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Quantum Evolution: The New Science of Life
Applying the quirky laws of quantum mechanics to DNA, McFadden (molecular microbiology, U. of Surrey, England) promulgates a new science of the origin of life. In a popular treatment, he claims that mutations driving evolution are not random; objects to complexity/chaos theory as an explanation for life's emergence; and asserts that we humans have "quantum evolved our own free will." Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
338 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
65 people are currently reading
617 people want to read
About the author
Johnjoe McFadden
9 books61 followersan Anglo-Irish scientist, academic and writer. He is Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey, United Kingdom.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
March 24, 2013
This book is fucking amazing.
Granted it took me a ridiculous amount of time to read it. But I promise that wasn't because it was bad. It was just so packed full of information, that I wanted to make sure I actually learned it, so I literally had to stop and process every few pages. This book is written so efficiently, almost every sentence gives you some new piece of information. I feel like by reading it I took an entire course in microbiology, an entire course in quantum mechanics (minus the math) and maybe a partial course or online course in thermodynamics.
Now I'm not entirely sure I buy his conclusions at the end. But I can't think of anything that disproves them either. I think this theory needs to be given all due consideration by the scientific community.
Regardless of whether you think he's right, reading this book will give you a solid understanding of the theory of evolution thus far, and what kinds of experiments have been ongoing in an attempt to understand evolution better. You'll get a good idea of the things evolution explains beautifully as well as the holes in evolution that we haven't quite figured out yet, and you'll get a detailed explanation as to how each and every one of these things work, from the most basic cells all the way to complex organisms like people. Seriously, even if he had made no conclusion and just left this to be an informative book, I would have LOVED it because of the thoroughness of his explanation.
Just read it. If you love science, just read it.
Granted it took me a ridiculous amount of time to read it. But I promise that wasn't because it was bad. It was just so packed full of information, that I wanted to make sure I actually learned it, so I literally had to stop and process every few pages. This book is written so efficiently, almost every sentence gives you some new piece of information. I feel like by reading it I took an entire course in microbiology, an entire course in quantum mechanics (minus the math) and maybe a partial course or online course in thermodynamics.
Now I'm not entirely sure I buy his conclusions at the end. But I can't think of anything that disproves them either. I think this theory needs to be given all due consideration by the scientific community.
Regardless of whether you think he's right, reading this book will give you a solid understanding of the theory of evolution thus far, and what kinds of experiments have been ongoing in an attempt to understand evolution better. You'll get a good idea of the things evolution explains beautifully as well as the holes in evolution that we haven't quite figured out yet, and you'll get a detailed explanation as to how each and every one of these things work, from the most basic cells all the way to complex organisms like people. Seriously, even if he had made no conclusion and just left this to be an informative book, I would have LOVED it because of the thoroughness of his explanation.
Just read it. If you love science, just read it.
February 9, 2023
Readers wanting to learn about science and how scientists think would be well advised to bear in mind that this work reflects the author's extremely idiosyncratic views on biology and that a mainstream consensus isn't presented.
I could only find one professional review; that of Wallace Arthur in the journal Heredity (which can be found here). Arthur concludes that Quantum Evolution "does not work". Otherwise, the book seems to have suffered the indignity of being ignored by the scientific community.
McFadden posits that the scientific theory evolution by natural selection is an insufficient explanation in biology. This is a fallacious argument from incredulity, which he attempts to support by referencing Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box . Behe's bizarre views on biology and evolution have been thoroughly discredited elsewhere. Piling more nonsense atop of other nonsense is not the way to do science.
Quantum mechanics is counter-intuitive, deeply mathematical and makes your head hurt. As a scientist, that makes it difficult to explain to a general audience. McFadden isn't a physicist - but Matthew J. Donald, who is - describes McFadden's use of quantum mechanics as "deeply flawed". In short, this appears to be classic "quantum woo". If you want a primer on quantum mechanics, look elsewhere.
A common misconception is that science progresses through massive paradigm shifts -- it generally doesn't. Paradigm shifts rarely occur, and if theory A is displaced in favour of theory B, then it's because theory B is largely correct, and is unlikely to be displaced by theory C. McFadden apparently thought that he was creating a "new science of life", yet 15 years after this massively vain overstatement, this remains an obscure work of little to no scientific relevance, in which the author over-reaches himself by making grand claims about areas of science that he doesn't understand.
I could only find one professional review; that of Wallace Arthur in the journal Heredity (which can be found here). Arthur concludes that Quantum Evolution "does not work". Otherwise, the book seems to have suffered the indignity of being ignored by the scientific community.
McFadden posits that the scientific theory evolution by natural selection is an insufficient explanation in biology. This is a fallacious argument from incredulity, which he attempts to support by referencing Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box . Behe's bizarre views on biology and evolution have been thoroughly discredited elsewhere. Piling more nonsense atop of other nonsense is not the way to do science.
Quantum mechanics is counter-intuitive, deeply mathematical and makes your head hurt. As a scientist, that makes it difficult to explain to a general audience. McFadden isn't a physicist - but Matthew J. Donald, who is - describes McFadden's use of quantum mechanics as "deeply flawed". In short, this appears to be classic "quantum woo". If you want a primer on quantum mechanics, look elsewhere.
A common misconception is that science progresses through massive paradigm shifts -- it generally doesn't. Paradigm shifts rarely occur, and if theory A is displaced in favour of theory B, then it's because theory B is largely correct, and is unlikely to be displaced by theory C. McFadden apparently thought that he was creating a "new science of life", yet 15 years after this massively vain overstatement, this remains an obscure work of little to no scientific relevance, in which the author over-reaches himself by making grand claims about areas of science that he doesn't understand.
January 20, 2023
This was a challenging book but definitely worth the patience and effort. I appreciate that the author explained the concepts in a straightforward way but the concepts themselves are still more theoretical and “quantum” then I can get my head around. Lots to think about and very well cited.
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June 6, 2022This book has an excellent introduction to quantum mechanics and evolution, but begins to lose its legs towards the end when we wander past what is known (at least relatively more so) and enter the realm of guesswork. McFadden makes intriguing points that I'll definitely be thinking about for a while, such as the link between consciousness and synchronization in neuronal firing, or whether consciousness can be said to be the driver of our individual experiences or some byproduct of neuronal computations. However, on the whole, I'm not sold on his exact theory (not that I have a better explanation!).
Also, it did take me almost two years of on-and-off reading to eventually finish the book beyond the initial background sections, since the writing did become more and more convoluted as we delved deeper into McFadden's theories. Despite this, he does an impressive job attempting to tie so many subjects together, so overall this book was, at the very least, a thought-provoking read.
Also, it did take me almost two years of on-and-off reading to eventually finish the book beyond the initial background sections, since the writing did become more and more convoluted as we delved deeper into McFadden's theories. Despite this, he does an impressive job attempting to tie so many subjects together, so overall this book was, at the very least, a thought-provoking read.
July 6, 2020
This book is a fantastic, in depth discussion of the potential routes for the origins and evolution of life through Quantum means. The beginnings of the book gave a wonderful foundation for the history of the emergence of life, the difficulty in defining life and the potential of life in other planets to name a few.
As the book advances it begins to delve deeper into Quantum means and relays them back to life and how it might be implicated in its start up as well as its evolution. It’s written in a very accessible way and helps the reader to understand often difficult concepts, as when it comes to Quantum, nothing is ever straight forward! As a biologist interested in Quantum mechanics, this book was way up my street!
I found the concept of Adaptive Mutations very interesting too and the whole book made me see certain aspects of what I thought I knew, very differently. It was also written in a very well balanced way, to account for the different thoughts or beliefs of the reader when it comes to interpretation of the quantum world, whether you believe in the Many Worlds Theory, Copenhagen interpretation, pilot waves etc..
I also loved the final chapter on the Quantum mind, free will and consciousness and how the Quantum world and our thinking mind, thoughts and brain could be connected.
Overall a brilliant book and one that I will probably come back to and read again!
As the book advances it begins to delve deeper into Quantum means and relays them back to life and how it might be implicated in its start up as well as its evolution. It’s written in a very accessible way and helps the reader to understand often difficult concepts, as when it comes to Quantum, nothing is ever straight forward! As a biologist interested in Quantum mechanics, this book was way up my street!
I found the concept of Adaptive Mutations very interesting too and the whole book made me see certain aspects of what I thought I knew, very differently. It was also written in a very well balanced way, to account for the different thoughts or beliefs of the reader when it comes to interpretation of the quantum world, whether you believe in the Many Worlds Theory, Copenhagen interpretation, pilot waves etc..
I also loved the final chapter on the Quantum mind, free will and consciousness and how the Quantum world and our thinking mind, thoughts and brain could be connected.
Overall a brilliant book and one that I will probably come back to and read again!
January 6, 2018
Gives a nice overview of the effect of Quantum Mechanics on how life might have originated hypothetically, explained explicitly in the book!
October 14, 2024
The best explanation of where life comes from, and consciousness, without unnecessary gymnastics. The way McFadden presents his argument is clear and follows one compelling line throughout — what is it, exactly, that characterizes the quality of movement in something living vs something not living? What is movement, exactly? He takes us on a journey from questions of what defines life, to where life came from, to the inevitable field of quantum physics which is required to delve deeper, and finally to a compelling recapitulation, equipped now with concepts such as the inverse quantum Zeno effect, to ask, truly, how the cell arose and remains immersed in a highly quantum level, and how consciousness follows as a quantum mechanical phenomenon.
The final (13th) chapter on consciousness is truly compelling. Having read Penrose, I was expecting an appeal to microtubules, but McFadden did not take it where I expected. It was simpler, more elegant, and left me asking, “How did I not think of that?” A book like this is in great danger of leaning toward too much speculation, but even in the final chapters, McFadden appeals only to scientific facts, and does his job to connect some dots that are easy to spot when they are put together the right way.
I am left with a new perspective now every time I perform any action, make any decision, to appreciate how deeply that decision can be tracked. As McFadden illustrates, when you kick a football, your foot and the football never touch. Even the electrons at the boundary of their particles, getting close, get only close enough to repel one another, a consequence of the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Yet, when we ask what made that kicking action happen, even factoring out the neural processes, we can trace the action down to the processes of individual protons in the enzymes which hook along the actin-myosin chain of a muscle fibre. Or, with regard to the neuron, critical voltage gates are opened or closed based on the quantum state of a single proton. When neurons are inactive, the freedom of this proton to exist in a state of superposition opens up a higher uncertainty in the measured state of the neuron when it is activated and fires (the proton is “measured” in quantum mechanical terms, collapsing a coherent state to a decoherent one). McFadden’s proposed CEM (conscious electromagnetic) field makes sense of EEG and MRI data, particularly the interpretation that the electromagnetic field’s characteristic wave patterns (alpha, beta, gamma, theta, delta) exist in synchronization between disparate brain regions utilized when attention is on one particular thing. The electromagnetic field, being composed of photons with wave-like properties, is subject to the same properties as photons in a 2-slit experiment — interference patterns, particularly — hence when we ask what makes the structure of human thought, feeling, and awareness, it is easier with McFadden’s model to see how it is entirely quantum mechanical, occurring in the quantum field, where the activity of neurons in the connectome are merely mediators of change, acting as a live feedback mechanism for the living organism’s sensory and sensory-processing data.
I am a fan of Penrose’s microtubule model, but on its own I struggled to see how the effects of electromagnetic waves along axons could map to a coherent quantum field by way of the microtubules alone. McFadden’s illustration of the proton-dependent gate-switching at the synaptic cleft provided the missing piece for me. If the phenomenon of consciousness is taking place in this quantum electromagnetic field, then there must still be a strong connection between this field and the activity of neurons — otherwise we risk the awkward mind-body dualism that has troubled philosophers. McFadden eliminated all that, and really, it’s brilliant and will keep me thinking for a long time (pun intended).
What was most fascinating to me was the way by which, as I read this book, I related deeply to some of the experiences I had encountered training in meditation, particularly, during longer retreats when the consciousness experience I have, there is no better term for than “quantum spookiness”. The mind is not what it seems, and you do notice that when you can still the neural processes, inactivating neurons so that more quantum superpositions can build up, and the conscious experience can exist more in the complementary electromagnetic field (the purpose of maintaining a precise, narrow object of concentration), where stranger and stranger phenomena (ie the jhanas) can arise. I knew intuitively I was somehow observing quantum states unmeasured, but could not understand how. Now, thanks to McFadden’s book, I have a model to make sense of it.
I will read more by this author, as I see he wrote two more books. I would love to see him write some day on the mind, perhaps a sequel to this called “quantum consciousness”. Yes, please!
The final (13th) chapter on consciousness is truly compelling. Having read Penrose, I was expecting an appeal to microtubules, but McFadden did not take it where I expected. It was simpler, more elegant, and left me asking, “How did I not think of that?” A book like this is in great danger of leaning toward too much speculation, but even in the final chapters, McFadden appeals only to scientific facts, and does his job to connect some dots that are easy to spot when they are put together the right way.
I am left with a new perspective now every time I perform any action, make any decision, to appreciate how deeply that decision can be tracked. As McFadden illustrates, when you kick a football, your foot and the football never touch. Even the electrons at the boundary of their particles, getting close, get only close enough to repel one another, a consequence of the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Yet, when we ask what made that kicking action happen, even factoring out the neural processes, we can trace the action down to the processes of individual protons in the enzymes which hook along the actin-myosin chain of a muscle fibre. Or, with regard to the neuron, critical voltage gates are opened or closed based on the quantum state of a single proton. When neurons are inactive, the freedom of this proton to exist in a state of superposition opens up a higher uncertainty in the measured state of the neuron when it is activated and fires (the proton is “measured” in quantum mechanical terms, collapsing a coherent state to a decoherent one). McFadden’s proposed CEM (conscious electromagnetic) field makes sense of EEG and MRI data, particularly the interpretation that the electromagnetic field’s characteristic wave patterns (alpha, beta, gamma, theta, delta) exist in synchronization between disparate brain regions utilized when attention is on one particular thing. The electromagnetic field, being composed of photons with wave-like properties, is subject to the same properties as photons in a 2-slit experiment — interference patterns, particularly — hence when we ask what makes the structure of human thought, feeling, and awareness, it is easier with McFadden’s model to see how it is entirely quantum mechanical, occurring in the quantum field, where the activity of neurons in the connectome are merely mediators of change, acting as a live feedback mechanism for the living organism’s sensory and sensory-processing data.
I am a fan of Penrose’s microtubule model, but on its own I struggled to see how the effects of electromagnetic waves along axons could map to a coherent quantum field by way of the microtubules alone. McFadden’s illustration of the proton-dependent gate-switching at the synaptic cleft provided the missing piece for me. If the phenomenon of consciousness is taking place in this quantum electromagnetic field, then there must still be a strong connection between this field and the activity of neurons — otherwise we risk the awkward mind-body dualism that has troubled philosophers. McFadden eliminated all that, and really, it’s brilliant and will keep me thinking for a long time (pun intended).
What was most fascinating to me was the way by which, as I read this book, I related deeply to some of the experiences I had encountered training in meditation, particularly, during longer retreats when the consciousness experience I have, there is no better term for than “quantum spookiness”. The mind is not what it seems, and you do notice that when you can still the neural processes, inactivating neurons so that more quantum superpositions can build up, and the conscious experience can exist more in the complementary electromagnetic field (the purpose of maintaining a precise, narrow object of concentration), where stranger and stranger phenomena (ie the jhanas) can arise. I knew intuitively I was somehow observing quantum states unmeasured, but could not understand how. Now, thanks to McFadden’s book, I have a model to make sense of it.
I will read more by this author, as I see he wrote two more books. I would love to see him write some day on the mind, perhaps a sequel to this called “quantum consciousness”. Yes, please!
October 3, 2016
This is basically a response in support of punctuated equilibrium that proposes a quantum level solution. Some interesting stuff for thought here, but I'm not convinced. What is it? Well, you can have a gene that's turned off or turned on. What's offered here is a third option: turned both on and off, kinda like Schrodinger's cat.
We know that something is or it isn't and that variations happen for a reason. We know that if you bake a cake, you're not going to pull a chocolate mousse out of the oven. The theory puts forth that you could...
The book also covers experiments in which evolution is attempted to be kick-started bu recreating the supposed primordial soup to see what evolves. Well, this experiments haven't worked. I would suspect that having a planet in general perceived status for a few billion years, and then changing would put some real harsh blockers in trying to recreate in an experiment. What we do know, is that life finds a way. What does that mean? It means you have organisms (unicellular and above.) They exist because they have been able to thrive in the current environment. Then there is a trauma - a scarcity of a needed resources which forces the organism to adapt. In this case, we had had anaerobic bacteria partner with aerobic bacteria to survive - when excretes what the other needs in a symbiotic fashion. There is either an inherent (genetic) potential to do so (live) or not (die) which is what we call natural selection. The greater the genetic variability, the greater the likelihood that some genetic strain will be able to adapt and survive.
We've been able to identify and document a few of these iterations. There is some support that it is cyclical, but in the end it still Darwinian in that you must be able to adapt, thrive, and reproduce.
We know that something is or it isn't and that variations happen for a reason. We know that if you bake a cake, you're not going to pull a chocolate mousse out of the oven. The theory puts forth that you could...
The book also covers experiments in which evolution is attempted to be kick-started bu recreating the supposed primordial soup to see what evolves. Well, this experiments haven't worked. I would suspect that having a planet in general perceived status for a few billion years, and then changing would put some real harsh blockers in trying to recreate in an experiment. What we do know, is that life finds a way. What does that mean? It means you have organisms (unicellular and above.) They exist because they have been able to thrive in the current environment. Then there is a trauma - a scarcity of a needed resources which forces the organism to adapt. In this case, we had had anaerobic bacteria partner with aerobic bacteria to survive - when excretes what the other needs in a symbiotic fashion. There is either an inherent (genetic) potential to do so (live) or not (die) which is what we call natural selection. The greater the genetic variability, the greater the likelihood that some genetic strain will be able to adapt and survive.
We've been able to identify and document a few of these iterations. There is some support that it is cyclical, but in the end it still Darwinian in that you must be able to adapt, thrive, and reproduce.
November 22, 2018
At first I was very intrigued. Later I lost the thread and got confused. I finished the book and googled the topic. There are apparently 2 schools of thought concerning Quantum Evolution. Mr. McFadden's school is listed as the 'alternative.' Although I am not a scientist, I am well-read in both physics and biology. Personally I think Mr. McFadden overstates his case.
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May 24, 2022This book, including the notes and the bibliography, spells out where Quantum Physics started and its future. We all live in a Quantum Universe, it is testable, and TRUE. The implications for anyone who grasps this knowledge and can use it in both "dry" algorithms (in computer programming) and "wet" algorithms (within you & me) ...are breath taking.
January 31, 2019
This book is a total mindfuck for both the chemist and biologists alike! I still find myself quoting little tidbits from this book to anyone who asks me to try and explain the quantum fuckery.
August 18, 2024
I never shut up about this book.
December 30, 2014
I think I understood most of this - I feel like with anything dealing with quantum physics/mechanics I really would need some sort of animated images to really grasp it. I mean, I get the (now seemingly maligned) Schrodinger's Cat illustration of basic elements of the quantum universe, and I see how applying that to all aspects of science (thus making determinism archaic) complicates much of what we know in the pursuit of answering more questions about our world and our universe.... There seem to be parallels between deconstructionism (in the linguistic & philosophical spheres) and quantum physics - if I grasp much of what is being discussed the basic aspects of quantum is to reduce existence to its literally elementary particles - the building blocks of how we perceive reality.
I felt that McFadden did touch on the esoteric possibilities of quantum reality - that there is a common ground linking philosophy, language, mathematics, and science (and through extension economics, history, art, etc etc) and that the quantum approach could unify all modes of thought - and open up new avenues of self-awareness. Heavy stuff.
I was drawn to the book as McFadden tried to illustrate how quantum physics could be applied to evolution in order to solve one of the pesky unanswered questions in evolutionary theory - how did organic life begin on earth? To me, he still didn't nail the question as I can't see quantum physics applied to the literal world (sure, there might be multiverses and parallel universes and everything else possibly out there, but we can only perceive of this world - so all that is theory), and since we are organic beings and the organic processes had an origin on earth, applying a purely theoretical solution to a non-theoretical question (well...) left me somewhat dissatisfied with his conclusions...
BUT much of the book was over my head and I felt that I would be returning to the book in the future to try to sort out much of what McFadden was trying to say, which I found intriguing to no end.
I felt that McFadden did touch on the esoteric possibilities of quantum reality - that there is a common ground linking philosophy, language, mathematics, and science (and through extension economics, history, art, etc etc) and that the quantum approach could unify all modes of thought - and open up new avenues of self-awareness. Heavy stuff.
I was drawn to the book as McFadden tried to illustrate how quantum physics could be applied to evolution in order to solve one of the pesky unanswered questions in evolutionary theory - how did organic life begin on earth? To me, he still didn't nail the question as I can't see quantum physics applied to the literal world (sure, there might be multiverses and parallel universes and everything else possibly out there, but we can only perceive of this world - so all that is theory), and since we are organic beings and the organic processes had an origin on earth, applying a purely theoretical solution to a non-theoretical question (well...) left me somewhat dissatisfied with his conclusions...
BUT much of the book was over my head and I felt that I would be returning to the book in the future to try to sort out much of what McFadden was trying to say, which I found intriguing to no end.
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November 28, 2017 It was one James Rollin’s recommend readings from his Sigma Series books. More often facts are stranger than fiction.
August 16, 2007
Containing both an introduction to quantum physics and the probabilistic universe, and McFadden's theory on how quantum theory intersects with evolution, this book is a page by page gasp-a-thon! Do not read this in bed if your partner is trying to sleep. You will find yourself continuously waking him/her up with a "Did you have any idea that ...!"
The crux of of McFadden's theory (as I remember it) is that our bodies themselves act as "observers" of quantum particles (forcing them continuously out of their unknown state), and yet because they are probabilistic and not deterministic, evolutionary changes can be "stored" in those probabilities. This gets around the thorny problem of atomicity in evolution (also known as the "flying dragons" or "what use is an eye halfway through it's evolution" problem.) Factor in the multiverse and a quantum take on Decarte's "I think therefore I am" philosophy and you've got yourself one incredible book.
Read it, and be amazed.
The crux of of McFadden's theory (as I remember it) is that our bodies themselves act as "observers" of quantum particles (forcing them continuously out of their unknown state), and yet because they are probabilistic and not deterministic, evolutionary changes can be "stored" in those probabilities. This gets around the thorny problem of atomicity in evolution (also known as the "flying dragons" or "what use is an eye halfway through it's evolution" problem.) Factor in the multiverse and a quantum take on Decarte's "I think therefore I am" philosophy and you've got yourself one incredible book.
Read it, and be amazed.
September 21, 2007
This is a science book-that is FUN to read. It was a great refresher on quantum theory (which I totally didn't get in P-Chem!). The theory presented is definitely just a theory...and many evolutionary biologists seem to think this guy is a quack...but this is typically how paradigm shifts begin! Overall it is written well enough that this sceince-laden book is a quick read! Enjoy!
October 3, 2007
K, actually, this is one of my favorites because it presents the science behind a great deal of my deepest spiritual beliefs. It is, however, not an easy read if you aren't accustomed to scientific language. Read with a dictionary in hand, and only if you fundamentally believe that quantum physics is at least possible, if not plausible or (as I do) irrefutable reality. Good stuff!
Want to read
April 23, 2010recommended by Zanardi
April 13, 2011
Interesting points of view - he's one of my old Uni lecturers.
August 12, 2011
A good exploration of how an understanding of quantum mechanics may impact the assumed probabilities of life spontaneously emerging.
February 16, 2012
Unfortunately I'm not a quantum physicist so a lot of it went over my head - but very thought provoking!
February 17, 2009
What an awesome book! The title is self explanatory.
September 23, 2012
Complex theory. Not sure if I believe the claim but great explanation. And it's possible
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews