A NOTE from R.A.M. to L.C.N.

080221 – Communication with Cancer – draft two

Communicating with the Consciousness of Cancer

[On the Possibility of Conducting a Negotiation with the Informational Holographic Form of Cancer to Achieve a Return to a Symbiotic Relationship with Its Human Host, Rather Than a Mutually Lethal Parasitic One]

Keywords: cancer, communication, consciousness, information, symbiotic, parasitic, holographic, systems theory, dedifferentiation, telepathy, evolution, unintended consequences, philosophy

Abstract

Cancer exists as a non-physical information system as well as a physically manifested entity within the human body. The informational aspect of cancer can be considered to be “conscious,” or to have “mind;” certainly to have affect and intention. Cancer does not “think” as humans do, but cancerous cells respond to evolutionary pressure. It seems possible that “communication” could be effected between the human host and the informational aspect of cancer.

The mutually destructive parasitic relationship may be a perversion of an earlier symbiotic relationship. An original symbiotic role of cancer was to de-differentiate the cell back to a “blank slate” so that it could be reformatted constructively; specifically, the ability of some forms of life to re-generate limbs.

Cancer sends out “runners” or “scout cells” that form a network of extensive colonies. Cancer—by its ontological nature—exists in an “open” system, and when placed in a “closed” system becomes pathologic. The twin historical, evolutionary “traumas” that switched cancer from its symbiotic function to its parasitic one were the closing and the pollution of its environment. Environmentalists are dealing with the pollution, and this paper should be read in conjunction with their works.

Humans were once an open system mentally or psychically, being historically skin-bounded individual selves. Telepathy is an innate human ability. When small groups of humans were linked with an open telepathic channel this was the open environment in which cancer could helpfully function as the de-definer that undid the structural stratifications of specific cells, returning them to a smooth status where regeneration happened.

While the physical aspect of cancer did this somatic work, possibly the informational aspect of cancer performed a complementary function—channel clearing or maintenance of the psychic (telepathic) channel.

Telepathic ability is much degraded but still exists and can be re-actualized—behaviorally or somatically manifest. Environmentalists would have to help humankind change the level of toxic pollution. Once the cancer returned to its open environment, and the meta-environment was no longer toxic, cancer could re-evolve to a symbiotic role.

Introduction

Predicated on the assumption that entities that may be mutually beneficial in an ecosystem can as circumstances change become harmful to each other, this paper seeks to explore the possibility that what we know as the “dis-ease” cancer was once an integral part of human (mammalian) health.

The changes that happened in the ecosystem of the human body (as the “environment” of the cancer), and the growth of toxicity in the environment of the human (as the meta-environment of the cancer) have been amply documented by biologists and environmentalists. From the consumption of a nutritionally depleted, overly processed diet, to the pollution of earth, water and air, the epigenetic causes of the lethal form of cancer are many.

As a philosopher I am more interested in the affect (the tendency towards expression), and the ontology (the state of being) of cancer. I conceptualize cancer as existing as both a physically manifest phenomenon in the cellular body, and also an organizational schema of information that exists within a nonphysical human body. By this I mean a fourfold set of:

1. Information
1. On the ontological level, that which tells the cancer what it is, and
2. On the affective level, that which tells cancer how it “should” behave, and

1. Organizational schema
1. How this information is organized (its structure, and also the rules by which its structure may be reproduced), and
2. How this organization changes (the rules, or heuristics by which the structure may be modified depending on both internal and environmental constraints and accidents)

Indigenous (and largely non-Western) cultures, as well as mystical traditions, have described an “energy body,” within which the corporeal body is housed. More recently, following the model that matter is merely a temporary manifestation of a quantum field, the human body has been conceptualized as a macroscale manifestation of a quantum field body. And the suggestion that we live in a Universe best described as a hologram with both perceivable, extended dimensions and imperceptible, immanent ones, bespeaks the possibility of a multidimensional, holographic informational body.

There are two models that may be borrowed from biology to conceptualize the relationship of cancer (in its organizational / informational aspects) to the field body. One is Lynn Margulis, et alia’s conception of symbiogenesis. In this model, a discrete entity (such as a mitochondria) forms a relationship with another discrete body (such as a eukaryotic cell) that is mutually beneficial. The two entities have now bonded to form something new that reproduces itself (all of our cells since then have mitochondria), and the two original entities are no longer able to exist separately. Therefore the health of each is dependant on the relationship between them remaining mutually symbiotic and not deleteriously parasitic. Perhaps cancer, by which I mean the information on how to become a cancerous cell, was once something that moved into the human information body for reasons that were mutually beneficial; specifically, as I will discuss later, the ability to dedifferentiate cells so that they could be redifferetiated as part of a process of limb regeneration, and other restorative growth practices.

A different theory (and I hope both of these possible theories will be experimentally researched by biologists who get their research ideas from papers written by philosophers) is modeled on the anti-malaria, unfortunate-consequence-of-sickle-cell-anemia scenario. Early humans living in malaria-infested Africa developed an anti-malarial tendency. This is a perfect example of epigenetics, a response to an environmental pressure on the cellular level. Unfortunately, in some cases this response manifested as the expression of sickle cell anemia. Since only those of the population who actually developed sickle cell died, and not everyone who was a carrier, the trade off was a “success” on the larger scale (of population group) since more people survived malaria than died from sickle cell. What’s important to understand about this model is that the “disease” of sickle cell anemia was an unintended consequence of the tendency toward developing a hereditable cellular defense against malaria. Almost all biologically expressed tendencies come in packages that include both beneficial and deleterious manifestations. The human genome, like our computers’ operational code history, is a series of generations of accretion of “fixing,” or “accommodating” for the errors of the previous generation. This system of bricolage means that it is impossible on any practical level to undo “harm,” from an earlier level. One can only fix forward, not go back and undo.

A final aspect of the theoretical ground of this paper concerns the difference between a concept of circular and linear time, and the expression of structured chaos as a cybernetic governor of a system. According to Mircea Eliade, archaic man was “anhistorical.” He lived in a circle of time that ritually and symbolically recreated an original sequence that had been performed by the gods as the act of creation of both the earth and mankind, and the establishment of the rules of operation. As part of this cycle of “eternal return,” there had to be the annual undoing of the order to allow for the (re)creation of the order. Georges Dumezil also chronicled this phenomenon cross-culturally, how in order for the physical world and human culture to sustain the rule of law, it was necessary to take “time out of time,” such as the intercalendrical days to reconcile the lunar year with the solar year. Carnival, the Twelve Days of Christmas, and Lupercalia (Valentine’s Day), are examples of this tradition. The advent of historical time changed the passage of time from a cycle to a linear progression (literally introducing the concept of teleological progress), leaving only these remnant holidays. The question of how to mediate the boundaries between chaos and order left the realm of the religious and moved into the province of law.

I posit a comparable biological evolution, where the creative use of “controlled” chaos, an undoing that doesn’t proceed to death, but allows the entrance of the new, was once a common adaptation that has been lost. In its place there is now a rigidity of structure that can only become “broken,” or “damaged” by an uncontrolled undoing unto death unless the “disease” itself is “killed” as conceptualized in the Western allopathic paradigm of disease. We have lost the accommodation to an adaptation with immanent unintended (and often harmful) consequences that nevertheless allowed for the flexibility of complexity.

The Multiple Levels of Context Within the Organism

Within the body there are multiple modes of expression of information : physical; chemical; electrical; magnetic; the configuration and adhesion/aversion of structured water molecules ; etc. Cells perform metabolic functions that allow them to survive, and also perform their role functions (i.e., kidney cells enable kidneys to do what kidneys do, etc.), and also encode both of these sorts of information (how to survive & how to perform one’s function) in such a manner that as a separate but concomitant process the cell can reproduce itself and replicate its functioning.

In order to understand how these aspects of the physical body interact it is useful to consider two conditions of contextualization. Each system may form a context for another (e.g., a chemical reaction via neurotransmitters through synaptic networks can happen within the context of a global electromagnetic body field, or a holographic information body field). Also, each system can respond to the metaenvironment, i.e., the environment of the organism of which it is a community member. There is a tendency toward survival (what might be called an affective Darwinism) that involves a stochastic process (multiple discrete decisions that each shape the scope of possible future decisions) without a centralized decision making entity. No one decides a course of action, which is why there is not a one-to-one correspondence between a specific gene and a specific expression.

Harmful Effects of Mismatch of Solution to Larger Context

Genetic expression involves situations where different causes trigger identical or (structurally, or formally,) similar solutions. The Wnt class of genes discussed later in this paper includes a gene that controls wing formation in flies and one that controls tumor growth in mice; dissimilar as these at first appear they are structurally and formally homologous.  Contrariwise, the same cause situated in differing contexts, or interacting with differing circumstances, can result in widely divergent outcomes. For example, the genetic propensity for a disease will be differentially realized in someone who has had adequate versus inadequate nutrition across a lifetime. This differential actualization only becomes problematic when the solution is not equally appropriate to both the local and global environments. An example of this is the malfunction of the immune system in its role as information-to-action transformer. A functional immune system makes heuristic, stochastic choices based on correctly interpreted information. The decision, and action that is appropriate for the situation in its most (temporally) immediate and (spatially) local context, may be inappropriate for the larger, or ongoing concerns of the organism. In a house where the sink is leaking it makes sense to turn off the water, however this leaves the house without water. Turning off the water can only be a temporary solution while the leak is repaired, and there would hopefully be an intelligent failsafe mechanism such that in case of fire breaking out the water would be turned back on. The bathroom sink might overflow, but the house wouldn’t burn down. Eshel Ben Jacob and Tom Bearden both suggest that life-threatening illnesses (such as cancer) might constitute cases where the house is allowed to burn down.

If a system is truly heuristic and nonteleological there is no intelligent centralized control agent. However, we have come a long way since 19th century thinking, and now have many models of nonequilibrium, noncentralized, complex or chaotic, fractal, holographic, iterative, autopoietic, nondeterministic, self-correcting, dynamic systems. I am suggesting that these systems are inherent in the body, that they have be disturbed and/or disabled by certain circumstances, and that they can be reconstituted (i.e., repaired or restored).

The model in this paper presents the immune system as a communication system that must distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate functioning within a specific context, and then must act on this information at the appropriate level of organization.

A Brief Summary of Levels of Organization

In a paper on the existence of a holographic wave mechanism as part of the body’s “Probabilistic and Linguistic Representations of Cancer and HIV,” Peter Gariaev, et alia, identify a holographic wave aspect on six levels of biota, from the level of the organism down through cellular, cell-nucleus, molecular, chromosomal, to the genome. Complementary to the particle-like aspect, this aspect is non-linear, multidirectional, statistical, and composed of processes rather than objects.

The holographic wave aspect functions to decode the homonymous-synonymous ambiguity of genetic texts. In order to be conservative enough to remain stable through time, and at the same time innovative enough to respond to the environmental pressure for rapid change, the genetic mechanism is redundant and multivalent. Each amino acid can be constructed from one of two codon triplets that differ only in their third character. Gariaev et al., compare this to knowing which homonym or synonym to use in a linguistic setting. The choice is usually context based (in the case of natural languages the context is the sentence / paragraph—followed at second order by cultural constraints). They suggest that the context within which the cell correctly inserts the “correct” codon (i.e., particle) is the holographic wave aspect.

The relation of “text” and “context,” however is relative; due to both the multiple-interactive levels of biotic systems (cellular, nuclear, molecular, etc.), and to the two types of non-locality present in the system. Since all levels operate with a particle/wave duality, there is the non-locality that is inherent in all wave-like aspects. Also, there is the non-locality of those levels of the system small enough to be susceptible to quantum effects.

The complex interaction of that which is a text on one level being a context on another means that a process or object may be either a part of something or an entirety in itself. Therefore, what might be identified as “noise” in one context can be valuable information in another.

The information for creating this hologram is present in the DNA, in the intronic regions. Gariaev et al., quote research on text entropy to confirm that the non-coding regions of DNA have even higher “language-like” regularities than the protein coding sections. They postulate that this structure is necessary for creating the complementary wave-like context.

The mechanism for creating this hologram is coherent light (as in laser actualized holograms on the macrolevel) or sonic stimulation. They demonstrate that both of these are present on the intracellular level. ,  

A Brief Summary of Ben Jacob’s Mechanism of Change

Meanwhile, Eshel Ben Jacob, who studies the physics of complex systems, has spent many years studying the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacterial colonies. His views them as equivalent in many ways to multicellular organisms, and considers his research to parallel the ways humans (and other multicellular organisms) have evolved complex responses to their environments. I am using his research as a model to my theorizing on cancer.

Ben Jacob writes, “With regard to eukaryotic organisms, an additional major difficulty arises from the notion that all the required information to sustain the life of the organism is embedded in the structure of its genetic code: this information seems useless without the surrounding cellular machinery.”

Ben Jacob parallels Robert Rosen’s argument for the paradoxical nature of the final cause calling into being that being whose cause it is when he writes that, “the coding parts of the DNA require pre-existing proteins to create new proteins and to make them functional.” Therefore, as in one of Gödel’s Theorems “(for finite systems), the structural coding can not be both complete and self-consistent for the organism to live, replicate and have programmed cell death.”

Ben Jacob is assuming that “usable information can be stored in its internal state of spatio-temporal structures and functional correlations. The internal state can be self-altered, for example via alterations of the part of the genetic sequences which store information about transcription control.” And, that this is possible because genome cybernetics allows for “hybrid digital-analog processing of information.”

Ben Jacob further elaborates, “The idea is that the hardware can be self-altered according to the needs and outcome of the information processing, and part of the software is stored in the structure of the hardware itself, which can be self-altered, so the software can have self reference and change itself.” Ben Jacob suggests that “semantics would imply contextual interpretation of chemical messages, i.e., each bacterium has some freedom (plasticity) to assign meaning according to its own specific, internal and external, contextual state.” The question remains as to the mechanisms involved.

The Body as an Open System and the Circulation of Violence

The question of whether the body is a closed or open system, and if open, then to what, has been debated throughout history. The model I am suggesting is one in which the physical body is skin bounded, while in terms of energy the body is open to the physical environment (it takes in nutrition and excretes waste products). I am also positing an information “body” that exchanges order and chaos in an information “economy” that is far from equilibrium, and not easily described by the solid state physics of objects, or by the laws of thermodynamics.

Michel Serres, a French philosopher of science, wrote of this in his book, The Birth of
Physics, a translation and revisioning of Lucretius’s book De rerum natura. In revisiting Lucretius, Serres examines “the real complexity of open turbulent systems. In contrast to the foedera fati (natural law), Serres traces the introduction of the foedera natura – a pact, an alliance, and not a law.”

The body’s history can be written as if it were an entity controlled by the laws of nature, or a relationship of continuous negotiation (i.e., a pact with nature). If we view the body as an open, turbulent system, with the germ of chaos alongside the germ of ordered growth, which is the model I have of the relation of my self and my cancer, there is always the negotiation between what the cancer needs, and what my self provides so that it will not kill me.

Serres recognized in Lucretius’ writing a physics based on hydraulics rather than statics, a science of flows and paths. Speaking in the language of his time, Lucretius compared the two to the rule of Ares (Mars), representing law (framed through the language of war,) and the rule of Aphrodite (Venus), Goddess of Love, born of ocean foam, “Every object, naturally, emerges like Aphrodite from a flux of elements. . . . The world, in total, flows in itself and for itself, exchanging its rivers at the maximal thalweg, to the point of consumption and return to the cataract.”

The thalweg is the passage that requires the least energy expenditure. In other words, systems develop both a spatial and temporal landscape in which the water falls from the cataract (waterfall), flows out through rivers, coalesces in an easy place, rests in its low ebb, and then the cycle continues. How does the resting pool under the waterfall become the roaring water that falls? How does the new enter the system, when according to the laws of thermodynamics energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed? The new comes from what happens during the fall, the divergence, the swerve, the clinamen.

Current theory refers to the genetic “code,” something that is more accurately conceived as genetic information present from the origin of life, which contains within it generations of ways of being in response to environmental contexts. The metaphor of computer code is valuable only if one explicitly means the textured layers of defunct code that are never removed, but only added to, with always the possibility of the bleeding through of an unrecognized, unremembered pentimento.

Serres interprets Lucretius to have developed a physics that “is reducible to two sciences: a general theory of paths and routes, a global theory of flow; and a topology of interlacings, a hydrology of what flows through the network.” Lucretius explained why the dynamics of this system this could never be regulated by [Martial] law, but only by [Venus’] flexible alliance.

[S]pace is rich in complexities . . . it is filled with knots and confluences, it is the conjunctive web of the topology and . . . of the event, of circumstance. The Cartesian figure refers back to Euclid’s geometry, it is a metrics . . . The Venetian contract leaves it as it is, venturesome and complex.

Lucretius was concerned with the flow of water and weather that moved the ships at sea that transported wealth and knowledge, i.e., the movement of commerce and armies. And also, the circulation of health and bodily fluids, as the wars were interspersed by plagues. Serres brings this concept forward to the present (at least as far at the 20th century), by introducing the movement of the perceptible, and the circulation of violence, “On the global circuit . . . other circulations . . . must now be recognized. Not only heat, the luminous, the ejecta of wear, the perceptible in general.  . . . the circulation of violence, of force.”

When did my cancer become perceptible? Undetected by modern technology it remained virtual until it had already metastasized into Level 4. Where was the violence circulating? In the environment of my body and the environment in which my body lives, were the toxins of modern life creating stresses triggering my cells to devolve into their lowest state of dedifferentiation? Where did agency lie? Was the cancer awakening in me as part of a complex, anachronistic, model of defense that, unknown to the cancer would not only kill me, but also fail to protect the cancer? Or, was my body calling the cancerous state into actuality, and, if so, for what purpose?

Serres has moved beyond a dialect’s limitation as a sequence of distinct static states, dialectics are ruled by solid, not fluid mechanics: “To say thesis, antithesis, movement would at least be comprehensible as a sequence. But dialectics would disappear, since movement is the contrary as such and contradictory to rest. We would need to produce it.” We forego events being reified as things, for example presence and absence, or complexity and simplification, static objects with characteristics and locations, histories and trajectories. Rather, “there first exists equilibrium and deviation. Together they produce flows, whose total is in equilibrium, but only relatively, since its remains unstable.” The clinamen leads to both birth and death, “it grants birth, it preserves a moment of existence, it leads to death. Or: it grants being, it grants movement, it leads back to phenomenal non-being. If we were to write an informed dialectic, it would adopt the following order: being, movement, non-being.”

In the case of the cell becoming cancerous this could be described as the coming into being of that which is individuated, followed after a period of time and for reasons not entirely understood, by the rupture of the boundaries that allowed the individuation of cell parts (and their discrete functioning) that allowed for complexity.

The question raised by Ben Jacob (among other contemporary evolutionists) is how the survival of the species is actualized when the change that occurs to effectuate it must happen in the germ cell of the individual. As the old joke goes, “how it know?” If, in fact, the move toward dedifferentiation is based on a salutary reading of an environmental threat and a retreat to an earlier genomic “code” left behind in the so-called “junk” room of the DNA for just such an eventuality, then one must posit an model where information from the past of the species is preserved within each survivable individual for just such a time and place.

It is just this point of view that Serres, speaking on behalf of Lucretius, challenges; the new definition of the dialectic “would go beyond the purely mechanistic model. This is the series that the last century spurned in favour of the eternal return, in all its diverse forms, like the long march on the sublime.”

The eternal return is a concept developed by historians and philosophers, as well as physicists, chemists and biologists. Eliade, writing of archaic culture (i.e., man without a concept of history), uses it to signify the necessity of actively recreating the original coming into being of the world and its regulatory mechanisms. Archaic man performed rites and created simulacra in order to renew that which had been created (by the gods) in the beginning. There was neither novelty, nor history, only this year’s recreated version of a posited original alter, rain dance, New Year’s feast, et cetera. It is a mechanistic model, rather than an organic (biologic) one, the distinction being that the mechanical can recreate both itself and its conditions for coming into being, but can’t create novelty. That is the beauty of organic life.

I find it significant that Serres refers to the sublime, that which is the intersection of beauty and terror. I suspect that it is in the realm of the sublime that the work is done of undoing the structure necessary to life in order to create a condition necessary for novelty. Without this ability, the species could never adapt to a novel circumstance. There could only be “the eternal return.” The work that I believe cancer was originally intended to do was to move beyond this limitation, to bioengineer the circumstances, both physical and informational, upon which the species could instantiate a new adaptation through an individual.

The bugbear of evolution is the unresolved question of teleology. Without an intelligent intention to see; why support the development of the first light sensitive patch to the complex intricacy of the evolved eye? Original variation need not be intentional. All evolution is bricolage ruled by the law of unintended consequence. An original light sensitive spot could have accidentally arisen concomitant to some freckling useful for storing melatonin. But then, the freckled creature with the light sensitive patch caught more flies than his comrades. The girl geckos preferred him, the light sensitive patch became a sexually chosen for attribute. Suppose the landscape changes over time, and those with freckles had greater difficulty hiding from prey. Now the choice was between the spotty short-lived, good provider, or his smooth skinned cousin who provided fewer flies, but more years of them. Now we are in the terrain of the antimalarial effects of the genetic “disease” of sickle celled anemia. At what point do we posit an intelligent agent? By whose teleology (the protein’s, the codon’s, the DNA’s, the cell’s, the individual’s, the species’, God’s) do we posit the genengineering? At whose feet do we lay the deleterious, some times fatal consequences? “How it know,” that the little girl dying from sickle cell anemia in Selma, Alabama was not at risk for malaria?
Thus, my model of what went wrong with cancer. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice that devolved the cell, a terrorist’s act, so that it could be the site of the regeneration of a lost limb, or the creation of a novel structure, a wondrous innovation; the amalgam of the sublime. The new built with the deconstructed materials of the pervious, but containing a new plan, new information, holographically supplied by information shared among the entire species, but applied specifically to the unique individual in need.

But something went wrong. The tearing down proceeded unto death, the building of the new on the site of the old failed to occur. Serres’ suggested looking at the difference between the economy of Ares’ law (foedera fati), and that of Venus’ alliance (foedera natura). We must distinguish between a nested set of objects (things) bound to each other by foundational laws that create stable objects (atoms, molecules, cells, organs, beings); and a different worldview that permits, “events or accidents . . . They come, they go. . . . events are adventitious.”
These adventitious events are not objects, but rather the interaction of organization and information, “The Lucretian world is entropic globally, and negentropic within pockets of vortical movement. Conjunction is negentropy, and the complex formed registers the quantity of information given over to the drift.”

That is, the information is not solely contained in the thing (event, being). It also exists in the “drift.” Epigenetics must be taken into account as well as genetics, a factor that is only now, in the 21st century (again) being taken seriously. Thus, the novel is not an expression coming out of the genome, not an extensive quality, but is a sparking between a physicality and information. The point particle of the gene and the flickering field of the holographic information. The revolution of 19th century physics has caught up with biology two centuries later: “If invariance is no longer to be just rest, if constancy is not to be just stasis . . . if stability itself is to touch upon movement, what else is necessary, in the very beginning, but inclination? . . . The eventa slide on the coniuncta, history skids on matter.”

History skids on matter. If we are to find (and repair) the disjuncture whereby the dedifferentiation of the cell leads to death, rather than the creation of the regenerated limb, or novel application, then we must distinguish a confusion based on the concept of identity, from a communication and cooperation based on affect. The standard (hegemonic, allopathic) model of disease holds that illness comes from confusion or conflict between “I” and “not I,” a view of biology that grew up alongside the identity politics of the Black, Women’s and Gay identity and civil rights movements. Serres situates them further back, in the Epicurean “revolution,” “the lessons of Epicureanism . . . come down to this: . . . There are only two objects . . . atoms and the void . . . The void is a part of chaos, but it is also a catharsis . . . . Second object, the atom. The sacred solution begins by a partition of space, by an apportionment . . . Inside, the religious, outside, the profane.”

On the cultural level this historical divergence is connected to issues of surplus and storage, both relevant to the biological model. The information is of both what to do, and how to do it, which of these is the “surplus”? Where is this information stored? In the object, and if so how is it physically triggered? In the species, and if so, how is it actualized in the individual? In a nonphysical manner, holographically (in which case it could be anywhere), and if so, how does it actualize? Serres reminds us that “We come back to the network of relations. . . . Beneath the sacred, violence. Beneath the object, relations reappear.”

Georges Dumezil writes about this very phenomena in the state rituals of ancient Rome, where agricultural worship involved both a god of the gathering of crops and their storage, and Ops Consivae—the goddess of stored-up abundance. The field on which crops were grown was also the field on which war was waged, the two being intimately related in many ways, one being the role of vigilance played by the two functions, both of which require surplus and storage to succeed.  In both cases the ritual enactment includes a call for vigilance. Dumezil writes, “Against the enemy that Rome is about to face, and also to counteract the fire that threatens stored-up abundance, what is demanded . . . [is] the vigilance which precedes action, which waits and keeps watch but does not manifest itself.” This reservoir of vigilance that requires a very active, attentive, waiting, “is the very attitude which accords with the sort of mystical benefits that the two chapels of the regia are supposed to contain: advantages, opportunities, means held in reserve until they are used, and ready to be used.” Sounding like an echo of Lucretius via Serres, Dumezil concludes, “This always aware, proactive state of readiness is much like the vortex (whirlpool) that maintains its structure while ever-changing water flows through it.”

Somewhere in the anhistorical past an epigenetic drift caused perhaps by an accidental linkage, or an unintended consequence, skewed the transition of dedifferentiation to openness and to novelty, to a differentiation that was the path of cancer. The noise that was necessary “forgot” how to resolve itself back into a message. Or the receptors of the message got lost along the way (how do you hear if your ears have melted in the general disorder?) Or the message lost its meaning. The surplus was mistaken for the germ cell, or vice versa. One way or another, the system stopped working. In the cultural and scientific context of the Western world, the model of Ares, the rule of war was applied. Perhaps, if we take Aphrodite’s left hand path we can (once again) forge an alliance with cancer. We need only the favorable circumstance.

The Relation Between Limb Generation and Cancer

The notion that cancerous growth is related to limb generation is supported by the many coincidences of the mechanisms involved. Embryogenesis (the development of the embryo) is one of the most fascinating areas of biology (and biochemistry and biophysics), not least because—despite a century of study—it is still quite minimally understood.

One of the difficulties in creating an accurate model of how the embryo develops is in choosing a framing for its growth. This applies even more so to what embryogenesis might indicate about how the same processes might continue (or be encouraged to continue) throughout the lifespan. Mechanistically as in computer code; the genome-based model of cell growth posits a “code” of genetic instructions that are “read” and then acted upon by protein construction parts of the cell. The cell is portrayed as a veritable 19th century Dickensian factory. There are of course other models that have been suggested all along. These however have not been funded, leaving these models (and the research they would require to be verified and refined) to drift to the edges of science and the cultural zeitgeist where such ideas are stored awaiting better conditions.

When the embryo is developing there are two main factors, location and timing. The release and reuptake of chemical and other affects (e.g., electrical fields, physical configurations of both proteins (i.e., protein folding) and water molecules that effect attraction, holographic information and its relation to poorly understood morphic resonance fields) must happen in the “right” place at the “right” time for the desired (i.e., normal) effect.

In flies, genes control the chemical pathways that express as first body segmentation and then as limb formation. In mice, genes control the chemical pathways that express as vertebra. In both cases these genes and their expression have to do with the spatial ordering of the being. That is, both its orientation in its environment (the fact that our heads are “up,” and our feet are “down,”) and its internal orientation (even if we are standing on our heads our arms come “between” our shoulders and our waists). These two genes were found to be homologous, with a common evolutionary origin evidenced by similar amino acid sequences of their encoded proteins.

When these genes are being expressed incorrectly (i.e., not in the right time and place) they are implicated in a mutation that causes flies to develop without wings, and mice to develop mammary tumor virus (MMTV). The wingless fly gene is called “Wg,” and the tumorous mouse gene, “INT.” The common class of this sort of gene therefore being called the contraction “Wnt.”

There are two aspects of significance of these Wnt “mistakes.’ One is that the communication (I use the term communication, rather than mechanism, to emphasis the informational rather than mechanistic model) becomes self sustaining. That is, the tumor, once “created” by the viral conditions then becomes a site for the production of the genes that create the conditions of its existance. According to a Wikipedia article, “tumors caused by MMTV were found to have copies of the virus integrated into the genome forcing overproduction of one of several Wnt genes.”

Coincidental with my framing of genetic expression as a communication rather than mechanistic behavior, is the actual nature of Wnt interaction, which is that of a signaling pathway.  A signaling pathway “describes a series of events that occur when Wnt proteins bind to cell-surface receptors.” Other proteins are triggered that cause still other proteins to be inhibited that would have otherwise degraded other signalling molecules. The undegraded signalling molecule enters the nucleus and is able to interact with factors that promote the expression of specific genes.

The second point of interest is the similarities of amino acid sequences (and supposed common origin) of Wg and INT, despite their being present in different genera and having different somatic effects. This difference between lack of wings and mammary tumors is less significant if one overlooks their material manifestation (wings, tumors), and focuses instead on the underlying structual function (i.e., their role in location and segmentation).

The sorts of organization that Wnt regulates include body axis specification and the development of the nervous system. Both of these organizations are temporally sequential; the body part, structure, morphology or function that develops first affects the nature of that which develops next.

This temporal sequencing is affected by both the degree of intensity (saturation) of the protein(s), and the length of time for which the developing entity is exposed, as well as the point in development at which the exposure happens. There is also an effect caused by proximity. Think of a heater blowing warm air from one end of a subway car that is filled at different tmes of day by differing numbers of people, standing at differing degrees of closeness, for differing amounts of time. This warmth is differentially absorbed by the people. Understand that this warmth is not only a quality in itself, but is an enabler of the activation of other qualities, so that the effects of these minute differences become magnified as they allow for differences of behavior that then produce their own consequences. Thus the difference of a tiny amount of substance or timing of Wnt (or warmth) can eventually lead to large effects.

There is also research that implicates Wnt in the orientation of the tiny hairs on the wings of a fly (that enable it to fly), and cell movements during gastrulation (the creation of a double layer of cells to create an inner tube in a vertebrate embryo).

The fact that Wnt is also implicated in cancer (is considered carcinogenic) makes sense if one understands cancer as the inverse of embryogenesis. Rather than moving toward sequential organization, cancer is a movement towards dismantling complex organization, a return to a preorganization, where time dependancy, proximity, and causality are replaced with a condition of less energy (entropy) that reduces the function of the entity to survival and reproduction.

The unanswered question is whether the action of cancer was once an attempt at a method to allow the already formed body to achieve that which the embryo does effortlessly. The price paid for the evolutionary richness of sexual reproduction was cell death. Thus, just as the embryo was coming into being (replacing the cloned daugher cell of mitotic reproduction), the being whom the embryo would be born to be was always already beginning to degrade. Why wouldn’t there be a way of repair and restoration, as, in fact there are many. Why can cuts scab, but fingers not regenerate? Adult neural plasticity at a level once considered impossible is now an established medical fact. Computer biofeedback can teach blind people to “see” with their tongues. Even though worn away by time and use, why couldn’t the orientation of tiny hairs, or the organization of the nervous system, continue?

Hypoxia: The argument from Bearden

The most plausible explanation of why cells becomes cancerous is the one I found in
T. E. Bearden’s paper, Cancer And The Unresolved Health Issues In The Biological Effects Of Em Fields And Radiation.

The heart of his paper lies in its providing a mathematically based explanation of how the body can create an antibody electromagnetic wave to undo damage, even genetic damage, to reverse the dedifferentiation of cancerous cells.

The first half of the paper provides a background of why classical electromagnetic (CEM) theory is incorrect—in part due to being developed using vector math, rather than the quarternion algebra Maxwell originally intended. The other problem with the original popularization of CEM was that it was based in classical physics, rather than quantum mechanics (QM).

Bearden posits:

CEM assumes the forcefields as primary causes, paying only lip service to the potentials and treating them as primarily mathematical conveniences. QM, on the other hand, has long since [since 1959] shown that the force fields are simply effects in and on the charged particle system, and are not causes. Instead, QM has shown that the potentials are the primary causes of all EM phenomena. In charged particle systems, potentials can interfere and cause observable EM phenomena such as the Aharonov-Bohm effect in the complete absence of the force fields (page #)

This means that EM phenomena could be applied to biological systems (cells, parts of cells, relations between parts of cells—i.e., patterns, or physical in-form-ation) in ways that we are not able to “discover” in our current experimental settings, due to the two-fold problem of 1) the lack of a paradigm that would cause us to create the necessary technology (i.e., techne), and therefore 2) the lack of equipment that would allow us to experimentally verify / falsify such theories.

toward chaos. I chose this example because it has been how I have been thinking of cancer, as a community of cells that are inclined toward chaos, living in the midst of a community of cells inclined toward order—finally, this paper has shown me why this might happen.

Bearden bases his theorizing on the interpretation of quantum physics of David Bohm and the concept of morphic resonance put forward by Rupert Sheldrake. He argues that generations of inclination on the cellular level have created species-wide memory traces (i.e., Sheldrake’s morphic resonances). Thus, confronted with a difficulty in its current environment, a cell has both its own inclination and a species-historical tendency to follow—i.e., a path of least resistance that is both personally unique, and species-historical.

The metaphor of a “path of least resistance,” is of interest to me, as it paradoxically implies something one returns to (the well-trod path) or is drawn to (the “chreod” which is literally the path of least resistance in the physical or energetic landscape) and yet is a path that is created wholly fresh having never been trod before.

Bearden reminds us that every particle (or wave—same thing, different aspect) has its opposite. Thus an EM effect that propagates “forward” in “time,” has its counterpart that “retreats” “backward” in “time.” All these words are in quote marks because at the quantum level (at smaller than the Plank length) there is no “time,” as we measure it here in the macro-world. Experience at this level is palindromeic (can be “read,” i.e., makes equal “sense,” going forward or backward). A teacup that has fallen and smashed and been glued together can be readily distinguished from one that doesn’t have a network of tiny fissures, but “Madam, I’m Adam,” can’t be left-right directionally distinguished.

The difference in going “forward,” or “backward,” in this context, is actually the difference between becoming more so, or less of—i.e., degree of actualization of one’s always present potential. For the cell that tends to become more differentiated (from stem cell to epithelial cell, let’s say), going “backward,” is toward de-differentiation—which is exactly what the cell does as it becomes cancerous.

Bearden is saying that the cell—under conditions of stress—“reverts” to a path of dedifferentiation that has always been there, available, to it. The environmental stress that Bearden conjectures is hypoxia.

Each hemoglobin molecule is surrounded by water molecules that enhance its ability to transport oxygen. Various kinds of contamination or dysfunction can interfere with this, causing hypoxia—a condition of not enough oxygen. When the body is faced with insufficient oxygen it begins a triage operation, lowering the body’s metabolism and minimizing the body’s requirement of oxygen. Thus we have two contradictory messages going though the cells, based on electromagnetic potentials creating what Bearden calls “signal waves,” and “anti-signal waves.” The signal waves are trying to get the parts of the cell to do what they’ve evolved to do, and the anti-signal waves are trying to get them to not do so, in order to conserve the limited resource (oxygen). Each contradictory signal acts as noise to the “message,” of the other.

This is normal functioning for a cell, as at all times, there are “forward evolving,” and “backward reverting” tendencies. In fact, it is the complex interaction of these multi-phasic waves that creates the information context within which the cell exists.

However, in the most extreme case, when the cell is about to starve to death from lack of oxygen, it remembers that it once existed as an anaerobic entity. Before we were oxygen-breathers, before the vegetation was green, we were single-celled methane breathers living under purple fronds. Eventually the species-historical quantum potential is evoked:

In a sustained cellular hypoxia stress environment, the "do whatever is necessary to reduce oxygen usage" countersignals will continue to cumulate from successively deeper levels in the QP over an appreciable time. These continue to slowly "kindle" after the "first high-level antisignal actions" that cumulated past the "noise" (quantum) threshold reached their limits of physical reactions and are still insufficient to resolve the problem. As the hypoxia stress in the cells continues, then much weaker but coherent countersignals that trigger deeper cellular adaptation actions eventually have time to cumulate past the quantum threshold to the observable state. These long-term cumulated antisignals come from much deeper, even from the species quantum potential itself.

In this circumstance, Bearden conjectures, “In the new model being advanced, cancer and leukemia are centrally-commanded, final, desperate, "first-step dedifferentiation" adaptive attempts by the stressed, affected cells experiencing sustained oxygen shortage (hypoxia) to reverse their cellular evolution and return to the anaerobic stage of their distant ancestry” (emphasis in original).

Since the messages that are allowing the cell to attempt to revert, and the way the parts of the cell communicate with each other, and these forward and backward propagating signals are all EM potentials, then it stands to reason that an electromagnetic “message” might be what turns the whole thing around :

The complete cure for cancer . . . would be to completely neutralize or "zero-out" the patient's cumulative Whittaker/Ziolkowski countersignal buildup in the MCCS (master cellular control system)/personal QP. . . . It can readily be done electromagnetically, using the multi-biwave tailored EM and self-targeting to provide an exact counter-countersignal (or antidote signal) to the cumulation signal itself. This is a scientific fact and it has been rigorously proven, although the methodology could not heretofore be technically explained and understood.

Bearden’s paper concludes with a history of how the development of antidote signal technology was begun, and then abandoned, under economic and political pressure. Although I would personally love to see this research returned to, for the purposes of this paper my concern is not with the “cure” but with the framing of the “problem” as a miscommunication. In this framing, cancer is the body’s attempt to shut down all non-essential systems as a response to an emergency that does not, or no longer, exists. Unfortunately the emergency action taken by the cells is no longer an adaptive one. Unlike bacteria that can sporulate, the community of cells that compose a human cannot “shut down” into a state of anaerobic suspended animation. Cancer dismantles the functioning of the body beyond a restorable quiescence, unto the point of death. However, I would argue that the emergency does exist. The emergency is being bound in a closed system, in a toxic environment. Rather than curing cancer on a case-by-case basis, a restoration of an open information system in a less polluted environment might release the cancer to return to its appropriately limited cybernetic function.

The Genome As An Adaptive Cybernetic Unit With Self-Awareness

Eshel Ben Jacob’s research concerns bacterial colonies, and is being presented as an example of how a form of life at that level exhibits conscious intentionality and communicative ability. This is not to say that these specific behaviors, or affordances as J. J. Gibson would have said, are the same for cancers. In fact, current research indicates that the term “cancer” is a meaningless globalization, and that each cancer has its own specific modality and/or heuristic techne for both intent and communication.

This research has implications beyond the specifics of bacterial evolution. Ben Jacob hopes to provoke a new framing of genetics and evolution that he calls, “cooperative evolution,” through the emergence of a “creative web,” that applies equally to eukaryotes. He specifically cites the fact that “cancer cells can emit genetic material which induces other cells to become cancerous,” as a “case of transfer of genetic material between cells.” In claiming the possibility of, “coupling between the genetic webs of different species,” that could, “cause induction of genetic change,” thus leading to rapid, “avalanche effects,” he posits just the sort of interaction I posit between the genomic informational aspects of cancer and its human host.

Rather than a “static genome which serves as a storage unit only,” Ben Jacob proposes, “a new picture of the genome as an adaptive cybernetic unit with self-awareness.” The significance of understanding “genetic elements” as “cybernetic agents,” or “cybernators,” as Ben Jacob would have us call them, is that it takes the interaction of just such a self-conscious autopoietic agent with an environment to create a self (concomitant with the perception of the self). It is only this sort of self that can exist in an open system, thus circumventing the paradox of how the needs of the global/macro bacterial colony can both be perceived and be met through changes effected at the individual/micro genetic level of the individual bacterium. In just such a two pronged manner I suggest that the collective community of cancer masses exist as macroorganisms of individual cancer cells with communication both between cells and between the cells/collective and the host body. Furthermore, I posit this is a material, somatic, instantiation of a parallel structure of a collectivity of human selves at the level of multiple informational field bodies, where once the cancer, in its nonmaterial, informational aspect, played an important communicative role, the perversion of which has lead to the current state of cancer as a lethal disease.

In an earlier paper , I considered Ben Jacob’s explanation of the transition from the global, external (population) to the local, internal (gene). Ben Jacob (2005) looks at Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem to explain how the information from the environment gets “in” to the closed (biological) system. This is necessary to explain if one posits the basis of the genetic information as “code.” One must answer the question: How does a response to a dynamic environment become a changed digital code?

Does the individual cancer act as if it were a square in a cellular AI game, such as “Prisoner”?
Or, does it form part of a cancer community that votes on its next move, as did the bacteria studied by Ben Jacob? When we “communicate” with the “Ambassador of the Nation of Cancer,” are we dealing with an individual who can make no promises for his neighbor, or with a Group Mind that has such processes of parlay that we can not perceive?

Ben Jacob and Shapira report that, “bacteria tend to cooperatively self-organize into hierarchically structured colonies , acting much like multi-cellular organisms. Moreover, the colony behaves as a new organism with its own new self, although the building blocks are living organisms, each with its own self.” They stress that communication within the colony consists of a truly semantic language, that is, one that supplies both content and meaning constructed via context. Therefore the bacterial colony must have evolved structures for both sending and receiving information. Ben Jacob only lists physical (somatic, material) ones, to which I would add, certainly in the case of cancer, holographic, nonmaterial ones. Ben Jacob’s reports that, “To achieve the proper balance of individuality and cooperation, bacteria communicate using sophisticated communication methods which include a broad repertoire of biochemical agents . . . At the same time, each bacterium has equally intricate intracellular communication means of generating intrinsic meaning for contextual interpretation of the chemical messages and for formulating its appropriate response.”

Under stressful conditions the bacterial colony transforms themselves into inert, enduring spores. I am comparing the process of transformation, not the spore formation. Whatever triggers the cancer’s onset may also follow a communication on the “community,” level. Stress may come from conditions within the host’s body, or physical environment. Possibly a clogged or closed telepathic network of the information body is a concomitant trigger. Ben Jacob and Shapira report:

Sporulation is executed collectively and begins only after "consultation" and assessment of the colonial stress as a whole by the individual bacteria. Simply put, starved cells emit chemical messages to convey their stress.

Each of the other bacteria uses the information for contextual interpretation of the state of the colony relative to its own situation. Accordingly, each of the cells decides to send a message for or against sporulation. After all the members of the colony have sent out their decisions and read all the other messages, if the “majority vote” is pro-sporulation, sporulation occurs.

Ben Jacob and Shapira then discuss various modes of bacterial communication. Again they remain in the realm of the material physical, whereas I wish to include the nonmaterial informational. It should be understood that although this level is itself nonmaterial (and outside the physical body), it nevertheless effects changes on the somatic level. Just as the issue of how stress at the level of the collective (colony) can effect the genetic structure of an individual bacterium; it remains unanswered how the information from and/or of the informational field body becomes manifest.

In addition to a chemical or electromagnetic framing, one must consider spatial organization, degrees of intensity, duration and even desire or affect. These framings have been theorized by philosophers such as Michel Serres, and Giles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. As discussed in earlier papers I suggest using Deleuze and Gauttari’s distinction between “smooth,” space that is not internally, hierarchically organized and “striated” space that is. They write of a process of “deterritorializing,” through which striated space is transformed into smooth space, and a process of “reterritorializing,” by which smooth space is transformed to striated space. If we consider the complexly, hierarchically organized healthy cell a striated space, and a dedifferentiated cancer cell a smooth space, we have a vocabulary to discuss the differences while giving value to each. There is no superiority between these two types of space, they each serve a function, and, in a healthy system transform readily from one to the other. It is a symptom of the “dis eased” status of cancer that it only deterritorializes, and whatever reterritorializing process that once it had, or was complementarily linked with, has been lost.

Ben Jacob and Shapira (2005) describe a spatial solution of bacterial colonies, where bacteria at the edge of the colony generate vortices that become independent structures that are yet connected to the entire colony. The vortices can move at a more rapid rate, in search of a less toxic environment. In addition, “once they’ve encountered the antibiotic, the bacteria seem to generate a collective memory so that in the next encounter they can respond even more efficiently.”

Ben Jacob writes, “With regard to eukaryotic organisms, an additional major difficulty arises from the notion that all the required information to sustain the life of the organism is embedded in the structure of its genetic code: this information seems useless without the surrounding cellular machinery”.

Taken together these two ideas, of collective memory in an organism that doesn’t have a brain, and the notion of information and context that co-constitute a distributed mind, describe the quality of affect as I defined it in a previous paper as:

A meta-node or a quasi-object that holds the input in such a way that it allows other processes to happen, as a homeobox gene does to control the timing of the expression of other genes. The threshold is like a switch (but an autopoietic, self-switching switch) that may distribute or concentrate the input over time or space, or modes of being. It is affect, because it is a tendency toward, or an incipient action, that is posed in such a way that it can distribute or release or withhold, or concentrate, etc. the input in a way that the input couldn’t (or wasn’t) on its own.

That paper questioned how affect is both amenable to the effects of agency, and—perhaps—vice versa. How does desire become the inclination that is the context of action? How does action (or even affect, the inclination toward action) inform desire? How does what I do, i.e., physiology, influence how I am [made], i.e., fabrication?

It is these same questions that I now wish to apply to cancer. How does the “desire” of cancer, in its latent informational form, become the inclination to manifest in its material, somatic form? How does the action of the human, or even the habitual inclination toward, a virtual action as it were, inform the desire of the cancer?

Ben Jacob answers some of these questions in his paper on bacterial self-organization. The general principles of self-organization of open systems posit that they “respond to externally imposed conditions by forming complex hierarchical spatio-temporal patterns,” through a mechanism of “patterning via competition,” “between the approaches towards global equilibrium (global entropy production) and local equilibrium (local entropy production).”   This is how I imagine cancer evolved when it existed in an open (information) system. Rather than the entropy being “trapped” at the local level (within the physical body) where it proceeded unto death, the dedifferentiation (deterritorialization) work of cancer operated on the (global) level of the telepathically linked human collective.

Ben Jacob contends that at far from equilibrium points, “The two-level picture is often insufficient. In such cases, a hierarchical multi-level organization is the only possible answer to the requirement of self-consistency (solvability).” Changes in the environment placed bacteria within an evolutionary space of need for both flexibility of adaptive choices, and the possibility of using both mechanisms within the individual and emergent attributes of the colony. Turing’s model of competition (between the individual’s degrees of freedom, and the cooperativity that is the group’s emergent adaptive ability,) is replaced with an evolution toward a more complex form that allows for both (individual) freedom and (group) cooperation.

Ben Jacob cites this sort of complexification and adaptability as being enabled by the bacterium/bacteria’s evolution toward the attributes of tolerance toward morphological change and system robustness, rather than stability, as desired traits for survival. This is exactly the role I posit for cancer in an earlier stage of human (or perhaps prehominid mammalian) evolution. Cancer, by being able to rapidly devolve structures is perfectly suited to effect morphological change. Furthermore, Ben Jacob cites the same mechanisms at work in two forms of life that prey on bacteria. This is significant because it shows that what he writes about is not unique to bacteria (therefore making more plausible my suggestion that a similar evolution is at work between cancer and humans). Also, the question of whether the prey absorbs the ability (or tendency toward, i.e., affect) to make use of this mechanism from what it eats, falls squarely within Margulis’s symbiogenesis paradigm. Margulis also documents research whereby the predator, in this case a bacteria, becomes a necessary for survival symbiont.

Finally, Ben Jacob challenges the current “top level,” paradigm of emergence. This holds that ever more complex qualities and properties emerge at “higher,” (i.e., more complex levels of organization) without a concomitant reconfiguration/evolution at the “lower” levels. Ben Jacob posits that the emergence of new behavior at the group level creates a context in which the individual cells are changed. It is this positive feedback loop that may account for the relative rapidity of this sort of change.

Thus Ben Jacob distinguishes between “structural (configurational) complexity and operational (functional) complexity in the context of self organization.” The first being complexity of “spatiotemporal structural variations, both within each level and between levels.” Whereas, “operational complexity represents the singular interplay between levels. It refers to the structural variations the levels can impose or generate on one another.” Thus, traditional emergent complexity theory doesn’t examine how the individual cells express genes (some of which have lain dormant in their genome for multiples of generations) that transform their basic functioning as an evolutionary response to information perceived and decisions made on a multicellular level.

If this is the case, it entirely supports Bearden’s contention that cells perceiving themselves in extremis would shut down via hypoxia, just as the bacterial colony would first vote, and then commence, to sporulate. The vote would be affected by individuals, consensus would be reached by the collective, sporulation would happen at the individual level. This nonlinear, coarising, stochastic “back and forth,” exemplifies an emergent third choice solution out of the “double bind” of competition between the individual’s freedom versus its cooperation with the group.

It is exactly just such a “generative complexity,” that I hope to provoke with cancer.

The Possibility Of A Correlation Between The Effects Of Electromagnetic Fields And Those Of Mental Intent On Genetic Regulation And Living Tissues

In their paper published in the Journal of Nonlocality and Remote Mental Interactions (JNLMI) Lian Siderov and Kevin Chen take up three points: a consideration of research on the electromagnetic fields that form the substrate of biological processes; studies on the affect of conscious intent on physiology, including at the genetic level; and, a consideration of whether there is a correlation between the effects of electromagnetic fields and those of mental intent on genetic regulation and living tissues.

If indeed cancer ever did, or could, act as an agent of change via mechanisms of telepathy, it would be in the areas outlined in this paper.

Siderov and Chen start out by demonstrating why the current model of genetic control is inadequate. In particular they highlight, “differential spatio-temporal expression of DNA in specialized cells and the emergence/loss of complex architecture during embryogenesis or malignant growth ,” exactly the areas in which I hope to find evidence of vestigial traces of cancer’s holographic informational telepathic history.

Effects Of Weak Electromagnetic (EM) Fields On Genetic Programs That Affect Cell Differentiation In Adult, Embryonic And Malignant States

The first case they study is that of the effects of weak electromagnetic (EM) fields on genetic programs that affect cell differentiation in adult, embryonic and malignant states. They cite the work done by Meryl Rose (1948), who noted, “that three major characteristics of malignant cells (cell simplicity, mitotic speed and metabolic priority) were also typical of embryonic growth and regeneration.” He wondered, “Whether the physiological environment of regeneration could take over the controls of tumor cells. After transplanting pieces of frog kidney tumor to the limbs of salamanders and watching them grow, he amputated the leg just below or, in some cases, right through the tumor mass. As opposed to controls, where the tumor metastasized and ended up killing the host, these specimens demonstrated a remarkable phenomenon: the tumor cells dedifferentiated more fully as the blastema formed, then redifferentiated along with the blastema - thus proving that "the regeneration's guidance system could control cancer, too. ”
Siderov and Chen then focus on Becker’s work to establish evidence of an endogenous weak DC current. They credit him with advancing the notion that the body is a unified electromagnetic field operating as a liquid crystal, a condition that I take as given. Significant to my current research is the matter of this current/field’s effect on limb regeneration, “Applying this knowledge to wound healing in mammals, in 1971 Becker's team stimulated the bone marrow of rats' amputated forelegs with a 1 nanoampere current and managed to obtain partial regeneration of the limb, including new, well organized bone, cartilage, muscle, blood and nerve tissue: at least ten types of cells had differentiated from the blastema, and some specimens even demonstrated the rudiments of finger cartilage .”

Endogenous Coherent Fields: Biosystems As Dynamic Holograms

Citing the work of Popp, Siderov and Chen then explore the evidence for endogenous coherent fields as dynamic holograms. “Popp has suggested that cancer induction is related to the loss of coherence of a photon field in the living tissues, originating from excited states of DNA (2002, 1998), and had demonstrated that, “cancer can be seen as an imbalance between cell growth and death due to a deterioration of intercellular and full-body communication systems (1998).” Additional “research has shown that the characteristics of biophoton emission curves are different for normal versus tumor tissues.”
If, as I postulate, cancer exists as a hologram within the informational aspect of the body, the question of coherence is salient. Degradation of holograms is a matter of loss of coherence, not a matter of loss of matter. The current model of cancer is that it is caused by a material failure, a mutated or malformed protein (or amino acid, or gene segment, or mRNA, etc.). Rather than being measured by the correct assemblage of material parts from a genetic “code,” holograms are more or less coherent based on their degree of informational interference patterns. The more complete the hologram, the more detailed and complex it will appear at multiple grains (levels), and from multiple points of view. If there were a loss of coherence within the biohologram the cell might interpret this as accurate information about degradation in the environment, rather than as degradation of the information about the environment. As such, cancer becomes a problem of misapplication of levels of logical type. The cell behaves appropriately to its’ context, the cancerous behavior of dedifferentiation following along Bearden’s suggested line of cellular response to hypoxia. The question becomes one of why the body perceives itself to be in extremis. Why is the perceived toxicity a trigger for disorganization unto death, rather than a movement toward recuperation? What is the difference between a hologram that guides the body to recreate a limb, and one that guides a body to grow a malignant tumor?
This is the line of research followed by both Popp and Gariaev. The research cited suggests “that these [holographic] patterns may be the basis of morphogenesis and structural/ biochemical regulation of the organism throughout its life–an EM blueprint guiding the development, repair and even social behavior of organisms.” Popp hypothesizes that, “phase information within and between cells . . . act[s] as a biological control parameter regulating the growth and differentiation of cells.”
The work of Gariaev and his colleagues (see earlier sections of this paper), are based on the interpretation of the genetic “code,” within the context of biophotonic (light) and biophononic (sound) “delocalized interference patterns.” In light of this self-regulatory system, they suspect that “the activation of oncogenes . . . is dependent on genome holographic processes.” They, and I, hope for experimental research in the modulation of EM field characteristics.
Siderov and Chen then turn to this modulation as effected by human consciousness. While I would be happy to discover evidence of psychic abilities to heal cancer, I am not primarily concerned with a healing model. Rather, I am positing a previous relation between mental (psychic) intent and the maintenance of a symbiotic, nondiseased state. I will therefore present only two examples of mental manipulation of holographic conformation, merely to illustrate what sort of mental process(es) might have been at work.

The Effects Of Healers' Intent On Living Tissues

Siderov and Chen express both the difficulties of obtaining studies conducted under stringent scientific conditions, and the preponderance of anecdotal evidence, and call for appropriate replication of these studies for validation. They postulate that, ”evidence of space and time non-locality is probably the single greatest reason for which spiritual healing continues to encounter major resistance as a legitimate research subject from the scientific establishment.” However, “at a physics theoretical level there is nothing that prohibits such effects from taking place,” therefore, they put forward a challenge to go beneath the level of the biomolecular, to the biophysical level of the “control hierarchy,” where, “answers which have eluded us so far, such as the onset criticality and reversal of malignant programs, will become more obvious.”

One example they cite is of chromatin folding/unfolding, which is involved in repair at the level of the DNA.   It would be significant if the change in the internucleosomal angle could be “partly controlled by the electromagnetic hologram grid nodes postulated by Gariaev, Popp and others,” because, “if electrostatic interactions are responsible for chromatin folding/unfolding, . . . the demonstrated ability of conscious intent to produce winding/unwinding of in-vitro chromatin and to directionally influence transcription becomes highly significant.”

A second model of what the telepathic, self-regulatory, holographic coherence pattern might have once looked like is provided by Mae-Wan Ho’s model of the body as a liquid crystalline matrix. Within this body that is receptive to global reconfigurations and nonlinear, phase shifts, it is easier to imagine a progressive increase of overall coherence, “via conscious mental driving, in a way not dissimilar to laser pumping or the gradual orientation of ferromagnetic particles in an EM field.” Meditation practices that allow the EM system of the brain/body to shift to alternate frequencies could certainly “drive the configurational states that the body naturally cycles through, to sensitize its LC matrix to particular frequencies.” The sort of positive feedback behind the long-term physiological changes seen in meditators, is, I believe a remnant of a common ability to maintain “a mentally-driven, permanent tighter-than-average molecular coherence [that] would, in our model, lead to a gradual increase in tissue liquid crystallinity, more efficient signal detection/transmission and hence greater perceptual sensitivity, energy efficiency (Bigu) and ability to correct local EM contextual errors.”
In conclusion, Siderov and Chen stand the question of whether the brain is the organ of detection for subconscious and/or anomalous conditions on its head. Rather than “the brain being the transducer of nonlocal information”, they suggest that the “survival instinct of primitive organisms qualify as consciousness–suggesting that the genetic material in our bodies might in fact be the oldest and primary "antenna" for nonlocal communication.” They remind us that this is not merely a rhetorical question, as “we are still in the dark about the higher-level programs regulating the spatial and temporal expression of DNA.” While they hold that, “if conscious intent has the ability to shape our organism's response to environmental challenges by acting all the way down to DNA, RNA and protein levels, then it is indeed the most versatile and potent therapeutic intervention we could ever conceive;” I hope we can rediscover our already present, merely quiescent ability to return cancer to its channel clearing, dedifferentiating, deterritorializing function.

Bibliography

Bateson, Gregory (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology. University Of Chicago Press

Beal, J. B. (1996) Biosystems liquid crystals and potential effects of natural and artificial electromagnetic fields (EMFs). Second Annual Advanced Water Sciences Symposium, Exploratory Session 1, Dallas, TX  http://frontpage.simnet.is/vgv/jim1.htm

Bearden T. E. (1993) Cancer And The Unresolved Health Issues In The Biological Effects Of Em Fields And Radiation // “Mechanism for Long-Term Cumulative Biological Effects of EM Radiation," 70th Annual Meeting of the Alabama Academy of Science.   http://www.cheniere.org/books/cancer/cancer.htm

Becker R. and Selden G (1985) The Body Electric: Electromagnetism and the Foundation of Life, 1st edn. Morrow, New York, NY

Ben Jacob and Y. Shapira (2005), “Meaning Based Natural Intelligence Vs. Information Based Artificial Intelligence,” in Cradle of Creativity. Quoted material taken from preprint: http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/papers/meaning%20based.pdf

Ben Jacob (2003) Bacterial self-organization: co-enhancement of complexification and adaptability in a dynamic environment. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. A (2003) 361, 1283-1312
http://star.tau.ac.il/~eshel/papers/nobel.pdf

Ben Jacob, E. (1998) “Bacterial wisdom, Gödel's theorem and creative genomic webs,” Physica A 248, 57-76

Ben-Jacob, E. (1997) From snowflake to growth of bacterial colonies. II. Cooperative formation
of complex colonial patterns. Contemp. Phys. 38, 205-241.

Ben-Jacob, E., Cohen, I. & Czirok, A. (1997a) Smart bacterial colonies. In Physics of biological
systems: from molecules to species (ed. H. Flyrbjerg, S. Hertz, M. H. Jensen, O. G. Mouristen
& K. Snepper). Springer.

Benor, D J (2001) Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution, 1st edition Southfield MI: Vision Publications

Bohm, David (1980) Wholeness and the Implicate Order Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., London.  
Butler, Octavia E. (paperback reissue 1997) Dawn, Aspect Science Fiction/Warner Books, 1987

Chwirot BW (2001)  Ultraweak Luminescence as a source of information on biological systems. International Institute of Biophysics. www.datadiwan.de/iib/ib0601e_.htm

Crick F.H.C. (1966) Codon-anticodon pairing: the wobble hypothesis. // J. Mol. Biol.. v.19. p.548-555.

Davidson, EH (2001) Genomic regulatory systems: development and evolution, 1st ed. , San Diego CA, Academic Press

Deleuze, Giles & Felix Guattari (translation by Brian Massumi, 1987) A Thousand Plateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press [(1980) Mille Plateaux]

Dumezil, George (    ) The Destiny of a King

Dyson, George (1997) Darwin Among the Machines: the evolution of global intelligence. Reading, Massachusetts: Helix Books. Perseus Books.

Eliade, Mircea (1991) The Myth of The Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and History. Princeton University Press: Bollingen Series [(1949) Le myth de l’éternel retour:archétypes et répétition]

Gariaev, Peter P., Tertishny, George G., Leonova, Katherine A. (2002) The Wave, Probabilistic and Linguistic Representations of Cancer and HIV.  Journal of Non-Locality and Remote Mental Interactions Vol. I Nr. 2 http://www.emergentmind.org/gariaevI2.ht

Gariaev PP, Tertishny GG , Iarochenko AM, Maximenko VV, LeonovaEA (2002b)  The spectroscopy of biophotons in non-local genetic regulation.   J of Nonlocality and Remote Mental Interactions  1[3]  www.emergentmind.org/gariaevI3.htm

Gariaev PG, Kaempf U, Marcer P J, Tertishny GG, Birshtein B, Iarochenko A, Leonova KA (2000) The DNA-wave Biocomputer. The fourth international conference on computing anticipatory systems (CASYS), Liege 2000. http://www.bcs.org.uk/siggroup/cyber/dna.htm

Gariaev P.P., Tertyshniy G.G., Gotovsky Yu.V., Leonova E.A. (1999) “Genome holographic and quantum non-locality.” Proceedings of the 5th International conference on “Theoretical and clinical aspects of bioresonance and multiresonance therapy application”, part II. p.256-272;

Gatenby, Robert and Robert Frieden, “Application of Information Theory and Extreme Physical Information to Carcinogenesis,” 62 (13): 3675–Cancer Research

Gibson, J.J. (1979). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Houghton Mifflin, Boston. (Currently published by Lawrence Eribaum, Hillsdale, NJ.)

Gilbert, Karen Wendy, (2006) “Locating Agency in an “Oreo” Subject: Ontological and Ethical Considerations” Cybernetic and Information Technologies and Systems Analysis Conference (CITSA)

Gilbert, Karen Wendy (2005) “Affect: A Mode of Cyborg Communication” Cybernetic and Information Technologies and Systems Analysis Conference (CITSA)

Gilbert, Karen Wendy (2004) “The Distributed Mind” Towards a Science of Consciousness Conference Proceedings

Gilbert, Karen Wendy (2003) “Slowness,” Quantum Mind II Conference Proceedings

Ho, Mae-Wan (1996) Journal of Consciousness Studies 3:231

Ho, Mae-Wan (1993) The rainbow and the worm: the physics of organisms, 1st edn. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co.

Huberman, B. A. & Hugg, T. (1986) Complexity and adaptation. Physica D22, 376-384.

Lagerkvist U. (1978) “Two out of Three: an alternative method for codon reading.”  Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. v.75.p1759-1762.

Lemley B. Heresy. Discover 21[8]: 60

Margulis, Lynn and Dorion Sagan (1995) What is Life? Berkeley, University of California Press: A Peter N. Nevraumont Book

Martindale, D. (2003) New Scientist 177 [2388]: 32

Pollack, Gerald H. (2001) Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life. Seattle, Washington: Ebner & Sons

Popp, FA  (2002) Basic theory of Cancer Development and Defense, a presentation for the 11th International Conference "Biological Cancer Defense" in Heidelberg, Germany (May 3-5, 2002) International Institute of Biophysics  www.lifescientists.de/publication/pub2002-05.htm

Popp, FA, Chang J (1998) The Physical Background and the Informational Character of Biophoton Emission. In: Chang JJ, Fisch J, Popp F-A (eds) Biophotons. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht p 239

Popp, FA  Some Features of Biophotons and their Interpretation in Terms of Coherent States. International Institute of Biophysics.  www.datadiwan.de/iib/ib0205e_1.htm

Prangishvili I.V., Gariaev P.P., Tertyshniy G.G., Leonova E.A., Mologin A.V., Garber M.R., (2000) “Genetic structures as a source and a receiver of holographic information.” Transducers and Systems, N2, p.2-8.

Rosen, Robert (1934, 1991) Life Itself. NY: Columbia University Press

Serres, Michel (2000, translated by Jack Hawkes) The Birth of Physics Manchester, England: Clinamen Press [La naissance de la physique dans le texte de Lucrece (1977)]

Shapiro, J. A. 1992 Natural genetic engineering in evolution. Genetica 86, 99-111.

Sheldrake, Rupert (reprint, J.P. Tarcher, Inc., Los Angeles, (1982) A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation. [Blond & Briggs, Ltd., U.S. (1981)]

Sidorov, Lian, DDS & Kevin Chen, Ph.D. MPH (2006) Biophysical Mechanisms of Genetic Regulation: Is There a Link to Mind-Body Healing?  The Journal of Non-Locality and Remote Mental Interactions http://www.emergentmind.org/Sidorov06.htm

Turing, A. M. (1952) The chemical basis of morphogenesis. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B237,
37-72.

Wikipedia, Wnt signaling pathway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wnt_signaling_pathway

Waddington

Mircea Eliade (1991)

Dumezil,

Gariaev, Peter P., Tertishny, George G., Leonova, Katherine A. (2002)

Gerald Pollack (2001)

Robert Rosen (1991)

Bearing in mind that these are not the same thing, see Dyson (1987) quoting Dyson:
It is often taken for granted that the origin of life is the same thing as the origin of replication, [Freeman Dyson] wrote, noting that it is important here to make a sharp distinction between replication and reproduction. ... Cells can reproduce but only molecules can replicate. In modern times, reproduction of cells is always accompanied by replication of molecules, but this need not always have been so. ... Either life began only once, with the functions of replication and metabolism already present in rudimentary form and linked together from the beginning, or life began twice, with two separate kinds of creatures, one kind capable of metabolism without exact replication, the other kind capable of replication without metabolism. ... The most striking fact which we have learned about life as it now exists is the ubiquity of dual structure, the division of every organism into hardware and software components, into protein and nucleic acid. I consider dual structure to be prima facie evidence of dual origin. If we admit that the spontaneous emergence of protein structure and of nucleic acid structure out of molecular chaos are both unlikely, it is easier to imagine two unlikely events occurring separately over a long period of time. Dyson (1987)

Gariaev, Peter P., Tertishny, George G., Leonova, Katherine A. (2002)

How are codons homonymies produced? A set of different amino acids is coded in mRNA codons by similar doublets; the third nucleotides in codons can relocate chaotically: they are wobbling and may become any of the four canonical ones. As a result, they don’t correlate with the coding amino acids [Crick F.H.C. Codon-anticodon pairing: the wobble hypothesis. // J. Mol. Biol. 1966. v.19. p.548-555., Lagerkvist U. Two out of Three: an alternative method for codon reading. // Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA., 1978, v.75.p1759-1762.]. That’s why semantic ambiguity appears regarding the ribosome’s choice of amino acid-carrying-tRNA anti-codons. For instance, each synonymous codon of the standard code of higher biosystems (AGT and AGC) codes for serine, while each synonymous AGA and AGG codon codes for arginine. Thus, the third nucleotides of mRNA codons in combination with a sign doublet don’t have exact amino acid correlates; at the same time, the first two sign codon nucleotides are similar with one another, yet code different amino acids - hence the ambiguity in selecting tRNA anti-codons. In other words, a ribosome may take serine or arginine tRNA with an equal probability; such an outcome can initiate synthesis of abnormal proteins (Gariaev et al., 2002, 6)

We think that the correct choice out of doublet anti-codon-homonyms is realized through a resonant-wave or context (associative, holographic) and/or “background” mechanisms. Amino acid code homonymity can be overcome in the same way as they are in natural languages - by the placement of a homonym in a complete phrase; the homonym decodes the context and attaches a unique meaning to it, thus resolving the ambiguity. That’s why mRNA, acting as a “phrase”, should operate in the protein synthesis process as an integral coding system, non-locally determining the sequence of amino acids at the level of tRNA aminoacylated associates, which interact in a global and complementary way with the entire mRNA molecule (Gariaev et al., 2002, 6).

The genetic apparatus can be non-local at the molecular level (holographic memory of a chromosome continuum) and at the same time quantum mechanically non-local in compliance with the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen effect. The latter means that the genome genetic and other regulatory wave information is recorded at the polarization level of its photons and is non-locally (everywhere and in no time) transferred (plays out) throughout the entire space of a biosystem by the polarization code parameter. This helps to set a quick-response information contact among the billions of cells constituting an organism. (Gariaev et al., 2002, 3)

A context “game” (combinatorial analysis) depends on current metabolic requirements of cells, tissues and an organism. The difference between a text and a context is conditional and depends on the domain of a part and an integer in a genome. The boundaries between the part and the integer are conditional and are likely to have a morpho-functional character which depends on an organism’s part differentiation at the cell, tissue, organ and biosystem levels. A finer ranking - by functional and metabolic areas of a cell which are controlled by certain chromosome sections (up to protein-genetic and exon-intronic splitting) - may also exist. Each of these quanta is an integral system in relation to itself, and just a part if the division rank is higher. (Gariaev et al., 2002, 13)

The genetic apparatus amplifies each image signal and picks up the amplified signals out of the background (context, noise) not through the noise suppression procedure. On the contrary, a cell, a tissue and an organism use the background changing context as a means of extraction, amplification and to understand the meaning of each of these available image signals. (Gariaev et al., 2002, 13)
The researchers applied a statistical analysis method for studying natural and musical texts, known as Zipf-Mandelbrot’s law, as well as the known Shannon postulate of text information redundancy calculated as a text entropy. As a result, they found that DNA “non-coding” areas (space, intronic and others) had more in common with natural languages than the “coding” ones. Taking this for granted, the authors inferred that “non-coding” sequences of genetic molecules were the basis for one or more biological languages. Furthermore, the authors developed a statistical algorithm for searching DNA coding sequences; the algorithm they developed demonstrated that protein-coding areas had significantly fewer long-distance correlations, compared with areas separating these sequences (Mantegna R.N., Buldyrev S.V., Goldberg A.L., Havlin S., Peng S.-K., Simons M., Stanley H.E. Linguistic Features of Noncoding DNA Sequences. // Phys. Rev. Lett. 1994.v.73 N23. p.3169-3172). (Gariaev et al., 2002, 5)

In some sense, the genome operates like a complex multiwave laser with adjustable frequencies. It emits DNA light which is gene- and sign-modulated by amplitude, phase, frequency and polarization. Moreover, the genome is also likely to be a radio wave emitter converting a wide spectrum of coherent sign-polarized radio bands [Gariaev P.P., Tertyshniy G.G., Gotovsky Yu.V., Leonova E.A. Genome holographic and quantum non-locality. // 5th International conference “Theoretical and clinical aspects of bioresonance and multiresonance therapy application”, part II. Imedis. Moscow 1999. p.256-272; Prangishvili I.V., Gariaev P.P., Tertyshniy G.G., Leonova E.A., Mologin A.V., Garber M.R., 2000. Genetic structures as a source and a receiver of holographic information. Transducers and Systems, N2, p.2-8.] (P.P. Gariaev, G.G.Tertyshniy, Ye.A. Leonova, etc. Radio wave spectroscopy of local photons: exit to quantum non-local bioinformational processes. Sensors and Systems (2000, N9, pp. 2-13).
The genome is also a dynamical multiple hologram which is able to produce light and radio wave images [Gariaev P.P., Tertyshniy G.G., Gotovsky Yu.V., Leonova E.A. Genome holographic and quantum non-locality. // 5th International conference “Theoretical and clinical aspects of bioresonance and multiresonance therapy application”, part II. Imedis. Moscow 1999. p.256-272; Prangishvili I.V., Gariaev P.P., Tertyshniy G.G., Leonova E.A., Mologin A.V., Garber M.R., 2000. Genetic structures as a source and a receiver of holographic information. Transducers and Systems, N2, p.2-8.] which carry out management functions by the biosystem. (Gariaev, et al., 2002, 3)

A family of various solitons (optical, acoustic, conformational, rotational-oscillating, etc.) excited in polynucleotides can become an apparatus for continual (non-local) “reading” of context RNA sequences on a whole. These solitons help gather semantic information on RNA contexts and then associatively regulate codon-anticodon sign interrelations. Genomes-biocomputers of cells carry out semantic estimates. Soliton reading, scanning the RNA surface, is a method of polynucleotide continual reading. For instance, the solitons of rotating torque vibrations of nucleotides on a sugar-phosphate axis we physically and mathematically considered for one-chain RNA-like DNA segments. (Gariaev et al., 2002, 11)

While the structural coding contains basic instructions on how to prepare many components of the machinery–namely, proteins–it is unlikely to contain full instructions on how to assemble them into multi-molecular structures to create a functional cell. We mentioned mitochondria that carry their own genetic code. In addition, membranes, for example, contain lipids, which are not internally coded but are absorbed from food intake according to the functional state of the organism [E. Ben Jacob and Y. Shapira (2005) Preprint p 28].

Robert Rosen (1991)

To say that something is the final cause of the proposition would require the proposition to entail something, whereas all the earlier causes require something to entail the proposition. Therefore a final cause would be self-reflexive—that which the proposition entailed would be the cause of the proposition Robert Rosen (1991)

In other words, within this paradigm, the transition from the coding part of the DNA to the construction of a functioning organism is metaphorically like the construction of mathematics from a formal axiomatic system. [E. Ben Jacob and Y. Shapira (2005) Preprint p 29]

Such mechanisms may take a variety of different forms. The simplest possibility is by ordinary genome regulation – the state of gene expression and communication-based collective gene expression of many organisms. For eukaryotes, the mitochondria acting like a bacterial colony can allow such collective gene expression of their own independent genes. In this regard, it is interesting to note that about 2/3 of the mitochondria’s genetic material is not coding for proteins. [E. Ben Jacob and Y. Shapira (2005) Preprint p 31]

  For that, a chemical message is required to initiate an intra-cellular response that involves internal restructuring - self-organization of the intracellular gel and/or the gene-network or even the genome itself. To sustain a dialogue based on semantic messages, the bacteria should have a common pre-existing knowledge (collective memory) and abilities to collectively generate new knowledge that is transferable upon replication. Thus, the ability to conduct a dialogue implies that there exist some mechanisms of collective gene expression, analogous to that of cell differentiation during embryonic development of multi-cellular organisms, in which mitochondria might play an important role. [E. Ben Jacob and Y. Shapira (2005) Preprint p 55]

According to the introduction by David Webb, Lucretius calls into question Democritus’ atomist model that despite “by convention sweet, by convention sour, in reality,” the universe consists entirely and only of, “atoms, and the void.” This worldview begs the question of form, how do these presences and absences come together to constellate thought, matter, nature, and disease? How from atoms and void does the in/form/ation occur to produce all chemical, mechanical, and biological processes? Serres (2000)

ibid. p xvii

ibid. p 50

Paulum, tantum quod momen mutatum docere possis (Book II, 219-20): atoms, in free fall in space, deviate from their straight trajectory ‘a little, just so much that you can call it a change of movement’ . . . We can see here one of the earliest formulations of what will be called a differential. The clinamen is thus a differential, and properly, a fluxion. Ibid. p 4

ibid. p 51

ibid. p 51

ibid. p 61
The thermos keeps hot things hot, and cold things cold, how [does] it know what it contains?

Serres (2000, p 61)

Eliade (1991)

As distinguished by Rosen (1991)

Serres (2000, p 124)

ibid. p 125

ibid. p 129

  ibid. p 133

ibid. p 134

Dumezil, The Destiny of a King

When the general-in-chief comes to touch the lances of Mars before taking his command, he says: Mars, vigila! A similar scene is enacted during the feast of Ops, when the vestal virgins command the king: Vililasne rex? Vigila! (Dumezil, The Destiny of a King, 126).

Ibid.

Thus this physics includes all the models of our own: the question of equilibrium and movement, inventory, difference and circulation, the first notion of a deviation from equilibrium, and the idea of the stochastic cloud of elements, order arising from disorder, the message arising from noise, the temporary organization of open systems, and this vortex which hurtles down a slope, which elsewhere I have called circumstance. Serres (2000, p 139)

See Waddington, Rosen (1991)

Ironically in a self-reflective loop, this “storage” of unsupported scientific framings parallels the storage of expressible behavior in unused DNA, which this research posits as a mechanism. Also implied is the concept of storage that is sensitive to external circumstances. Like the myth of King Arthur and Saint Wenceslas who are merely sleeping and will awaken in the hour of their people’s greatest need, epigenetic research now indicates that genetic responses triggered by environmental factors can be transmitted through at least four generations. That the distinction between somatic and germ cell is not as absolute as the framing of the original 19th century Darwinian / Lamarckian debate suggested reveals more about the deconstructionist and postmodern philosophies of the 20th century than about the science entailed. It now remains to the 21st century to forge an organic, relativistic, far from equilibrium, temporally dynamic, affectively agential model of science. It is to this effort that I hope to contribute.

The Wnt pathway involves a large number of proteins that can regulate the production of Wnt signaling molecules, their interactions with receptors on target cells and the physiological responses of target cells that result from the exposure of cells to the extracellular Wnt ligands. Although the presence and strength of any given effect depends on the Wnt ligand, cell type, and organism, some components of the signaling pathway are remarkably conserved in a wide variety of organisms, from Caenorhabditis elegans to humans. Protein homology suggests that several distinct Wnt ligands were present in the common ancestor of all bilaterian life, and certain aspects of Wnt signaling are present in sponges and even in slime molds. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wnt_signaling_pathway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wnt_signaling_pathway
The canonical Wnt pathway describes a series of events that occur when Wnt proteins bind to cell-surface receptors of the Frizzled family, causing the receptors to activate Dishevelled family proteins and ultimately resulting in a change in the amount of β-catenin that reaches the nucleus. Dishevelled (DSH) is a key component of a membrane-associated Wnt receptor complex which, when activated by Wnt binding, inhibits a second complex of proteins that includes axin, GSK-3, and the protein APC. The axin/GSK-3/APC complex normally promotes the proteolytic degradation of the β-catenin intracellular signaling molecule. After this "β-catenin destruction complex" is inhibited, a pool of cytoplasmic β-catenin stabilizes, and some β-catenin is able to enter the nucleus and interact with TCF/LEF family transcription factors to promote specific gene expression. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wnt_signaling_pathway

The names of the proteins reminds me of the early days of naming subatomic particles, frizzled receptors and dishevelled proteins join charmed and strange quarks to prove the poetic nature of true scientists.

The ensuing effort to understand how similar genes produce such different effects has revealed that Wnts are a major class of secreted morphogenic ligands of profound importance in establishing the pattern of development in the bodies of all multicellular organisms studied. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wnt_signaling_pathway

Body axis specification. Injection of Xenopus eggs with Wnt inhibitors is involved in the development of a second head. Wnt is extensively involved in formation of the posterior nervous system and are released by tail "organizers". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wnt_signaling_pathway

Morphogenic signaling. Wnts produced from specific sites, such as the edge of the developing fly wing or the ventral edge of the neural tube of the developing vertebrate, are distributed throughout adjacent tissues in a gradient fashion. The Wnt pathway becomes activated to different degrees in cells of these tissues depending on how close they are to the production site, leading to subtle but crucial differences in the level of genes regulated by the Wnt pathway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wnt_signaling_pathway

An example of the control of planar cell polarity in insects like Drosophila is determining which direction the tiny hairs on the wings of a fly are aligned. Planar cell polarity is distinct from and perpendicular to apical/basal polarity. Some of the proteins involved planar cell patterning of the Drosophila wing are used in vertebtates during regulation of cell movements during events such as gastrulation. A common feature of both hair patterning in Drosophila and cell movements such as vertebrate gastrulation is control of actin filaments by G proteins such as Rho and Rac. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wnt_signaling_pathway

Largely taken from the author's presentation, "Mechanism for Long-Term Cumulative Biological Effects of EM Radiation," 70th Annual Meeting of the Alabama Academy of Science, University of Alabama at Huntsville, 25 March 1993.  http://www.cheniere.org/books/cancer/cancer.htm

  The vectorists simply threw out the quaternion EM theory and adopted the vector theory of Heaviside and Gibbs. Note that this represented a substantial curtailment of Maxwell's actual theory. In other words, you can actually do a lot more in and with EM fields and circuits than what now appears in "modern" EM theory, and "modern" EM analysis won't even show it. Barrett's Oscillator-Shuttle-Circuit analysis of Tesla's actual patented circuits shows this clearly and resoundingly. Also, living systems utilize the discarded subset of EM for their most vital control functions, and the present theory and methodology will not detect or "see " this. [This is the same problem Mae-Wan Ho complained of in “The Rainbow and the Worm.”]
David Bohm (1980)  
Rupert Sheldrake. (1981) 

This aspect of it is represented by the Kabbalistic notion of “da’ath,” the stone that arises from the water only for long enough for one to step on it as one crosses the stream, and by the beautiful poem:

Traveler these are your tracks
The road and nothing more;
Traveler, there is no road,
you must make yourself a road to walk.
To walk you must make yourself the road,
and to return to the view from before
see for yourself the path that never
made you return from stepping.

Traveler, there is no road,
except those in the sea
Everything passes and everything remains,
but it is we that pass,
to pass making roads,
roads on the sea.

Antonio Machado

Or, if I were Jacques Derrida, sous rature (under erasure), thus forward, backward, time.

In quantum field theory any mechanical or EM force is caused on a mass by absorption and emission of virtual photons. Accordingly, let us examine the smallest possible EM or mechanical "force" _ that one caused by the absorption of a single virtual photon. Newton's third law requires that two photons (the causes) must occur, not one. Further, in all cases, the one must be the exact antiparallel to the other. The only thing always meeting that condition for a photon is its exact antiphoton _ its time-reversed, phase conjugate replica twin. But a phase conjugate replica photon must also superpose spatially with its parent photon _ that's what phase conjugate replicas normally do, according to the distortion correction theorem of nonlinear phase conjugate optics. Thus instead of the conventional "single photon" interaction, the actual vacuum entity engaged in the interaction with an atom is a coupled photon/antiphoton pair

[E]ach cell in a multi-cellular organism normally is under a centralized electromagnetic control system (which functions in the organism's higher-­level personal quantum potential), so that the organism lives and functions as an overall higher-­level unit. If a cell (or group of cells) has separated from this centralized EM control, but is still living and functioning, then obviously the cell is no longer under the whole organism's MCCS and personal quantum potential. However, it still possesses its own control system, and its own personal QP. If the breakaway is by a small group of cells, then they are loosely under a "small group" quantum potential and MCCS as well. That is, they have gone from "large-scale central control" to a "much lower" level of centralized cellular control, accounting for the "tumor as an individual multi-cellular entity." Nourished by the host body, the new parasitic organism _ the tumor _ grows at an unchecked rate. Again, we argue that the problem is electromagnetic in nature, and it can be "fixed" electromagnetically.

Gibson, J.J. (1979)

Ben Jacob (1998, p 72) I believe that eukaryotes (single-cell organisms that their cells have a nucleus or multi-cell organisms) have not lost the option of genetic communication in the course of evolution from prokaryotes, and that under stress, colonies of single-cells eukaryotes establish genetic networks in very much the same way as bacteria do. Some initial hints, that this might be the case, are provided by observations of adaptive mutagenesis in yeast.
In multicellular eukaryotes I expect continuous exchange of genetic information between cells. There are fragments of knowledge which, put together, could support a picture of genetic communication in multicellular organisms. However, in the absence of a proper theory, some were discarded as meaningless and others were studied separately. They were never put together and considered as parts of one picture.

ibid. (1998, p 72, 73)

ibid. p 61

Ibid. (1998) p 62 In this picture, the genome includes the chromosome, all the extra-chromosomal elements and all the “chemical machinery” (like enzymes) involved in genomic activity and the production of proteins.

ibid. (1998, p 62)

ibid. (1998, p 67, 68)  Russell and others . . . closed system.

Karen Wendy Gilbert (2006)

“109-1013 bacteria each.” [E. Ben Jacob and Y. Shapira, (2005) Preprint. :Appendix A: Bacterial Cooperation–The Origin of Natural Intelligence (p 51)]

. . . capable of coordinated gene expressions, regulated cell differentiation, division of tasks, and more. . [E. Ben Jacob and Y. Shapira, (2005) Preprint. :Appendix A: Bacterial Cooperation–The Origin of Natural Intelligence (p 51)]

Such as simple molecules, polymers, peptides, proteins, pheromones, genetic materials, and even “cassettes” of genetic information like plasmids and viruses. [E. Ben Jacob and Y. Shapira, (2005) Preprint. :Appendix A: Bacterial Cooperation–The Origin of Natural Intelligence (p 51)]

Signal transduction networks and genomic plasticity. [E. Ben Jacob and Y. Shapira, (2005) Preprint. :Appendix A: Bacterial Cooperation–The Origin of Natural Intelligence (p 51)]

E. Ben Jacob and Y. Shapira, (2005) Preprint. :Appendix A: Bacterial Cooperation–The Origin of Natural Intelligence (p 51)

E. Ben Jacob and Y. Shapira, (2005) Preprint. :Appendix A: Bacterial Cooperation–The Origin of Natural Intelligence (p 51)

Gilbert (2004); Gilbert (2003)

Deleuze & Guattari (1987, p 493) The first aspect of . . . smooth space . . .  is that its orientations, landmarks, and linkages are in continuous variation . . . Examples are the desert, steppe, ice, and sea, local space of pure connection. Contrary to what is sometimes said, one never sees from a distance in a space of this kind, nor does one see it from a distance, one is never “in front of,” any more than one is “in” (one is “on”).

ibid. (p 69) It is difficult to elucidate the system of the strata without seeming to introduce a kind of cosmic or even spiritual evolution from one to the other . . . There is no biosphere or noosphere, but everywhere the same Mechanosphere. . . . there is no fixed order, and one stratum can serve directly as a substratum for another... Or the apparent order can be reverse, with cultural or technical phenomena providing a fertile soil, a good soup, for the development of insects, bacteria, germs or even particles . . . Furthermore, if we consider the plane of consistency we note that the most disparate of things and signs move upon it: a semiotic fragment rubs shoulders with a chemical interaction, an electron crashes into a language, a black hole captures a genetic message, a crystallization produces a passion, the wasp and the orchid cross a letter.
The situation is the same in biology: the great cellular divisions and dichotomies, with their contours, are accompanied by migrations, invaginations, displacements, and morphogenetic impulses whose segments are marked not by localizable points but by thresholds of intensity passing underneath, mitoses that scramble everything. (p 201)

Ben Jacob and Shapira (2005) Preprint, p 52  Hierarchical organization of vortices: Some bacteria cope with hazards by generating module structures - vortices, which then become building blocks used to construct the colony as a higher entity (Fig 2). To maintain the integrity of the module while it serves as a higher order building block of the colony requires an advanced level of communication. Messages must be passed to inform each cell in the vortex that it is now playing a more complex role, being a member of the specific module and the colony as a whole, so it can adjust its behavior accordingly.

ibid.  Once the vortex is recognized as a possible spatial structure, it becomes easy to understand that vortices can be used as subunits in a more complex colonial structure for elevated colonial plasticity. . . . P. vortex bacteria utilize their cooperative, complexity-based plasticity to alter the colony structure to cope with antibiotic stress . . . The bacteria simply increase cooperation (by intensifying both attractive and repulsive chemical signaling), leading to larger vortices (due to stronger attraction) that move faster away from the antibiotic stress (due to stronger repulsion by those left behind).

Ibid., p 28  While the structural coding contains basic instructions on how to prepare many components of the machinery–namely, proteins–it is unlikely to contain full instructions on how to assemble them into multi-molecular structures to create a functional cell. We mentioned mitochondria that carry their own genetic code. In addition, membranes, for example, contain lipids, which are not internally coded but are absorbed from food intake according to the functional state of the organism.

See also the discussion of the distinction and interaction of these two in Rosen (1991), and in Gilbert (2006)

Gilbert (2005)

Gilbert (2005), see also, Rosen (1991)

Eshel Ben Jacob (2003) Bacterial self-organization: co-enhancement of complexification and adaptability in a dynamic environment.

Turing, A. M. (1952)

Ben Jacob (2003) p 1284

ibid.

Or, inclinations (affects, desires)

bacteria’s genome

Ben Jacob (2003) The ‘smart’ bacteria (Shapiro 1992; Ben-Jacob et al. 1997a) have ‘realized’ (over evolution) that increasing informative communication between individuals results in increased freedom and cooperation of the individuals. As the individuals increase their adaptability to the group, the colony elevates its adaptability and endurability by increasing its complexity (Ben-Jacob 1998). The essential new lesson that has been learned from bacteria is that colonial higher complexity provides the degree of plasticity and flexibility required for better adaptability and endurability of the colony, as a whole, to a dynamic environment (Huberman & Hugg 1986).

Op cit. p 1287 The ordinary notion of stability, as used in equilibrium, can also be applied to the case of open systems exhibiting static or regular steady states. It is not valid for morphologies with hierarchical spatio-temporal complex patterns formed during self-organization. In such cases, the morphology tolerance and system robustness are the relevant concepts rather than stability. Tolerance and robustness require higher plasticity and flexibility that go hand in hand with higher complexity.

Op cit. p 1294. The predator myxobacteria afford the richest set of phenomena observed during colonial development, including cooperative feeding on other bacteria, group motility, cell differentiation, aggregation and cohesion, rippling and formation of fruiting bodies for a more efficient dissemination of spores in response to starvation. All of these phenomena bear amazing similarity to those exhibited by the eukaryote Dictyostelium amoebae, which is genetically much closer to us than to myxobacteria. This makes sense when we remember that both amoebae and myxobacteria live in a similar environment and feed on bacteria. The challenge is to understand how cell behaviour is coordinated in a self-consistent manner with gene expression, in order for multicellular behaviour to emerge.

Margulis and Sagan (1995) p 114. Our kind of life, that of the nucleated cell, began long before animals. Amid cell gorgings and aborted invasions, merged being that infected one another were reinvigorated by the incorporation of their permanent “disease.” The first new kind of cell—the nucleated cell—evolved by acquisition, not of inherited characteristics but of inherited bacterial symbionts.

Ben Jacob (2003) p 1301. The contemporary view of adaptive complex systems, still inspired by ‘More is different’, is that of ‘complexity-based top-level emergence’. When large numbers of elements are assembled and linked to form a complex system, new qualities and properties of the system as a whole, but not of its parts, emerge. Bacterial self-organization holds clues to a new perspective of ‘More is different’ when applied to biotic systems. The notion of adaptable generators reflects the freedom that elements at the lower level have: to assume new properties and qualities when self-organizing to form the higher level.

Ben Jacob (1997)

Ben Jacob (2003) p 1302 Colonies of P. vortex bacteria provide an excellent example of high structural complexity.

ibid.

Bateson (1972)

Op cit. p 1304. My hypothesis is that the informative communication between individuals enhances the individuals’ regulated freedom, and at the same time intensifies their cooperation. This apparently paradoxical process is accomplished via cooperative complexification of the colony through self-organization of hierarchical spatio-temporal patterning. The colonial higher complexity provides the degree of plasticity and flexibility required for better colonial adaptability and endurability in a dynamic environment. The biotic system can modify the environment and obtain environmental information for further self-improvement by autocatalytic complexification.

Op cit. p 1302. The motive of regulated freedom leads to an additional concept of complexity specific to the biotic world: generative complexity. It expresses the ability of the bacteria to generate different morphotypes and the freedom-cooperation interplay of each morphotype. I emphasize that this concept does not describe a specific mode of bacterial self-organization but rather the self-organizational potential of the strains to deal with a dynamic environment.

Based on a presentation made at the First International Conference on the Science of Whole Person Healing (March 28-30, 2003, Washington DC)

Davidson EH (2001) p. 9  The present model of genetic control, based on chemical messengers, transcription factors, molecular feedback loops, enzyme conformation, promoter regions and other forms of cis-/trans modulatory regulation is restricted to describing these all-important programs at a primarily intra-cellular level which fails to fully account for the astounding degree of synchronization between the billions of cells comprising the human body. It has been shown that on average four to eight different transcription factors service each gene's regulatory module and that many hundreds to thousands of genes must be coherently expressed in order to create any given tissue or multicellular structure.

See: D. Martindale (2003), and B. Heresy Lemley.

Becker R. and Selden G (1985)

See: Gilbert, various papers, also Ho (1993).

Becker and Selden (1985, p 153)

Popp FA  (2002); Popp FA, Chang J (1998); Popp, www.datadiwan.de/iib/ib0205e_1.htm

Chwirot BW (2001) 

Bearden (op. cit.)  conjectures, In the new model being advanced, cancer and leukemia are centrally-commanded, final, desperate, "first-step dedifferentiation" adaptive attempts by the stressed affected cells experiencing sustained oxygen shortage (hypoxia) to reverse their cellular evolution and return to the anaerobic stage of their distant ancestry.

Gariaev PP, Tertishny GG, Leonova EA (2002); Gariaev PP, Tertishny GG , Iarochenko AM, Maximenko VV, LeonovaEA (2002b); Gariaev PG, Kaempf U, Marcer P J, Tertishny GG, Birshtein B, Iarochenko A, Leonova KA (2000)
Popp, FA  International Institute of Biophysics.  www.datadiwan.de/iib/ib0205e_1.htm  The phase information within and between cells is hypothesized to act as a biological control parameter regulating the growth and differentiation of cells, with constructive interference domains intracellularly and destructive interference in the extra-cellular matrix.
Sidorov & Chen (2006)  Gariaev and his team suggest that the genome operates like a "complex multi-wave laser with adjustable frequencies", able to produce light and radio waves which regulate the biosystem's space and time organization. This complex background is the basis for the correct expression of genetic material (peptide codes) during embyogenesis and adult life, accounting for the elusive self-regulation and specificity of DNA function in various tissues and under various conditions. Various solitons (optical, acoustic, conformational, rotable-oscillating, etc) excited in polynucleotide areas, and transmitted over large distances significantly exceeding the hydrogen-bond length,  "become the apparatus for continual (non-local) reading of context RNA sequences on a whole".

Ibid. [T]he activation of oncogenes and xenobiotic HIV sequences is dependent on genome holographic processes and therefore that future research in these high-profile areas should focus on the factors modulating such EM field characteristics (such as external artificial modified fields) in addition to local, molecular biology approaches. Given that the expression (onset) of oncogenes and retroviruses such as HIV is known to vary widely among individuals and be largely context-specific, the authors suggest that external artificial modified fields may, in the future, help us modulate this apparent cellular context (environment) and thus keep such noxious genetic material dormant for indefinite periods of time.  Another interesting suggestion made by Gariaev is that phenomena such as cellular apoptosis might be connected with an abnormal compression of photons by cell nuclei, which are accumulated to a maximal value and then destroy the nuclei.

Benor, D J (2001) Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution, 1st edn.Vision Publications, Southfield MI 2001

op. cit. It is generally accepted that the conformation of the chromatin fiber must change reversibly in processes that require the access of regulatory proteins and enzymes to the DNA template (such as in transcription, replication and repair). . . . [O]ne of the major conformational changes that occurs during DNA compaction is a collapse of the angle made between three consecutive nucleosomes (internucleosomal angle), probably mediated by electrostatic changes in histone interactions with linker DNA.

Ibid. [U]nder polarized light microscopy, the extraordinary level of molecular coherence makes organisms appear crystalline. This dynamic coherence is a continuum that extends from intracellular molecules to the cytoplasm, extracellular matrix and the connective tissues throughout the organism. [Ho, Mae-Wan. (1993) The rainbow and the worm: the physics of organisms, 1st edn. World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore] . . . Liquid crystals (LCs) are mesophases–states of matter between the solid and liquid phase. While they possess long range orientational order, they are highly mobile and responsive, undergoing orientation changes (phase transitions) when exposed to a wide variety of stimuli, including electromagnetic fields, temperature and pressure changes, hydration, pH, concentrations of inorganic ions and other psysico-chemical parameters [Ho (1996), Beal (1996)]. LC can convert information about minute changes in pressure, temperature and light into electrical currents (they are piezoelectric, pyroelectric and photoelectric). Finally, they are permanently modified (sensitized) by the passage of electrical currents so as to facilitate the future passage of such currents [Becker R. and Selden G (1985, p. 257)]. Considering these arguments, Mae-Wan Ho suggests that the LC matrix may act as a quantum holographic medium which records interference patterns between local events and the global body field–an idea which finds full agreement with Gariaev's experimental work.

ibid. We propose that qigong and other meditative techniques work by progressively increasing the overall coherence . . . of the body's liquid crystal matrix via conscious mental driving, in a way not dissimilar to laser pumping or the gradual orientation of ferromagnetic particles in an EM field. Meditation frequencies could . . . possibly . . . drive the configurational states that the body naturally cycles through, to sensitize its LC matrix to particular frequencies. Moreover, the semiconductor nature of living tissues suggests that, with repeated passage of an EM current through them, their sensitivity to subsequent signals should increase - a property which, we believe, is critical to the understanding of long-term physiological changes seen in meditators. The maintenance of a mentally-driven, permanent tighter-than-average molecular coherence would, in our model, lead  to a gradual increase in tissue liquid crystallinity, more efficient signal detection/transmission and hence greater perceptual sensitivity,  energy efficiency (Bigu) and ability to correct local EM "contextual errors”.