Thinking about energy is not radical re-thinking

By: James V. Kohl | Published on: March 19, 2017

The brain: a radical rethink is needed to understand it

…Optogenetics, a technique that uses genetic modification of neurons so that their electrical activity can be controlled with light pulses – can help us to explore their specific contribution to brain function.

Optogenetics links the speed of light on contact with water to what is known about all energy-dependent cell type differentiation in all individuals of all living genera. Serious scientists, for example, have linked angstroms to ecosystems in all living genera because they know that brain function is experience-dependent and RNA-mediated.

Even in organisms that have no brain, cell type differentiation occurs in the context of biophysically constrained RNA-mediated protein folding chemistry. All chemistry is energy-dependent quantum chemistry and chemistry links quantum physics from the de novo creation of G protein-coupled receptors to the biological basis for all biodiversity on Earth.
For example, food odors link natural selection for energy-dependent codon optimality to the metabolism of food to pheromones. Biophysically constrained RNA-mediated feedback loops link the metabolism of food from the physiology of reproduction to supercoiled DNA, which protects all organized genomes from virus-driven entropy.
Simply put, quantum physics, quantum chemistry, and energy-dependent quantum biology prevent virus-driven entropy, which links everything known to serious scientists about niche construction to consciousness.
The Penrose Institute was established to link that fact to human consciousness in the context of everything known about cell type differentiation to everyone since the time that Lewis Thomas began making claims olfaction and smell.
A Fear of Pheromones (1971)
On Smell (1980)

The act of smelling is remarkably like the act of thinking itself.

See also:

I should think we might fairly gauge the future of biological science, centuries ahead by estimating the time it will take to reach a complete comprehensive understanding of odor. It may not seem a profound enough problem to dominate all the life sciences, but it contains, piece by piece, all the mysteries.  —  as cited in The Scent of Eros: Mysteries of Odor in Human Sexuality

In 1991, Roger Penrose, summarized what was known about all the mysteries in his forward to the reprint of Schrodinger’s “What is Life?”

How often do we still hear that quantum effects can have little relevance in the study of biology, or even that we eat food in order to gain energy?

For comparison, see this comment by “Sonny” Williams to the International Society for Human Ethology’s yahoo group:

The empirical evidence is overwhelming that the brain is composed of highly specialized regions, whose neuronal members are unique in their cytoarchitecture (down to the molecular level).  Moreover, empirical evidence reveals that genes have directed these neural variations during corticogenesis; that is, most specialized neurons are differentiated early during development and directed to their place in the brain by intrinsic cues, and not activity-dependent cues.  This fact does not preclude later “rewiring,” or changes that are activity-dependent (plasticity), but this range of plasticity is constrained by the genetically derived regions.

Thus, the metaphor that the brain is “modular” is as accurate as any other metaphor.  HOWEVER, “modular” and functionally specialized regions has always included the fact that functional outcomes require a widely distributed network of specialized regions.  That is, modules do not exist in isolation, as islands of specialized function, but rather there existence as a specialized region is predicated upon their iterative communication with many other equally specialized regions.

I cannot recall any comment by Clarence “Sonny” Williams that might ever have made sense to a serious scientist. He is, in my opinion, a biologically uninformed science idiot. I once wondered who could have taught anyone to believe what biologically uninformed people believe in, or why they think what they were taught makes sense to serious scientists.
Then, I tried to discuss what I know about the energy-dependent links from angstroms to ecosystems in all living genera with the senior author of Complex Spike Patterns in Olfactory Bulb Neuronal Networks by Alister U Nicol, Anne Segonds-Pinchon, and Magnus S. Magnussen. It was also published as a book chapter in Discovering Hidden Temporal Patterns in Behavior and Interaction: T-Pattern Detection and Analysis with THEME™
Background:

T-pattern analysis is a procedure developed for detecting non-randomly recurring hierarchical and multiordinal real-time sequential patterns (T-patterns).

CONCLUSIONS:

We conclude that such sequences are an important physiological property of the neural system studied, and suggest that they may form a basis for encoding sensory information.

My summary: They link everything known to serious scientists about energy as information to non-randomly recurring patterns of biophysically constrained RNA-mediated protein folding chemistry and “…characterize these patterns in light of their putative role in processing sensory information.”
They ignore the fact that sunlight is the anti-entropic virucidal source of the energy that prevents genomic entropy via the pheromone-controlled physiology of reproduction in all living genera.
Apparently, like other biologically uninformed theorists, they did not realize what Dobzhansky (1973) did when he linked the light of evolution to all biophysically constrained biodiversity via the nutrient energy-dependent pheromone-controlled physiology of reproduction.
Dobzhansky was one of the first self-declared Creationists to level the playing field with his joke about evolution as if it occurred over billions of years.

I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God’s, or Nature’s, method of Creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 B.C.; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.

Anyone who followed Dobzhansky’s works probably got the joke. He knew there was experimental evidence of God’s Creation. For example, he linked sensory input from what organisms eat and their physiology of reproduction to amino acid substitutions that differentiate all cell types in all living genera. He also knew that theorists had not found experimental evidence of biologically-based cause and effect that supported their claims about millions to billions of years of evolution.
All serious scientists were made aware of Dobzhansky’s rabbinical form of debate in 1964. He began by referring to theorists as bird-watchers and butterfly collectors.  A rather well known form of rabbinical begins with: “Thou fool….”
Dobzhansky was far less damning when he started his address with this:

The notion has gained some currency that the only worthwhile biology is molecular biology. All else is “bird watching” or “butterfly collecting.” Bird watching and butterfly collecting are occupations manifestly unworthy of serious scientists! I have heard a man whose official title happens to be Professor of Zoology declare to an assembly of his colleagues that “a good man cannot teach zoology. A good man can teach, of course, only molecular biology.

Dobzhansky probably was referring to himself in the third person when he made the claim about the unidentified Professor of Zoology. Still, to avoid ridicule by biologically uninformed theorists, he tempered the claim.

Such pronunciamentos can be dismissed as merely ridiculous. They are, however, caricatures of opinions entertained by some intelligent and reasonable people, whose views deserve an honest and careful consideration and analysis. Science must cope with new problems that arise and devise new approaches to old problems. Some lines of research become less profitable and less exciting and others more so.

Clearly, Dobzhansky knew that his claims about amino acid substitutions would be accepted by serious scientists and rejected by pseudoscientists, who have continued to reject the claims of all serious scientists. That’s what pseudoscientists have always done.
See for instance:

3/09/17 Jay Feierman: One can’t have Darwinian evolution by natural selection without either “random” mutations or directional selection. They are both necessary, proximate, contributing causes for genes and the proteins they code for changing in frequency over time in a population and by which the population becomes adaptively configured to the current environment.

3/17/17 Jay R. Feierman [NEW]: We are adaptively configured to the current environment because we are the most successful mammal on earth by any measure. There are 7 billion of us and we inhabit every continent on earth. We accomplished this by Darwinian natural selection adaptively influencing the structural design features we call genes and the proteins they make as well as the extra-genetic structural design features developed through our creativity and ingenuity where we pass the instructions on how to make them across generations by social learning. An iPhone is an example today and an obsidian arrow head was an example in the past.

My comment:  After attempts to discuss energy-dependent biophysically constrained RNA-mediated cause and effect with Magnus S. Magnusson, I was not surprised to find support for some of Feierman’s claims about human adaptations in:

Complex spike patterns in olfactory bulb neuronal networks

Indeed, adaptations occur. But, in the same article, they failed to support Feierman’s claims that the adaptations randomly occur.

Abstract excerpt:

BACKGROUND:

T-pattern analysis is a procedure developed for detecting non-randomly recurring hierarchical and multiordinal real-time sequential patterns (T-patterns).

Conclusion: We conclude that such sequences are an important physiological property of the neural system studied, and suggest that they may form a basis for encoding sensory information.

My conclusion: People like Jay R. Feierman should try to support their assertions about adaptations with experimental evidence of biologically-based cause and effect like the evidence that was cited in the article linked above.

Any claims about how a population becomes adaptively configured to the current environment are not true outside the context of what is known about energy as information and biophysically constrained RNA-mediated protein folding chemistry. If those ridiculous claims were true, the experimental evidence of top-down causation that theorists think support the claims could be used to convince serious scientists that something besides natural selection for energy-dependent codon optimality and the physiology of pheromone-controlled reproduction could replace facts to support theories about mutation-driven evolution.

See also 3/18/17: [MODERATOR NOTE: I’m posting this submission even though it misquotes Feierman, who did not ever say or imply that “adaptations randomly occur.” jrf]
See alson 3/18/17: [MODERATOR NOTE: Adaptations and mutations are not synonyms. An adaptation is a mutation acted upon by natural selection to configure a population to the current environment. It would be an oxymoron to say that “adaptations randomly occur.” By definition, adaptations are mutations that have been acted upon by natural selection by which their frequency is increased in a population over time in a specific environment. jrf]


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