Salvatore Santoli

INT - International Nanobiological Testbed Ltd., R&D Dept.

via A. Zotti 86, I-00121 Rome, Italy

The dissipative hierarchical nonlinear dynamics of evolutionary systems previously investigated is reexamined for the case of living systems to answer the question as to whether such evolutionary extralogical dynamics, where structure and function make up a solidary, indistinguishable unity, is just an epiphenomenon, or there are physical events in spacetime underlying the apparently phenomenological character of physics of non-equilibrium. This question is particularly stimulated by some ideas put forward recently in attempts at a description of life and biological intelligence that rely on the hypothesis of quantum physical aspects of biosystem evolution and brain processes, which would basicly rely on quantum coherence and entanglement. However, such attempts have not been able as yet to overcome the sound objection that the far-from-equilibrium condition would destroy such quantum dynamics. First it is shown here that the hierarchy of far-from-equilibrium bio-macromolecules, and mainly the long DNA arrays and its immediate environment within the cell, cannot be described according to standard Shannon's information concept and linear methods which lose meaning when information no longer is a monotonic function of entropy, as is shown to occur on the nanoscale for informational events, or when even entropy, being a state function, is not defined. The notion of information, suitable for deepening the physics of such systems, that basicly work on nanoscale physics, is reformulated as a process of interaction between the observing and the observed system, the usual terms "source" and "flow" of information being mere metaphors when applied to evolutionary systems. Quantum nanochaos is shown to support the information processing evolutionary dynamics in long-chain biomacromolecules and to spread along their chains, while a Quantum Field Theoretic (QFT) and Thermal Field Theoretic (TFT) approach to DNA arrays shows the possibility of quantizing the molecules themselves and their fundamental interactions through the Heisenberg matter fields, and of defining within such arrays a new kind of information-processing structure-function that is called "mesoscopic extended object"љ and defined asљ a macroscopic object in a quantum ordered state. The so-called geometric quantization approach to the Heisenberg matter field shows its "hidden" symmetries whose action as input information goes from the mesoscopic up to the macroscopic level, as can be observed e.g. in quantum holographic processes, and can formљ a sturdy support for quantum phenomena consisting of coherent wavelets, e.g. from high-dipole moment membranes and linear subcellular biostructures, against the destroying action of far-from-equilibrium conditions. Moreover, it adds through quantum holographic processes to nanochaos in overcoming the so-called exponential evolutionary "cybernetic crisis". While this deepening of the nature of the noncomputable and extralogical processes of life evolution and biological intelligence reveals their deep origin in the underlying physics of the universe, these views open up the possibility of a novel biomimetic engineering and of novel technologies, which are briefly illustrated. In addition, the notion introduced here of physical information, and the results of noncommutative geometry which allows the hidden symmetries of Heisenberg matter field to be evidenced, definitely dispel the misconception of Cartesian mind-body dichotomy and merge such assumedly separate agencies into the solidary unity of one and the same informational process of syntaxљ Ûљ semanticsљ Ûљ pragmatics.