Orders of Magnitude in the Neuron
Stuart Hameroff wants neuroscience, for the first time, to think in scalar terms, in particular of the versatility and electronic coherence of intracellular tubulin, which is responsible, among other things, for the cell cytoskeleton, for cell division and the separation of homologous chromosomes in meiosis, for the transport of proteins which alter the characteristics of the neuronal synapse and thus enable learning, for precise placement and delivery of these proteins at the interior of the dendritic cell membrane and, as linear and geometrically regular, for two-way electrical, magnetic or electromagnetic conductivity in the intracellular medium of cortical pyramidal cells through twelve orders of magnitude.
These pyramidal vibrations, including the EEG patterns detectable outside the skull, may be beat frequencies of the quantum-entangled web of aromatic dipoles inside the pyramidal dendrites. These dipoles would be induced by the terrahertz pi orbitals of nearby aromatic rings in certain of the amino acids (tyrosine, tryptophan, phenylalanine) spaced regularly along a tubulin axis in these cell bodies.
We think the quantum theory of consciousness is a plausible physical hypothesis which may prove to be behaviorally testable. We think such testing, however, will require some societal improvements.
A theory of conversation, heretofore unthinkable by physical science, should, we think, culminate in a world filled with diaphanous, self-conscious spirits capable of coherent personal memory and able, in auspicious ways and using auspicious domains, at will to move back and forth across the threshold of death, thereby producing a species of heaven on earth.
Such a world would require a great deal of us human beings. We would each individually, as final agents in such a world, need to be capable of immaculate self-government. We would each be required to conform to moral law, such as our society contemporaneously understands it, and exhibit that conformity in a unique and personal manner. Correlatively, we will each be required to appreciate fully such performances and exhibitions by others.
The neuroscientific revolution Stuart Hameroff now advocates, we think, would extend far beyond mere neuroscience. It would be a sociocultural revolution, whereby humanity raises itself on a planetary scale quite literally off the earth and into cosmic space.
