BOLOGNA 2000 Workshop 5 Lara Croft and her sisters: Language, Communication and the new ICT's       Giovanna Braidotti    

IN-FORMED MATTER

Abstract

Cutting edge science is finding it increasingly difficult to communicate theories/explanations with high fidelity using words. Language introduces a coherency error. An error due to an information gap between description (language based mind) and the actual nature of physical/biological/chemical systems. On one side of the information gap, language based mind inadvertantly locates itself within a Cartesian grid of linear cause-effect. This linearity, while a useful tool to approximate, categorise and compare, renders some of our most successful scientific theories counter-intuitive, incomprehensible or just plain weird. Language cannot readily grasp a notion of "cause" that does not pre-exist an outcome. What science needs to start bridging the information gap is a familiarity with the all important role played by non-linear systems and acausal synchronicities. Artists have always managed to tease more meaning from language than seems possible. Given the way science is evolving, technology, by necessity, may similarly push the horizons of where mind chooses to locate itself. Cartesian grids or implicate orders. These days, our mind's linear soliloquies and technology - especially communication technology - seem to be on a collision course.

 

Introduction

     As a molecular biologist - a scientist who is fascinated by existence enigmas and the ways of this universe - I am discovering that an accord between science, philosophy, art and religion is not only possible, it is obligatory if we are ever to cohere mind based descriptions with the nature of the described. But such an accord intrinsically comes with a critique of fragmented, disciplinary narratives which in turn creates a difficulty locating a forum in which to elaborate the idea of an accord. I am a minority within science but with a message to all - but a message that cannot be readily spoken within the scientific mainstream. It is as a consequence of this disciplinary policing that I come to cherish the fact of those radical truth-seekers, collectively called feminists, and it is in one of their forums that I offer a description of the latest from our high tech laboratories …

Physicality

     We are all familiar with the idea that something odd happened in the twentieth century to our description of physical systems, of matter. Something about Einstein and the odd behaviour of atoms in the so-called "quantum world". What is less well known is that an interpretation-war has been raging within the scientific mainstream made possible by the fact that matter does not obey familiar notions of being and cause and becoming. Our most successful theory of matter, in fact, has forced scientists to question the very principles underlying notions of existence.

     In the 1920's the development of mathematical calculi, collectively called quantum mechanics, permitted scientists to predict the behaviour of atoms with unprecedented precision. Yet the theory presented us with a two-way bifurcation with regards to the way we view the universe because it predicts that there is a fundamental indeterminancy associated with matter and radiation: the very nature of atoms and photons is inextricably linked to the ability to behave as if aware of the overall state of a scientist's measuring equipment. Flick a switch to alter that state and the "building blocks" of matter transform themselves … and do so in a way that preserves the indeterminancy. Consequently, decisions made by the observer alter the nature of the observed. This ability to conspire to affect the outcome necessitates discarding one of two assumptions about the universe. We could choose to keep a local notion of "cause". By locality, physicists mean that matter is located completely within its physical boundaries and, therefore, can interact only locally, at this boundary, to cause effects. But view phenomena through the lens of locality and quantum behaviour renders objective reality (the idea that the universe exists independently of mind and observers) untenable. Scientists were presented with a choice between locality or objective reality.

     And to everybody's surprise, they chose to discard objective reality.

     According to the standard interpretation (also referred to as the Copenhagen interpretation), characteristics associated with matter and radiation exist only as a ghostly superposition of probabilities. Measurement of a characteristic (observation) collapses these probabilities into a concrete quality, rendering it real in the classical sense. But there is a condition. Characteristics come in attribute-conjugate pairs: measure an attribute and the reality of the conjugate vanishes into the uncertainty principle. The pairs cannot exist in the classical sense at the same time, say the Copenhagenists. They also insist that there are no more valid questions one can ask about matter beyond this attribute uncertainty.

     For sixty years the Copenhagen interpretation was treated as the standard despite being opposed by the likes of Einstein, Schrödinger, Bohm, Bell and Hiley most famously. In 1982, technology finally caught up with theory and experimentalists were able to test and confirm the validity of a locality versus reality bifurcation. Scientists from all camps were invited by the BBC to explain the implications of Alain Aspect's results. The interviews were published in a book entitled The Ghost in the Atom (1). The Copenhagenists were represented by Rudolf Peierls. The interviewer is Paul Davies:

 

Paul Davies: "… do you think that the Copenhagen interpretation is still the official view?"

Rudolf Peierls: "Well, first of all I object to the term Copenhagen interpretation."

PD: "Why is that?"

RP: "Because this sounds as if there were several interpretations of quantum mechanics. There is only one. There is only one way in which you can understand quantum mechanics. There are a number of people who are unhappy about this, and are trying to find something else. But nobody has found something else which is consistent yet, so when you refer to the Copenhagen interpretation of the mechanics what you really mean is quantum mechanics. And therefore the majority of physicists don't use the term; it's mostly used by philosophers."

 

     Despite Peierl's protestations, quantum mechanics has been subject to numerous rounds of interpretation, made necessary by the fact that there is no clear cut correspondence between the mathematical symbols and real-world objects. All that is known is that in order to account for observations about the chemical and electromagnetic properties of atoms and photons, one must fiddle with the maths to the point where you are left with a calculus that can, indeed, compute atomic behaviour but with no one knowing why the formula works. Obviously this opens up a guessing game as to what the mathematical symbols may represent. A guessing game which Peierls inadvertantly reveals was carefully policed by the Copenhagen mainstream.

     Davies then summarises the existence-paradox forced onto matter by the Copenhagen interpretation. It is worth repeating:

 

PD: "Is it correct then that we can't think of an electron as being just like a scaled down version of say a billiard ball, in the sense that we can't say that it has a position or has a motion, until we've actually measured either its position or its motion? In the absence of a measurement we can't say that it has either of these qualities?"

RP: "Yes, I entirely agree with this way of putting it."

 

     The problem here is the attribute-conjugate relationship. Measuring an attribute into existence sends the conjugate characteristic into an odd state where it cannot be said to exist … unless you alter observation and make it the subject of the measurement. You can then observe it into existence (but rendering the former attribute into the now conjugate). It is a problem that highlights an interplay between mind and existence, say the Copenhagenists. Which of course leaves the observer with one mighty role to play in materialising the real from quantum uncertainty. So mighty a role that David Bohm wondered how the universe managed before observers. Davies picks up the theme:

 

PD: "So you think consciousness plays a crucial role in the nature of reality?"

RP: "I don't know what reality is."

 

Later, he once again stresses this point:

 

RP: "Again I object to your saying reality. I don't know what that is. The point is I'm not saying that our thinking about the universe creates it as such; only that it creates a description. If physics consists of a description of what we see or what we might see and what we will see, and if there is nobody available to observe this system, then there can be no description."

 

     Got it? Without a describer there can be no description. And physicists by opting for locality did, indeed, choose to render description (mind based systems of logic) the sole framework in which to seek explanation. Davies clarifies this preference:

 

PD: "Personally, I've always found it curious that scientists should want to displace mind or the observer from the centre of things because it seems to me appealing to have us there. Why do you think there is this restless search by many physicists to find some sort of vestige of Einstein's vision of objective reality which doesn't depend on the mind?"

 

     Here we have a physicist describing existence as a "vestige of Einstein's vision". Description has been granted supremacy over the actuality. Here is Peierls retort:

 

PR: "… I do not think there are so many physicists who are worried about this. I think it is only a very small minority."

 

     Oh goody, it is only a very small minority that don't think themselves into a parallel nonreality where matter has to ask our permission to exist. That's a relief. After all, it wouldn't do for physicist to believe in the existence of the stuff they measure into existence.

     Now watch the Copenhagenist think reality into being the moment Davies points to a viable alternative interpretation, that not only exists but at that point had existed for decades. It is Bohm and Hiley's quantum potential interpretation (2) that is explicitely nonlocal:

 

PD: "One possibility is to abandon the idea of locality, that is, to entertain the possibility of some sort of faster-than-light signalling, so that the events taking place at separated places can somehow conspire together simultaneously; I think Einstein referred to this as 'spooky action at a distance'. If one is prepared to entertain the possibility of such instantaneous communication, then I suppose it would be possible to retain an objective view of reality and yet still be in keeping with the results of Aspect's experiment."

RP: "It becomes a very funny view of reality if you do that."

 

     Suddenly reality exists for this Copenhagenist. Exists and can refute the competing interpretation. It is a funny reality indeed that can permit such incoherence to flourish as the mainstream view.

     In the 1998, Dürr, Nonn and Rempe performed the experiments that tested which bifurcation atoms themselves take (3). Atoms chose not to obey the rules of locality. Matter is nonlinear, it is nonlocal. It can be roughly described as a conspiracy between local physical particles and nonlocal information waves that guide the particles relative to the overall possible outcomes of interactions. An aspect of atoms and photons extends well beyond the physical boundary and possesses the capacity to inform each other virtually instantenously. They are separate bits ethereally connected to a web of shared information.

     The oddity of this whole debate is that since the 1930's (thanks to Einstein and Schrödinger) it was clearly understood that the maths of quantum mechanics itself predicts that matter is nonlocal. The scientific mainstream for 60 years fought to retain locality rather than choose the bifurcation their own theory predicted. That is a measure of how threatening the idea of nonlocal and nonlinear cause was to the scientists.

     The wonder of it is, that a dual view of phenomena as information competent matter is applicable from the quantum scale all the way up and including life. Improbable, complex phenomena is more accurately and coherently described in this way. The trick within quantum mechanics is that information isn't just a metaphor. Science is starting to suspect active information actually, really does exist. Information possesses existence. And with existence … well, lets just say that the next generation of technological gizmos - especially computing and communication tools - will rely on the information competency of matter to produce machines that will just simply take your breath away (4).

     So how will we cope with the next generation of ICT technology? Prototypes of machines that rely on the very fact of nonlocal quantum entanglements already exist in basic research labs. Quantum computers and teleportation devices, for instance. Applied labs are, as of this year, investing to develop these technologies into commercial applications, with an especially keen eye towards a new kind of internet. Their effect on technology stocks is already being anticipated. But where do they leave the operator? Will the human component in the web continue to believe s/he possesses existence only because of the machinations of dumb, inert matter, a physical be-able caught in a local reality that chugs away in the grips of linear cause-effect? While they operate machines that rely on atoms in wildly different locations behaving for the all the world as if a wholeness exists that space and time cannot eliminate. How will the operators cope with computers that cannot distinguish between data and software, a computation being a one off deal because the computing relied on an interaction between atoms that is creative. Cause did not pre-exist the participation required to affect an outcome.

     As biological beings we will be in the capable hands of molecular biologists, geneticists, and genome companies. How will the biological sciences cope? By offering us prozac and viagra and beta-blockers, perhaps. What are these pharmaceuticals trying to prevent?

     There is a very great error occurying in the narratives coming out of molecular biology labs. It is helpful to remember that this discipline not only has not, but also cannot, come up with a coherent definition of what is life.  The operators that desire coherent explanation find themselves once again staking out a position that is viewed as a "minority" by the scientific mainstream. Those genome companies will fight you all the way. It is a battle over narratives, one that is distinctly similar to what the minority physicists have been through battling the Copenhagenists. And yet, the next generation of ICT machines enact a paradigm shift that inspires a more accurate definition of who, what and how we are.

Information competent molecules

     Thanks to Alan Turing, information has done odd and wonderful things to our machines (5). Turing invented the notion of machinery that can process that which is insubstantial: information. He designed machine movements such that they are analogous to the logical progressions in an algorithm and, therefore, constitute a computation. Like a master wizard, he materialised information from the realm of abstract logic. He gave logic a body.

     However, to contemplate biology in the context of information inevitably leads to a knee-jerk reaction: DNA! Genes! The genetic code has been cracked, information in biology has been mastered, goes the refrain. And yet thermodynamics and information theory tell us quite categorically that DNA cannot cause the ordering of matter into life competent activity; DNA contributes to maintaining order. For DNA to do otherwise would require a new law of physics, as Schrödinger pointed out in What is Life? in the 1940's (6).

     DNA is effectively two-dimensional memory: it is a string of Adenine, Cytosine, Guanine or Thymidine nucleic acids: ACCATGCTACGAATATTCGTGAAT, a 4-letter code. Genes are the memory for the linear sequence to arrange the building blocks of RNA (ribonucleic acids): short, mobile strings of ACGT. Some RNA molecules possess biological activity as RNA, most are encrypted messages: they require a cypher to translate the string of 4 letters into strings of 20 possible amino acids … proteins. Fold the proteins, subject them to more decyphering processes and there you are: hormones, antibodies, growth receptors, signals to store calories, enzymes to extract energy from chemical bonds. Clearly, DNA can be viewed as devoid of meaning unless associated with processes that "decypher". DNA is encrypted memory. It does not, of itself, possess a message, a blueprint. It is not a program that manifests the decyphering processes; it is dependent upon (but can resupply, maintain) processes. So what is the source of these decyphering processes, this maintained order?

     At this point molecular biologists start talking about genetic programs while evolutionary scientists insist natural and sexual selection designed the order that cells maintain. Creationists, of course, will place genesis at the source. This quest for explanation is absolutely scientifically rigorous - we really are missing something in our understanding of life.

     Having witnessed evolutionary scientists battle creationists and notions of genetic programs deteriorate into notions of genetic determinism, I can't help pointing out that whichever route you take, these discussions are not only committing an error … they are committing exactly the same error. It is one of coming up with mechanisms that fail to constitute explanation. But which which do much to maintain mind based systems of thoughts. It is a coherency error: mind taking precedence over what actually exists.

     Physically, living systems are constituted of machine like molecules that possess a shape and chemistry that codes for a physio-chemical doing and/or interaction. Myriads of these molecular doings interlink and together manifest higher order outcomes. For instance, glucose can be metabolically converted to energy stored in the form of ATP by a series of enzymes. No one molecule causes the appearance of a higher order outcome yet all cooperate to manifest it. The overall outcome affected by molecular activities may be useful or a hindrance to the organism. The molecules will just as happily do either. Normally we view this state of affairs and conjure up notions of dumb mechanics. It is claimed that there is no need to speak of information and memory when referring to your average, non-DNA, bio-molecule. And yet the very bone-headeness of biological molecules that just do as they are - their very machine like quality - renders them information competent. They invariably "do this given that". And in the process are faithful zerox machines to manifest outcomes. Alan Turing was one of the earliest aficionados of the bone-headed ability of physical stuff to faithfully repeat outcomes. He understood that a "this" following inevitably from a "that" is absolutely analogous to the way logic flows in algorithms. The difficulty visualizing this inherent property of bio-molecules is precisely because we can't see information.

     The puzzling order implicit in living systems arises because each molecule's activity is in a synchronised state relative to the the activities of other molecules permiting higher order outcomes. It is crucial to be aware that synchronicities involve acausal relationships: as in, the relationship occurs but does not invoke the notion of one molecule ordering the remainder. Which does beg the question of how did this coherence between individual shape-chemistry and higher order outcomes arise?

     Building living systems based solely on the chemical properties of matter produces a paradox (irrespective of how loudly evolutionary gurus may howl in protest). There is a pre-existing entropic condition in this universe. Thermodynamics drives towards the randomization of patterns of energy dispersing them and, therefore, towards the loss of structures and information. Obviously, there is nothing inherent in chemistry that permits matter to defy entropy. Aware of this limitation, evolutionary scientists are staking their reputations on the hypothesis that dumb matter can defeat entropy by self-organising into self-replicating proto-organisms. Creationists point to the irrationality of proposing that matter possesses this kind of propensity and insist nothing but a creator god can fill the explanation-vacuum produced by the randomizing entropic noise.

     Both approaches view matter as "dumb". But biological molecules are information competent. In information theory, when systems are improbable it is advised that one searches for the intervention of a selective mechanism. This means a search for something that limits possibilities and arranges for a "this" to specifically result from a "that". A mechanism that can select outcomes from random, chaotic, entropic noise exists. It is in the nature of a relationship. Before I spell it out let me run a hypothetical so that you can visualise how the physical can insubstantiate itself into memory … that can defy entropy.

     Physio-chemical processes can spontaneously manifest formative activities (liquid water into snow flakes, for instance) that generally require energy and disintegrations that generally release energy. Making energy available for formations requires co-opting disintegrators. For instance, molecule-A can energetically feed synthesiser-B as a way of reforming some of its own chemical bonds. A has acquired a degree of immunity to disintegration. But holding on to this immunity requires physically holding onto to molecule B, perhaps by interlinking which produces a smidgen of mortality.

     But now imagine molecule A-B as a chemical factory that forms molecule-C. If C is disintegrated the means exist to synthesise more of it. The memory for it is encoded in the activity of A-B.

     Extend this inter-dependency - let C supply a chemical something required by A-B. This approach respects the fact of entropy but the inter-dependent relationship predisposes for certain outcomes, is a selective mechanism. In this universe, information (selected higher order outcomes) spontaneously results from inter-dependent relationships. They quench the noise of all the possible, random, chaotic chemical activities and inadvertantly elicit cooperativity relative to specific higher order outcomes. Consequently, I'd like to suggest that information competent matter managed to pull off a thermodynamic hat trick: at the level of molecules requiring each other in order to be themselves.

     Failure of the molecules to cohere to the inter-dependent cooperativity permits entropy to erase them. Like a sculptor that removes clay from a lump to manifest a form, inter-dependent physiochemical systems are inextricably linked to a process of formative erasure. What is erased are all the forms that are not competent to recapitulate outcomes, permiting a kind of memory to manifest. Unbecoming manifests the forms that are memory competent, the outcomes that spike above the background noise of randomized energy.

     There is no natural "selection" process as such active in evolution. How could there be? Natural selection is simply a mind based approximation for a more complex cycle of interactions. Thinking of it as selection facilitates thinking. And if the thinker forgets existence exists in its own right, there is the possibility of getting carried away by the cognitive power of the simplified approximation. Evolution is more accurately described as a process of forgetting that informs the memory encoded by inter-dependent physical doings. Lions that kill cubs sired by other males or polar bears that adopt orphans. Doesn't matter. As long as the strategy possesses entropy defying memory. And there is no point describing memory as selfish or a survival of the fittest gambit. Memory is memory. It is inherently a drive, a propagation.

     Inter-dependent relationships - molecules requiring each other to be themselves - spontaneously envoke a selective mechanism on outcomes with inbuilt memory and linked to a process of formative unbecoming. Literally, molecules become in-formed (info+shaped) by the consequences of recapitulated outcomes outputted by mutual dependence.

     So here is a definition of life for the information age. Living systems can be described as in-formed matter in an inter-dependent state that inter-collate outcomes, coupled to entropic erasure, to enact a memory that can transcend death.

Creativity

     The molecular synchronicities of biological systems can be described as something like algorithms or programs. Yet it is important to note that in the actuality, a pre-determined rationale does not exist. The biological order/disorder will appear only after a consort of molecules have cooperated to affect outcomes. Consequently, the "cause" of order appears after molecules have acted. Just as the trajectory taken by an atom in Rempe's experiment is chosen after all possible trajectories have been taken by a quantum potential wave. The cause of the chosen trajectory is affected by the motion of the atom. This is why quantum computers cannot distinguish between data (information) and software (instructions for how data should interact). This requirement for participation to affect an outcome displaces "cause" from the originator of phenomena to the affected; where we can approximate it with linear logic.

     In living systems too, phenomena comes into being as a consequence of a participatory mechanism. Whether or not the participatory interactions will manifest life-competent overall activity isn't caused; it is a doing. Genes do not cause phenotypes. Ever. It is impossible for them to do so. Linear logic approximates participatory interactions into a nonexistent "cause".

     Living systems also possess memory. The memory requirement is also a formative feature of organisms from molecules on up. Use a different strategy to solve the memory problem and you radically redesign the form of life.

     Integrate the formative effects of memory and many scientists permit the notion of pre-determined programs to sneak into their thinking. In this sense, scientists and creationists are not very different - as some creationists have unsuccessfully tried to point out to the scientists! Sometimes when there is a conflict between what mind expects and what the actuality delivers, it is worthwhile to spend some time scrutinising the logic.

     Linear, cause-effect logic is not the only way to describe the universe. In fact, applying logic to logic itself proved remarkably enlightening precisely about formal logic's shortcomings. Deficiencies that opened the door for mathematicians to invent extraordinarily creative and useful new ways of thinking. Fuzzy logic (that relies on statements being half true, half false), for instance, is used in the design of components in consumer electronics. Chaos theory is doing wonders to the design of lasers.

     Let me suggest that the problem with genetic determinism is the linear logic which states: if DNA is the memory molecule and genes are the active agents, then genetic information causes organisms. Let me show you why this is nothing more than intellectual laziness.

     There is no question that the shape-chemistry of a molecule predisposes to certain actions, limits possibilities. Molecules cause a physio-chemical something. But never is this the cause of a higher order outcome. Biologicals require networks of inter-dependencies to process physio-chemical somethings into higher order outcomes. Even the encrypted, memory molecule - DNA - is in an inter-dependent relationship to other molecules when it comes to higher order outcomes. A description of life that ommits the nature of this interaction-dependency has omited a spectacular component of the very thing the logic was trying to explain. With the consequence that scientists once again - again and again - offers us a bunch of words professing to be explanation when they are nothing more than opinion.

     The mechanisms underscoring life-competent activity are creative not deterministic. Those butthead stubborn, machine like entities, that are supposed to produce lumbering robots are conspiring with information and memory creatively. I can't help pointing out that this actuality-friendly conclusion is awe-inspiring. Creative mechanisms possess molecular free-will that leaves the door open not just to pathologies and mutations but to the notion of life as an ongoing journey that creatively solves the means of being. It pays to observe this universe carefully. It routinely packs this kind of surprises.

     Deterministic explanations invariably lumber life to a materialistic ball and chain, as in, only the physical exists and should be considered. In reality, the form of the physical stuff is simulataneously the cause of an organism's being and it is utterly irrelevant IF the underlying logic of the synchronicity is preserved. Any material stuff that can process the information flow inherent in the synchronicity (affect a certain this given that) will do. This is the very principle that permits genetic engineering, cloning and designer pharmaceuticals. Molecular biologists have unwittingly been decoding systems of (acausal) synchronicities despite claiming that "cause" is located in DNA and "genetic programs".

In-formed matter

     The life definition I've suggested possesses a physical, reductionist component (the shapes and chemistry of molecules) which is best studied by a reductionist approach. The knowledge from this approach is intrinsically incomplete, however. Incomplete because life possesses an insubstantial component (matter is imbued with the resonances of information and memory) and a holistic component arising from networks of inter-dependencies that affect outcomes creatively.

     The definition unifies the reductionist and holistic approaches and adds in an immaterial component. Life, with this definition, is not a wholly physical phenomenon. Nor is it completely local. Factors affecting forms - in-forming matter - exist well beyond the physical and temporal boundaries of living organism. There is a ghost in living systems that science can point to. Insubstantial information and memory. And the ghost of all entities and events that participated to in-form the contemporary living organisms. We are enacting their after-life, so to speak. Here and now. And we are participating to pass on the rationale in ways that will create what, where, how we become.

     The question now can be asked, in a perfectly scientific manner, whether we have been putting too much emphasis on the material. On the compounded matter that clearly is not, of itself, alive. If biological activity is riddled with the insubstantial resonances of information flow then considering the machinery of this flow alone - to look for life in the nuts and bolts - is the act that renders us robotic.

     This metaphor introduces the idea of information but does not distinguish between components of living beings transmitting information and machines doing the same thing by a similar mechanism. The point becomes that no such distinction is possible. The best I can do here is to introduce the notion that in biologicals the information-competent building blocks are excruciatingly small - even molecular biologists, and certainly evolutionary biologists forget how small molecules are (for example, the Adenine nucleic acid involves 36 atoms). Bio-molecules are so small they are pleiotropic: 200 molecular things can interlink to manifest a "this", 20 can be reused in a different chain to manifest a "that" … the effects they create depend on context. For example, an estimated 70% of a fruit fly's genes are active during the formation of the eyes alone (7). And pleiotropy is the rule not the exception: there is very little linear correspondence between what is encrypted in DNA and the form of an organism. The building blocks are more fundamental than the functions we normally think of as biological processes. Add in the coherence between shapes-chemistry, higher order outcomes and entropy defying memory and you end up with something that is technically and conceptually difficult to mimic in an engineering design. Of course, if scientists refuse to conceptualise how cohering simple things and events can produce complexity we delay and stunt technological progress; science renders itself lame. Except in the realm of the imagination.

     Science fiction writers - at liberty to use imaginative, creative thinking - have mined the limits of scientific theory and proposed such ideas as nanotechnology that inherently grasps the idea of a molecule being simulatenously a physical doing and a bit to manifest a higher order rationale. It is the artists, the imaginative writers of science, who have appreciated the information competence of physical stuff and the creativity inherent in inter-dependent relationships that are possible in this universe. Our living intelligence, according to the artists can (and the sci-fi writers insist that we should) enact a process that will super-cohere our machinery.

     This is the marvelous oddity of Turing's discovery. Endowed with internal logic drives, machines take a gigantic leap towards biology. Simultaneously, it permits us to confront the machine-like component of our nature without reducing humans to lumbering robots infested by selfish genes. "Inanimate matter" is now seen to possess the most extraordinary characteristic - it is information competent. This permits the nature of biology and machines to blur. We are not computers, obviously. But a comparison to a machine, as long as it is one of Turing's, no longer means what it used to. It is a magical transformation, one which rescues 'life' from the drudgery of Cartesian mechanics.

     It is typical that something like this should happen when Alan Turing is brought in. He was forever violating the previously sancrosanct barrier between embodiment and the insubstantial realm of logic. Materialising information so that we could insubstantiate the physical. It took his machines to point out the ethereal in being.

Lifeline

     What I have not done with the life definition is defined a cut off point - the limit at which one system is a self-contained being. Definitions of life have a tendency to accelerate away along continuums of inter-dependency. Worker ants require the entire colony, require a habitat require a planet in order to exist, for instance. The synchronised state incorporates and requires a great deal more than just the local biological be-ables.

     While physical organisms (except viruses) normally have well defined physical limits, the information content of beings very simply does not. Implicit in the bio-synchronicities are coherency-continuums with processess well beyond the limit of an organism. From the quantum nonlocality inherent in atomic structures, to the formative continuums of unbecomings and on to the coherence relative to constraints imposed by the universe. It is inescapable that we cohere to systems well beyond the limits of our bodies and our time. This permits us to clearly appreciate that the nature of the physical isn't sole source of the nature of life: information spontaneously results from inter-dependent relationships. Mutual dependency insubstantiates the physical, producing a quality that disperses along a nonlocal continuum.

     Biological being actually does require a much greater whole to have and continue to exist for our own existence. Ultimately, this component of the life definition states that being requires the universe as a whole to achieve the rationality drive that produces the processes that informs matter. This is a nonlocal link, you can't see it … unless you have trained to be aware of it. But because we appear physically contained, complete within ourselves, we have a tendency not only to fail to realise the extent of this nonlocal implicate order (8), we are prone to denying it even exists.

     And we are in a creative relationship within continuums of inter-dependencies. A creative relationship that permits us to paticipate to affect outcomes.

     What we conspire to affect is something that will ultimately be profoundly affected by the kinds of narratives we tell about existence and this universe. Yet the narratives we derive from observing existence itself is producing ideas that society is reluctant and resistant to listen to. Mention notions of inter-connectedness within a society that does not grasp nonlocal, information-competent, creative mechanisms and the debate with the Copenhagenists starts to look sensible by comparison. These ideas really are threatening. Seeing the insubstantial connections permits science, ethics, philosophy, art and religion to start speaking with a common vocabulary of mechanisms. Let me quote Mark Buchanan reporting on the re-evaluation of quantum mechanics following Rempe's confirmation of nonlocality (3):

 

"If a particle interacts with some object then the two can become inextricably linked, or entangled. In a sense, they simply cease to be independent things, and one can only describe them in relation to each other."

The attribute-conjugates pairs of quantum mechanics aren't mutually exclusive, they are inter-dependent properties: one requires the other to be itself. Compare the above with the centuries old Buddhist description of phenomenon by Nagarjuna (9):

 

"Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves."

And now Deleuzian philosopher, Rosi Braidotti (10):

 

"In spite of the sustained efforts by many radical critics, the mental habit of linearity and objectivity persists in its hegemonic hold over our thinking. Thus, it is far simpler to think about the concept A or B or of B as non A, rather than the process of what goes on in-between A and B. Thinking through flows and inter-connections remains a difficult challenge."

     They are speaking of the same processivity that shifts cause from nouns into verbs. But do so in a way that grasps concepts involving the self-contained yet nonlocal, the reductionist that is implicitely whole and other seemingly paradoxical mechanisms that we can detect contributing to phenomena.

     The idea of inter-connectedness we obtain from observation is one that does permits shifts, transformations and movements. After all, were we to overlook the fragmentation required by dynamic processes in favour of holism, I would merely end up recapitulating Zeno's paradox. Two thousand years ago Democritus solved the paradox by proposing the atomic structure of matter. Quantum mechanics elaborated the solution into a more accurate description, one that includes the wholeness of information available to nonlocal atomic entanglements. Matter fragments into physical bits, information retains the potential for wholeness. Holism without the fragmentation of the physical and physical reductionism without the holism of information are each incomplete. Learning to learn about wholeness that incorporates dynamic, creative, transformative mechanisms really has presented us with conceptual difficulties. But it would be truly ironic if the next generation of nonlocal ICT machines intrinsically solve this conceptual difficulty before the operators even set about understanding that there is a problem with current existence-narratives. As Alan Turing always hoped, his machines may yet beat us to the punchline.

Bibliography

1. P.C.W. Davies and J.R. Brown (ed.), The Ghost in the Atom (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986)

2. D. Bohm and B.J. Hiley, The Unidivided Universe (Routledge, London, 1993)

3. S. Dürr, T. Nonn and G. Rempe (1998), Origin of quantum-mechanical complementarity probed by a 'which-way' experiment in an atom interferometer. Nature 395, p33 (see also Mark Buchanan's report in the 6 March 1999 issue of New Scientist, p25)

4. Recent reviews of the next generation of ICT machines:

J. Mullins (2000) Spin doctors. New Scientist 166 (2244), p36; A. Zeilinger (2000), Quantum teleportation. Scientific American April 2000, p32

5. A. Hodges, Alan Turing: The Enigma (Vintage, London, 1992)

6. E. Schrödinger, What is Life? (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1967)

7. H.M. Thaker and D.R. Kankel (1992) Mosaic analysis gives an estimate of the extent of genomic involvement in thre visual system in Drosophila melanogaster Genetics 131, p883

8. D. Bohm Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Routledge, London, 1995)

9. Nagarjuna, quoted in T.R.V. Murti The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (Allen & Unwin, London, 1955), p138

10. R. Braidotti Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming (Polity, in press)