quantum limit in its sense modes. This universal nature of human consciousness makes it possible for the first time in Earth's history for the self to come to a full awakening of its primordial nature.
Fig 7: Burning forests: Left and centre Amazon,
right Sulawesi from the Shuttle. When the forests are burning
it clouds the entire image of the earth from space. Peat fires
lit in Indonesia during the 1997 El Niño equal Western
Europe's entire CO2 output.
Bio-apocalypse
Associated with the emergence of an archetypal meta-species is a crisis of the evolutionary epoch caused by the emergence of culture. This results in a chain-reaction process in which the meta-species discovers semantic language, analytic knowledge and the physical universe description and takes dominion over the genetic web on the planet, forever changing the nature of evolution and of life on Earth. Accompanying this, even in ideal circumstances, is increasing impact on other species as dominance grows and a sense of culture shock and alienation in the face of increasingly rapid social change. There is a very significant risk that the meta-species will, during the process, out-populate other species and through its own impact cause a mass extinction of life, possibly annihilating itself, or suffering severe attrition. The balance of analytic knowledge and sustainable wisdom is critical to survival and sustainability in evolutionary time.
This transition is a unique one in the cosmology of any living planet and one which is most unlikely to be repeated, unless the meta-species extinguishes itself in the process. The reasons are that we can only find the physical description of reality and biology out once. We are already 90% of the way there and we are now going to have to learn how to live on a sustainable planet for millions of years to come. Technology cannot solve this existential dilemma. We have also assumed ultimate powers of destruction through nuclear and genetic technologies. If we continue damage the planet as much as we are doing at present, these could be millions of years of poverty rather than paradise.
Fig 8: Predicted state of oil
reserves worldwide are already half gone. Cities such as Los
Angeles are likely to suffer because of their design dependence
on transport.
We are in almost one generation, burning all the fossil oil reserves, fishing the oceans to extinction, burning the great rain forests home to the richest 9/10 ths of the world's diversity, causing significant chemical and radioactive pollution and of course out-populating virtually every other species in existence in a boom-bust cycle of untold proportions. We are in the process of hurtling into a genetic epoch in which rampant genetic engineering and patenting is likely to further collapse the already fragile status of the species upon which we depend. We are also disrupting the climate in ways which drive vulnerable species out of their natural habitats too fast to reproduce.
The recklessness and selfishness of such an approach can only really be understood in terms of a culture shock in which no one is fully aware of the dimensions of the transformation taking place and rapid exploitation has such potential short-term gains during the apocalyptic transition as to over-ride any sustainable common-sense.
Fig 9: Past and predicted chart of biological
diversity. Left: Evolutionary times, right the next century. The
predictions are for triage as in Revelation. We need to save 66%.
By far the worst consequence of bio-apocalypse is genetic holocaust. If humanity makes a bonfire of genetic diversity, our descendents will suffer not just for a century or a millennium, but for perhaps 10 million years to come. Many people worry more about air pollution and climatic change, but of all the environmental crises, genetic holocaust is the most devastating.
Genetic algorithms are the most efficient way known to generate new varieties. Techniques of genetic engineering almost universally use existing genes from the wild to splice into new situations. It is phenomenally difficult to design genes de-novo because of the complexity of the protein-folding problem. Only about 10% of the species in the biosphere have been characterized, so we are potentially losing resources whose value we cannot even estimate.
At greatest risk are the very plants and other species upon which we depend for our food, medicines and commercial production, because it is these species which are most subject to genetic modification often to monoclonal form while the natural resources of biodiversity of such species are withered or eliminated by clearing for farming and agricultural production. The diversity resources of species essential for our survival are being gradually squeezed down into a few germ plasm banks where a single failure could wipe out our entire genetic heritage. The terminator gene is about to result in the death of immortality.
The likely consequences of the rampant commercial exploitation of genetic engineering without democratic ethical foresight is that human society will enter a genetic end-game, reducing the natural robustness of the species upon which we depend until any small interruption, to the climate, through volcanism or through quite a small astronomical impact will result in the collapse of society and possibly human extinction. Cloning compounds this risk.
There is no quick technical fix for the rape of the biosphere and the loss of our major non-renewable resources. At best the technical utopia can alleviate some diseases such as cancer. Used wisely space technology could protect us into the far distant future. Now water has been discovered on the moon it is possible to have a small biosphere project on the moon which would protect a seed core of humanity and key species from a major astronomical impact on Earth. Likewise an underground 'space-station' on Earth would protect from the radiation disaster of a nearby supernova. Eventually we may also reach gingerly for the stars, but only when we have learned to care for the Earth well, otherwise we are at best a carcinoma in the face of the universe - the evil empire incarnate. If we seriously damage our heritage in the next century, it is unlikely we will ever mount such utopian visions.
Humanity on Earth is clearly going through the acute phase of bio-apocalypse as I speak. While the planet is still green and pleasant in many places, very disturbing changes are happening, including massive deforestation, desertification and wholesale disruption and fragmentation of natural ecosystems and while debate continues about the severity of atmospheric change there is little dispute about the dire fate in store for biodiversity.
Gendering Bio-apocalypse
A key problem with our own bio-apocalypse on planet Earth has been the misunderstanding of sexual sociobiology and how imbalances of power between the genders, induced by culture, can cause human society to become acutely damaging to the planet and its living systems. Throughout the evolution of sexual higher animals, despite some genetic warfare, evolution has selected simultaneously for 'dissemination' of each gender's genes.
Contrary to the fantasies of some male anthropologists, the evidence of human socio-biological evolution attests to a prominent role for female choice, rather than the notion of dominant men using women as property. This is a pattern common to most animal species spanning guppies to colonial birds. There is a fundamental reason. The larger female investment and the greater male competition act together to make female choice pivotal. The female needs to be choosy because, unlike the male, she will be stuck with the result and cannot compensate by fertilizing other individuals like the male.
Fig 10: The two human genders are even more different
in the haploid phase than in the flesh. The difference between
ovum and sperm is a classical case of symmetry-breaking. Put romantically
the sperm began to cheat by contributing less cytoplasm and then
found itself stripped of all but its DNA by cytoplasmic incompatibility.
Ever since there have been massive numbers of smaller 'particulate'
sperm and a larger enveloping ovum. Ever since, the male investment
in reproduction has been less than that of the female, who by
contrast with the competitive, venture risk strategy of the male
has to make an honest long-term investment, thus requiring sustainability
as opposed to boom and bust. This difference is abundantly manifest
in human pregnancy and child-rearing.
The evolutionary record speaks volumes for human female reproductive choice. The female is the most sexually evolved and the most neotonous or 'child-like' - indicative of greater evolutionary adaption. Gatherer-hunter societies depended on women for 80% of their diet. The estrus is concealed and the woman is permanently attractive, giving her great power to entice a mate into a resourceful long-term association. The evolution of the human brain pivots on gender paradox, leading to the need for elaborate social communication to resolve social transactions of trust and deceit and for adroit skill to maintain sexual mana. The male sexual anatomy displays elaborate defences to male reproductive competition including aggressive and defensive sperm, indicative of such competition.
Female reproductive choice includes covert sexual association as part of the evolutionary strategy in overtly monogamous colonial species, facilitated in humans by the female orgasm. This represents a hedge of the massive female investment against a genetically defective principal partner. Men solve this by spreading wild oats. Genetic testing suggests 20% of human offspring are so-conceived. This is however a cause of great anxiety to males, who have never until this decade been able to be fully certain that any offspring is their own.
During the transition from gatherer-hunter society to urban cultures such as Sumeria, a transition occurred in which women became sequestered in houses, in nunneries, in harems, in brothels and in the fields. Part of this process was facilitated by militarization which made one male powerful over others, but more broadly became a religious, cultural, genealogical and legal paradigm in which males had predominant reproductive rights and powers over women as property, to ensure to their satisfaction that they had not been impregnated by any male competitor. These patriarchal characteristics were shared by almost all ancient societies by 2000 BC, despite immemorial support for the Goddess and her 'whoring' fertility rites.
Fig 11: Afghani Women suffer complete
seclusion in society inability to work,
fulfill their education or even move about independently.
Patriarchal monotheism set in motion a long-term suppression of the feminine reproductive strategy, stoning women for adultery, circumcising and infibulating them to keep them faithful, regarding them as evil except for the virgin, sequestering them in a variety of often violent ways and killing the girl child.
Patriarchal religion, combined with male elites in political and commercial power disrupted the balance of evolutionary gender paradox and resulted in a frank epoch of the male spermatogenic imperative to the detriment of the feminine long-term sustainable investment strategy. This had a series of consequences: Civilizations with boom and bust cycles, populations growing rapidly and entering into combat, an attitude of dominion over nature, that nature herself was somehow flawed and evil, as opposed to the life-giving, verdant source of all abundance. Taken to an extreme in terms of patriarchal religion it preaches an end of days in which the physical world will be scrapped for a new celestial order. It has resulted in a frank atmosphere of Armageddon which has almost led to nuclear annihilation.
It is only with the industrial revolution that the full impact of the patriarchal imperative has become expressed. The scientific revolution happened in a context where the Christian view of dominion of man over nature combined with the callous ethical nihilism of mechanistic science to unleash the commercial-industrial machine without effective constraint on the natural environment - and indeed no ethical contract with society, being responsible only to investors.
We have thus witnessed an explosive growth of mechanized culture extrapolating on an exponential curve of population, resource exploitation, endless economic growth punctuated by boom-bust crises, and consequent destruction of the living habitats of Earth. All of these have one characteristic in common, the competitive, winner-take-all, venture-risk, short-term investment, of the spermatogenic imperative.
It is doubtful whether any of these instabilities would have happened had the predominant human culture displayed a greater honesty and frankness about its sexual socio-biology and the importance of respecting the evolutionary investment and strategies of both genders. Even today, society is still struggling over the complementation between 'nature' and 'nurture'.
The adamant position taken by certain patriarchal religions today about contraception, female fertility and reproduction emphasizes how intimately such religions are steeped in the spermatogenic imperative. This has obviously been very detrimental in historical terms to the exploding population.
One immediate conclusion that has to be drawn in the age of genetic testing is that women must have the right to retain reproductive choice even within an existing relationship, because this reflects the biological realities of a sustainable world. Genetic testing raises a sword of Damacles here. In the words of Chaucer's Tale of the Wyf of Bath - the male has to accept saying to the female in respect of her fertility and her sovereignty - "You decide".
Fig 12: In Chaucer's Wyf of
Bath, a young knight who has raped a lass is given a year under
pain of death to find out what women really want. On the last
fruitless day a hag offers the answer for a wish. She explains
"sovereignty". He lives, only to find she claims him
as bride. She says she is a witch and he can either have youthful
beauty or fidelity - he must choose. He says "You decide"
and she grants both.
To correct this imbalance requires a renewal of forgiveness, honesty and trust between the genders, not a new unbalanced epoch of female dominion, but certainly the freeing of all women from bondage worldwide and the renewal of the feminine vision of sustainable immortality. This can come about only through an acknowledgment by men of the deleterious role played by male religious and secular power through the epoch and the threat that this has made to the world future. It requires a preparedness to facilitate new democratic social and economic structures to heal the venture-risk exploitation of free-market capitalism with a fully ecosystemic sustainable economy and a fully liberated economic democracy which is empowered to address all ethical issues.