Quantum theory of Evolution
By: Hamza Abdullah
Tags: Biology, Quantum, Life, Evolution

Classical theory of Evolution

Charles Robert Darwin was a English naturalist and biologist who presented the theory of evolution in his book On the origin of Species in 1859. Darwin’s scientific discovery is widely credited theory of life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.

He defined evolution as “descent with modification,” the idea that species change over time, give rise to new species, and share a common ancestor. The mechanism that he proposed for evolution is natural selection.

“Variation is a feature of natural populations and every population produces more progeny than its environment can manage. The consequences of this overproduction is that those individuals with the best genetic fitness for the environment will produce offspring that can more successfully compete in that environment. Thus the subsequent generation will have a higher representation of these offspring and the population will have evolved.” -Charles Robert Darwin

Natural selection acts to preserve and accumulate minor advantageous genetic mutations. Suppose a member of a species developed a functional advantage (it grew wings and learned to fly). Its offspring would inherit that advantage and pass it on to their offspring. The inferior (disadvantaged) members of the same species would gradually die out, leaving only the superior (advantaged) members of the species.

Natural selection is the preservation of a functional advantage that enables a species to compete better in the wild. Natural selection is the naturalistic equivalent to domestic breeding. Over the centuries, human breeders have produced dramatic changes in domestic animal populations by selecting individuals to breed. Breeders eliminate undesirable traits gradually over time. Similarly, natural selection eliminates inferior species gradually over time.

But the things got complex when we observe such a natural diversity at cellular level and even more deeper. Many evolutionist and biologist contradicts with the Darwin’s theory of evolution or natural selection. Darwinism led science astray by assumption, not by observation.

Repeatedly, evolutionists impose their view of the world and how complex traits emerge and progress over time onto biology as a dogma. But when they actually look in detail at organisms, they are surprised. Enough anomalies can kill a paradigm, even if it survives for over a century by the willful belief of an entrenched ideology.

Quantum theory of evolution: A new perspective into cellular dogma of life

Classical physics which many of us may know, following the Newtonian conceptual realms fails or at least doesn’t work at deep atomic level. And here at deepest of atomic world, quantum phenomenon comes into action. Biological systems are the living counterparts of the physical known universe of cosmos. They are made up of molecules, atoms, subatomic structures, and strings of energy and therefore should obey the same laws/regularities of quantum physics and relativity. Few years ago, it was suggested that quantum mechanics may play a substantial role in functioning of biological systems at atomic level.

We believe people that way, would be splitting hairs, as both points of views represent a continuum in the evolutionary process and it all is consistent with the current Darwinian evolution point of reference.

Apparently classical Darwinism is opposed by quantum theory of evolution, because it states that mutation mechanism in DNA is random. Which occurs randomly in clusters of species and only those survive which are beneficial for survival resulting in the extinction of those which doesn’t survive those mutations and that’s how Darwinian evolution progress over the period of time. On the other hand, Quantum theory suggest that mutation mechanism somehow follow the systematic way.

Quantum evolutionary theorist suggest that at the quantum level, similarly to the wave-particle superposition concept, the DNA (made up of atoms and subatomic particles) is also held in a superposition of states, which eventually unfolds in a mutation that is “helpful” to the organism.

Over a long period of time, all these beneficial random mutations accumulated and persisted leading to a system, which in its whole, also exhibit features of quantum evolution.

Classical Darwin’s theory leading ultimately to a system that obeys the laws of quantum entanglement/evolution theory.

Chaoyang Lu (left) and Jian-Wei Pan of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei led a recent experiment that tested quantum Darwinism.

Recently three separate experiments were conducted by three separate teams located at Italy, China and Germany to confirm the accuracy of quantum evolution theory.

Since long scientists are trying to balance these two theories of evolution i.e. Classical Darwinism and Quantum Darwinism.

Quantum theory of evolution which is topic of discussion of this article, is firstly proposed by the Polish theoretical physicist Wojciech Zurek in 2003.

One of the stranger aspects of the quantum world is superposition, the ability of a quantum system to exist in more than one state at one time. The system seemingly only snaps into one state or the other — moving from the quantum world to the classical — the moment we observe it.

That process is called decoherence, and quantum Darwinism is an attempt to explain it.

According to Zurek’s theory, quantum systems have “pointer states”. These are specific measurable characteristics, such as a particle’s location or speed.

When a particle interacts with its environment, all the superposition of those characteristics — alternate locations or speeds — decohere, leaving just the pointer state, which many people can observe because it “imprints” replicas of itself on the environment.

That’s where the idea of Darwinism comes into play: only the “fittest” state — the one best suited for its particular environment — survives the process of decoherence.