02/05/2024
What does a unification among the major scientific disciplines look like? Such a unified science would not exactly regard physical phenomena as being delineated by tiered levels that are entirely separate and distinct: with physics at the base, then chemistry, and then in some rare instances complex biology emerging by happenstance. Instead, in the emerging syncretic science we can see the intersectionality of these processes such as in magnetoreception by organisms like birds: in which the particle spin state of free radicals determines what chemistry takes place depending on orientation with the Earth's magnetic field to produce differential products that react with magnetoreceptor cells in the retina to send signals to a bird's nervous system so that it knows which direction is North or South: in a single process there is classical physics of electromagnetism, Earth science, quantum physics, chemistry, biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, electrophysiology and ultimately behavior. Some models in biology involve quantum gravity, such as the Hameroff-Penrose Orch-OR theory, in which the spacetime geometry of qubits in neuronal microtubules are involved in generating consciousness.
In these examples we see the role of physics in biology, but we can also consider the importance of biology in physics; exemplified in the quote "biology is the feedback mechanism for the universe to learn about itself." From this perspective, we can begin to build a unified model in which biology is not a rare emergent happenstance, but instead, because it plays an integral, non-trivial role as a mechanism of the increasing functional complexification of systems within the universe there are probably natural self-organizational processes at fundamental levels of physics that drive systems to the level of biological complexity. The feedback mechanism of biology then accelerates such functional complexification, and the autodidactic universe learns. In a certain sense, the universe needs this feedback, or development can quickly get stalled or dissipated in the enormous possibilities of configuration space.