What This Model Predicts About the Reality of “What’s out there beyond the eye?”
March 6th, 2004 | No Comments »What The Geometic Model For Light Interaction With The Retina Predicts About The Reality Of “What’s Out There” Beyond The Eye
I have ordered these three sections as to “degree of speculation” placing discussion of a possible connection between this geometric model for light interaction with the retina of the eye and Julian Barbour’s timeless ideas last in the order - as (certainly!) the most speculative.
Three sections thus:
- Speculation about the idea that the diffractive retina predicted by the model represents the diffraction pattern of an externally perceived “Fourier reality out there” along the lines proposed by Brian Hagan.
- The connections that have been proposed to exist between quantum reality and biological systems (such as the eye) that have been put forward indenpendently by Penrose, Frohlich and others.
- Speculation as to a possible relationship of the Fourier/optical transform that the geometric model predicts for vision to the concept that time itself may not exist as Julian Barbour proposes - the eye views a “timeless reality”?
I. THE RETINAL MOTIF AS THE DIFFRACTION PATTERN OF EXTERNAL REALITY
The retina can certainly be considered an extension of the brain and serves as the interface between the brain and external reality. What can this new diffractive model for the retina and the vision system tell us about such external reality? One approach that has attracted me (as discussed elsewhere on this webpage) is the very specific diffractive motif of retinal organization - which in the “photon interacts” era has never been considered. I refer here to the particular “eight-around-one” arrangement of rods around cones which , surprisingly, is seemingly present in most (all?) biologically evolved photosensitive stuructures. With the new understanding that the diffractive retina of this new model connotes a frequency or Fourier domain imaging process, could it be that this motif represents a “Fourier objectification” of externally perceived realty, i.e., beyond the eye? Or, alternatively, that the retina represents the diffraction pattern of externally perceived reality?
I have made one initial foray into this thicket noting (again discussed elsewhere on this page) a potential association of this specific motif with a spatially symmetrical, two lobed epitrochoidal figure… while on either side the hexagonal symmetry of the all-cone and all-rod regions produces asymmetrical single lobed epitrochoids. Thus, spatial symmetry is characteristic at the peak of the visible spectrum with an asymmetry on either side. Can this have any meaning?
Another starting point might be asking the question: what external reality might such an octagonal diffraction pattern represent? One possiblity is an association with quasi-crystal geometric “tilings” of the genre that Penrose has discovered. Certain of these tilings display diffraction patterns with octagonal symmetry. In studying some of these tilings I can almost see a quasi- “added dimensional” effect. Could this be in some way what vision perceives?
Hagan (Ref.1) in a whimsical but very thought provoking ( and I believe important) paper proposes that a Fourier transforming process is involved in our overall perception of reality and a few of his words are worth quoting: under his heading “BIOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF FOURIER TRANSFORMS” to wit: ” The two views of matter , wave or particle, are thus not really divorced, but rather, are inseparably connected through the Fourier transforming process. They are merely different aspects, in the true sense of the word, of the same reality. We will later mention the proposition that the human eye can make these Fourier transformations and so, probably, can the brain”. Hagan thus forsaw, what I believe I have now provided a basis for, the actual mechanism of vision.
II. QUANTUM CONNECTIONS
I was fascinated to read Penrose (Ref. 2) in his adventure into the “quantum mind” asking “Is there a role for quantum mechanics in brain activity?” In this regard he states “There is, in fact, at least one clear place where action at the single quantum level can have importance in neural activity, and this is the retina (Recall that the retina is a part of the brain).” Penrose italicizes “retina” in the orginal text. He goes on to discuss the well known fact that the vision process is sensitive to a few photons (or, in the context of this paper “quantal interactions”). Penrose then proceeds to develop his ideas regarding a quantum/mind process..
It is my premise that the necessarily complementary quantization arises in biologically evolved photosensitivity not in the incident light but in the “absorbed mass” - the electron. I do not believe that nature uses “light as photons” It really doesn’t matter which aspect of the classical/quantum duality is quantized! I believe that it is clear that an observation of the retinal structure leads to the conclusion that I have come to. I find it interesting how a mental construction such as “a photon interacts” told over and over again can so cloud reality and lead for so long a time down blind alleys!
This is perhaps the point to introduce the “other” theory that proposes a quantum basis for biology. I refer to the concept put forward by Frohlich (Ref.3) in 1968 proposing theoretically that coherent states characteristic of biological molecules should result in long range order in biological systems. I have felt since first reading his paper that such order was ultimately necessary to explain such systems above the usual “chemical” explanations (albeit that have been very successful up to this time!). I have often quoted an example - the cover of Scientific American some years ago spotlighted the protein ( or enzyme) that in “lock and key” fashion fitted into the DNA helix causing it to unravel or unwind. Now identification of this protein certainly represents an important step but questions occurred to me such as “where (certainly somewhere remote from this point) was this protein synthesized?” …and “how did it come to be ‘delivered’ to this site at precisely the moment it was needed?” These type of questions imply to me the need for some kind of (in military terms) {”command and control” system to order the spatio-temporal aspects of biological processes. In any event this is the aspect of Frohlich’s thought that interested me.
There was one aspect of Frohlich’s proposal that was considered possible to demonstrate experimentally. In a simple calculation he proposed very specifically that bilipid cell membrane would be found to oscillate in the millimeter wave region - at approximately 40 GHz as I remember. In a meeting here in Califonia that Frohlich attended I remember him stating strongly that the fundamental vibrations would be phononic (i.e., mechanical) and were not electromagnetic in nature. I believe he agreed that they might, however, secondarily, cause vibration of charge (on the membrane surface) that could emit/absorb electromagnetic radiation. At the same meeting one experimentalist (from Canada whose name I cannot remember!) did report detecting such microwave emissions and in a rather curious way. His laboratory had been working for months with cell cultures and microwave receivers without success. One day during morning coffee (or tea) break the receivers suddenly began to emit the sounds indicating that they were detecting emissions. It turned out that a technician had inadvertently added nutrient to the cell culture and the cells were in the process of mitosis and seemingly emitting radiation. This raised the intriguing question: are these emissions characteristic of the processes of the living cell ? Following the California meeting I remember that a group from the Los Alamos National Laboratory became interested in duplicating these experiments. I heard later that they had no success.
That is where I believe we stand today in 2002 - although intense interest has persisted around the world, no experimental evidence has been elicited to verify Frohlich’s hypothesis. I always thought that I understood the difficulties. If such a spatio-temporal ordering, information-bearing system were present, nature would by necessity design it to be commensurately as reliable (or secure) as the helical genetic replication process - which we now understand has been passed down free of errors for millenia. Morphogenesis information, for example, would have to be transmitted within and between cells in completely error free fashion totally independent of, for example, the thermal background of the biological system. An information bearing channel formed phononically (coherent excitonically) at such high frequencies “insulated” from it’s external environment by water seems a credible possibility. I remember calculating the attenuation of water at these frequencies and it was an extraordinary number of orders of magnitude! I feel that nature would use such a system with the corrollary being that it would be very difficult to experimentally interrogate.
There, however, some indirect evidence supporting the Frohlich hypothesis which I will attempt to recount.
In the 1970’s a group of Soviet investigators reported a series of what they termed “athermal” microwave biological effects wherein certain celular processes such as mitosis could be affected by extremely low levels of microwave radiation in the same millimeter band that Frohlich had proposed.. These reports proceeded to generate a great amount of interest around the world. The subject of possible mechanisms for such behavior at such extremely low microwave intensities became very controversial - a controversy that probably persists to this day. A second event then occurred. A German group (from, I believe, a Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart where Frohlich was in residence) reported successfully replicating the Soviet experiments. These results were presented at a special meeting held near Munich which I attended, The German group had done their work carefully and their presentation was very persuasive to the point that such low level microwave effects did indeed exist. The Soviet invstigators who were invited were precluded from attending because of the politics of the time. I have not followed any subsequent work in Germany but I am aware that the Soviets (now Russians) have introduced “microwave medicine” treating diseases using low level microwave radiation in the millimeter band. I have no idea how successful (or unsuccessful) this effort is but it has achieved some notariety.
Another experimental result that potentially supports the Frohlich hypothesis is Hans Kuhn’s “photon funnel” discussed elsewhere on this webpage. An interpretation of this result is that energy is transduced mechanically laterally in lipid membrane (simulating cell membrane) over many molecular distances from single quantum interactions. The result is similar to a much earlier discovery made independently by Jelley and Schiebe studying chromophoric molecules in solution. They achieved an essentially lossless situation with the optical absorption and emission peaks being separated by only a few nanometers. They termed the effect “resonance radiation” with the enities in solution being termed either Schiebe or Jelley “aggregates”. Kuhn achieved the same result in a more controlled fashion using Langmuir Blodgett methods to incorporate the optically active molecules into lipid membrane - the funnel. A bit of startling intuition by Kuhn was the incorporation of space-filling octadecane molecules into the lipid interstices of the membrane layers which resulted in the shifting of the optical response from the usual, lossy, “Stokes shifted” absorption/emission character to the lossless resonance situation. I believe that this very much supports the proposal that some sort of mechanical solitonic vibration is involved. A seemingly important connection of the funnel result to actual biological cell mambrane can be made in that nature inserts the cholesterol molecule into exactly the same intersitial lipid spaces as Kuhn’s octadecane!
I would mention the proposals that have been made by Hammerof et al proposing that the “microtubules” inherent in living cells are somehow involved in quantum / Frohlich processes… and on development of theories of “quantum conciousness.” Microtubules are mechanical structures that are constructed (and deconstructed) of inert tubulin by the cell in it’s various stages of mitosis etc. This group would propose that there is something fundamental about this “cytoskeleton” so produced. I don’t agree that there is anything fundamental about these materials or structures. I would believe that these, again mechanical, structures may serve as “high frequency, information-bearing, solitonically-transmissive, conduits” that would seem to be a necessary part of Frohlich’s concept.
III. ON THE FOURIER TRANSFORM AND TIME:
This transform brings spatial information into time coincidence at the focal (or Fourier) plane of a condensing optical lensing system such as the eye. Feynman in his short book “QED - The Strange Theory of Light and Matter” notes that this is the fundamental purpose of such an optical condensing lens. The thinner section of the periphery of the lens slows light less than rays passing through the thicker center with the result being that each ray arrives at the focal point of the lens at the same time - assuming, importantly that a single wavelength is involved.
At first blush such time coincidence would seem to be an absolute requirement for forming the image seen by the eye (or any image), i.e., all information about the image must arrive and be processed into the final form contemporaneously.This much must certainly be true. But…is it possible that such time coincidence might represent a “timelessness” as perceived by the retinal surface? It seems to me that “coherent time” might be seen as the negation of time. A reality without time is the subject of a new book by Julian Barbour (4) that I have found fascinating. I won’t go into detail about Barbour’s ideas here but the question that the above poses might be: are we moving through a timeless “many universe” reality and might the eye in this new view be the vehicle for such perception? In fact more question marks!
A particularly nice line from Barbour’s book - “the instant is not in time - time is in the instant”
On the near-in subject of the relationship of the transform to the retinal structure proposed - an optical lens is defined as a “Fourier transforming device”. In fact the lens actually performs a second, “inverse Fourier transform” in re-creating the original spatial image at the image plane. Thus the image formed by a lens is defined as “the Fourier transform of a Fourier transform”. Phase information is, however, lost in the latter image transformation. Phase information is only present at the focal or Fourier plane. The photographic images that we are accustomed to seeing contain only the amplitude information. There is a medium that does preseve phase information - holography - but we will not go down that line of thought here.
One must empahasize that the function of the extended retina that I propose is to spatially separate the electromagnetic wavelengths of the visible spectrum . This is not the “frequency space” of the Fourier domain.
It follows from this model that the retinal surface satisfies the Fourier equation at each point, i.e., both light amplitude and phase can be determined at each point. This implies, to satisfy the Fourier eqaution, that the Fourier (or focal) plane and the image plane must be in coincidence. In a real sense then an actual image is detected on the retina.
REFERENCES:
1.) B.E.Hagan and B.L. Reid, “The Mathematical Transformation of Growth and Form - I. Transferring the Wave-particle Duality From Physics to Biology and Proposing Wave Interaction as Key Determinant of Biological Structure”, Medical Hypotheses, Vol. 6, 559-609, 1980
2.) Roger Penrose, “The Emperors New Mind”, Oxford University Press, 1989.
3.) Frohlich, H. “Long Range Coherence and Energy Storage in Biological Systems”, Int. J. Quantum Chemistry, II, 641, 1968
4.) Julian Barbour, “The End of Time - The Next Revolution in Physics”, Oxford University Press, 2000
