III. Ecosmos: A Revolutionary Fertile, Habitable, Solar-Bioplanet, Incubator Lifescape

1. Quantum Organics in the 21st Century

As science transitions to a planetary progeny, new phases of integral clarity are being achieved. In the early 1900s, this realm of subatomic substance and activity was dubbed “quantum,” from the Latin for “amount,” by Max Planck because he theorized that energy waves are composed of discrete material units. For over a century, physicists such as Einstein, Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, Bohm, Wheeler and many more sought to study, test, and make sense of this fundamental domain. Quantum “mechanics” went forth somewhat as a “methinks it is like” series of concepts and thought experiments such as entanglement, decoherence, double-slit tests, dead or alive cats, uncertainty, non-locality and so on. For example, I heard Abner Shimony speak in 1979 about superposition, and John Bell in 1990 ask what does it mean that some kind of quantum phase exists, from which we then arise from and wonder.

Around 2000, the project began to include an informational content and essence, along with algorithmic communication, cited more in An Information Computation Turn. In 2009 I heard two of its conceivers, Jeffrey Bub and Hans Halvorson, give a survey to date. With the advent of complex network systems science, since the 2010s a growing recognition of their similar presence in this deepest mode went forth. As a result the old quantum-classical divide began to dissolve, which Nobel physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft, philosopher Alisa Bokulich and others engage. A premier, comprehensive entry and accessible text is Beyond Weird (2018) by the British science writer Philip Ball, which was cited as the European Physics Book of the Year. For these reasons, as a fertile ecosmos comes into view, the phrase Quantum Organics is broached going forward.

This we seek to document a historic revision due to humankind, which has been called a “second quantum revolution.” As the citations convey, a common affinity to other scales of nature and society became evident. Emergent Quantum Mechanics (EmQM) conferences have realized that what lies beneath is not another material stage but a strongly implied independent, mathematical, generative source. Since the 2010s a robust recognition of multiplex, neural-like network systems in this deep domain also arose and took off. For one example, an international Network Science conference (NetSci 2014) has a “Quantum Network” symposia. And as our collaborative vista brings many pieces to fit together into place, might one imagine a Quantome?

2020: A second quantum revolution phrase has arisen because it is lately realized that this deepest, contextual realm seems to be actually suffused by the same network, self-organized, complexities as everywhere else. The advance was fostered by a global project to achieve superfast quantum computers, along with finding that neural network methods are applicable. Nonlinear phenomena such as self-organized criticalities and chimera states are also present. Another aspect is a notice of quantum-like effects in biological organisms, cognition and behavior. As a further result, the olden quantum-classical divide is being erased due to better understandings of each domain. An issue remains because the 20th century version of unintelligible opaqueness is still in place. But altogether within a nascent ecosmos genesis, it may be appropriate to propose a new “quantum organics” identity.


Balatsky, Alexander, et al. Dynamic Quantum Matter. Annalen der Physik. 532/2, 2020.
Ball, Philip. Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew about Quantum Physics Is Different. London: Bodley Head, 2018.
Bastidas, Victor, et al. Chimera States in Quantum Mechanics. arXiv:1807.08056.
Berkelbach, Timothy and Michael Thoss. Special Topic on Dynamics of Open Quantum Systems. Journal of Chemical Physics. 152/020401, 2020.
Bharti, Kishor, et al. Machine Learning Meets Quantum Foundations. AVS Quantum Science. 2/3, 2020.
Burghardt, Irene and Andreas Buchleitner. Quantum Complex Systems. Annalen der Physik. 527/9-10, 2016.
Deutsch, Ivan. Harnessing the Power of the Second Quantum Revolution. PRX Quantum. 1/020101, 2020.
Economou, Sophia and Edwin Barnes. Hello Quantum World. A First-year University Course in Quantum Information Science. arXiv:2210.02868.

Heyl, Markus. Dynamical Quantum Phase Transitions. Reports on Progress in Physics. 81/5, 2018.
jaeger, Gregg, et al. Second Quantum Revolution: Foundational Questions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. 375/20160397, 2016.
Lombardi, Olimpia, et al, eds. Quantum Chaos and Complexity. Entropy. July, 2018
Martyn, John, et al. Grand Unification of Quantum Algorithms. PRX Qunatum. 2/040203,, 2021.
Spitz, Damiel, et al. Finding Universal Structures in Quantum Many-Body Dynamics via Persistent Homology. arXiv:2001.02616.
Walleczek, Jan, et al, eds. Special Issue: Emergent Quantum Mechanics – David Bohm Centennial. Entropy. 21/2, 2019.

<2023:

EmQM13 Emergent Quantum Mechanics. www.emqm13.org. A website for the “2nd International Symposium about Quantum Mechanics based on a Deeper Level Theory” held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, in October 2013. Its distinction is that the keynoters, Stephen Adler (IAS Princeton), Gerard ‘t Hooft (Utrecht, Nobel laureate), Masanao Ozawa (Nagoya), and Aephraim Steinberg (Toronto), and 40 presenters, are senior theoretical physicists. While reality seems to disappear into colliders, a multiverse, and nothingness, a worldwide revolution is also going forth. The Proceedings are published in the Journal of Physics: Conference Series as Volume 504. As one may view on that site the annual listings, some 60 meetings for 2013, might we imagine a global science project learning on its own? Surely there must be some grand, significant reason and discovery by this intended human phenomenon of a self-observing and creating genesis universe.

The symposium invites the open exploration of an emergent quantum mechanics, a possible »deeper level theory« that interconnects three fields of knowledge: emergence, the quantum, and information. Could there appear a revised image of physical reality from recognizing new links between emergence, the quantum, and information? Could a novel synthesis pave the way towards a 21st century, »super-classical« physics? The symposium provides a forum for discussing (i) important obstacles which need to be overcome as well as (ii) promising developments and research opportunities on the way towards an emergent quantum mechanics. Contributions are invited that present current advances in both standard as well as unconventional approaches to quantum mechanics.

“Physics on the Boundary between Classical and Quantum Mechanics” Quantum Mechanics and Classical mechanics are usually regarded as mutually exclusive: a system is presumed to be either quantum mechanical or classical but never both. Here, however, we show that theories that are both do exist — there is life on the boundary. These theories allow for dual mappings between a classical picture and a quantum one; they both describe the same time evolution equally well. There are some simple examples, but also quite contrived ones, such as superstring theory. (Gerard ‘t Hooft Abstract)

Frontiers of Quantum and Mesoscopic Thermodynamics FQMT 17. https://fqmt.fzu.cz/17. A biannual conference held in Prague in July with a diverse international attendance so to figure out nature’s deepest formations and dynamic arisings. Some 600 speakers and contributors made presentations such as Anton Zellinger, William Wootters, Verdal Vlatko, Joan Vaccaro, and Christopher Jarzynski. A 336 Abstract Book can be accessed from this home page. Select papers are also online in the European Physical Journal Special Topics, for March 2019, introduced by Valcav Spicka, et al.

Recent advances have led to improvements of measurement, imaging and observation techniques at microscopic, mesoscopic and macroscopic scales. At the same time, we can investigate not only equilibrium features, but also time evolution of classical and quantum systems far from equilibrium at different time scales. The FQMT’17 conference will be thus focused on conceptual and experimental challenges of quantum many body physics, non-equilibrium statistical physics, foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and quantum thermodynamics. Their further development is needed for understandings and use of quantum correlations, entanglement dynamics; decoherence and dissipation; light-matter interactions; behavior of closed and open quantum systems; roles of initial and boundary conditions; influences of environment, reservoirs and external fields on the time evolution of systems; quantum to classical transitions; and more.

Quantum Complexity Science Initiative. Quamplexity.org. The site for Jacob Biamonte’s innovative group which seeks, as the quotes say, to join quantum systems with nonlinear networks, which each and all spring from an informative physical realm. See also Quantum Machine Learning by Biamonte, et al, above.

We are a vibrant and focused research group happily based in the Department of Physics at the University of Malta. We study the fundamental implications physics has on information and computation, typically viewed through the lens of quantum theory. Quantum theory has provided uninterrupted insights both in the fundamental laws governing our world and in the novel mathematics developed in its description.

By correctly studying information as an entity fundamentally governed by the laws of physics, development of an emerging common language is already binding certain ideas and mapping some techniques between the fields of quantum physics and complexity science. What’s more, the ubiquitous use of various network and graph theories inside of both disciplines, creates a stage for an abstracted comparison of networked systems, recovering both fields as special cases of more general mathematical entities. An ultimate goal of our effort is to form a new theory, uniting these disciplines.

Quantum Interaction. www.quantuminteraction.org/conferences/qi2016. As the quote describes, an eclectic meeting to imagine a humantum (just coined) merger of these separate micro sub-atomic, macro classical, and regnant sapiens phases. Typical papers are Quantum Cognition beyond Hilbert Space, and Categorical Compositional Cognition (arXiv:1608.03785). Proceedings are now published with this title as Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science 10106.

The 10th international conference on Quantum Interaction (QI 2016) was held at the Downtown Campus of San Francisco State University (SFSU), 835 Market Street, San Francisco, California, from July 20—22, 2016. Over the years, the Quantum Interaction conferences have provided a debating ground for applications of formal concepts of quantum theory to a variety of areas outside of the natural remit of physics. Quantum Interaction has developed into an emerging interdisciplinary area of science combining research topics in mathematics, physics, psychology, economics, cognitive and computer science. These include: decision making in a variety of social science fields, studies of non-separable concept combinations in natural language, information retrieval and semantic networks in computer science, proposals to test temporal nonlocality in perception and cognition, and the study of non-commutative structures in learning behavior.

Quantum Many-Body Systems Far from Equilibrium. www.physics.sun.ac.za/~kastner/qmb18/index. This is a March 2018 conference at the National Institute for Theoretical Physics in Stellenbosch, South Africa about quench dynamics, thermalization and many-body localization. We also note as an example of how quantum phenomena are now being perceived and treated in similar ways to classical condensed matter.

Recent progress in manipulating cold atoms and ions has brought the study of non-equilibrium behavior of isolated quantum systems into the focus of research. This has given rise to the development of novel theoretical concepts and numerical tools, but also led to a renewed interest in foundational questions. Important recent developments, like quench protocols, thermalisation in isolated quantum systems, as well as absence of thermalisation due to many-body localisation, will be in the focus of this workshop. We aim to bring together researchers from a variety of fields related to this topic, including quantum information, statistical physics, mathematical physics, cold atoms and condensed matter physics.

‘t Hooft, Gerard. The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. arXiv:1405.1548. Along with a prior paper The Fate of the Quantum (arXiv:1308.1007), the Utrecht University, 1999 Nobel laureate physicist continues his project to move beyond a state of entangled theories by this approach that admits a generative program. Albeit with technical density, by this theoretical advance, one may press on to significant resolutions. As noted in Quantum Complex Systems, in these 2010s (much as if humankind’s own version) via better terms and clearer insights, the quantum-classical discord can be removed. Thus “quantum mysteries can be known as classical systems in disguise,” which is quite a claim. As the quotes express, ‘t Hooft avers that an extant reality does and must in fact exist, which proceeds by an interplay of “invariable laws” and their overt stochastic result.

The apt word “beable,” (search) from John Bell, is used in a clever context that such a 21st century vista, after a century of off-putting quantum arcana, can recover the “19th century philosophy” of a mathematical “sequence of integers” as the actual within of things. Although Stephen Wolfram’s cellular automata is noted in the first paper, this CA model holds to a “digital universe or universal computer” doubleness of an algorithmic source and consequent evolutionary complexity. Even with 200 pages of equations, it is an important statement of a greater creative reality and animated emergence of universe to human. For more illumination see 't Hooft's 2016 Springer volume with this title.

When investigating theories at the tiniest conceivable scales in nature, "quantum logic" is taking over from "classical logic" in the minds of almost all researchers today. Dissatisfied, the author investigated how one can look at things differently. This report is an overview of older material, but also contains many new observations and calculations. Quantum mechanics is looked upon as a tool, not as a theory. Examples are displayed of models that are classical in essence, but can be analysed by the use of quantum techniques, and we argue that even the Standard Model, together with gravitational interactions, may be viewed as a quantum mechanical approach to analyse a system that could be classical at its core. We then explain how these apparently heretic thoughts can be reconciled with Bell's theorem and the usual objections voiced against the notion of 'super determinism'. (Abstract)

Our models suggest that Einstein may still have been right, when he objected against the conclusions drawn by Bohr and Heisenberg. It may well be that, at its most basic level, there is no randomness in nature, no fundamentally statistical aspect to the laws of evolution. Everything, up to the most minute detail, is controlled by invariable laws. Every significant event in our universe takes place for a reason, it was caused by the action of physical law, not just by chance. This is the general picture conveyed by this report. (9)

We set up a systematic study of the Cellular Automaton Interpretation of quantum mechanics. We hope to inspire more physicists to do so, to consider seriously the possibility that quantum mechanics as we know it is not a fundamental, mysterious, impenetrable feature of our physical world, but rather an instrument to statistically describe a world where the physical laws, at their most basic roots, are not quantum mechanical at all. Sure, we do not know how to formulate the most basic laws at present, but we are collecting indications that a classical world underlying quantum mechanics does exist. (9)

A cellular automaton is a discrete model studied in computability theory, mathematics, physics, complexity science, theoretical biology and microstructure modeling. (Wikipedia)

Aczel, Amir. Entanglement. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002. In quantum physics "entanglement" occurs when two subatomic particles are somehow connected or "entangled" with one another, so that when something happens to one particle, the same thing simultaneously happens to the other particle, even if it's a great distance away.

Adesso, Gerardo, et al. Foundations of Quantum Mechanics and their Impact of Contemporary Society. Philosophical of the Royal Society A. Vol.376/Iss.2123, 2018. An introduction to proceedings of a Scientific Discussion Meeting held December 2017 at the Royal Society London. An array of papers include From Quantum Foundations to Applications by Nicolas Gisin and Florian Frowis, Quantum Theory of the Classical by Wojciech Zurek, and Causality Re-established by Giacomo D’Ariano. Speakers such Bill Unruh, Joan Vaccaro, Carlo Rovelli, Sandu Popescu, and Stephanie Wehner further survey and press these frontiers.

Revolutionary quantum phenomena like superposition, wave-particle duality, uncertainty principle, entanglement and non-locality are today well-established, albeit continuing debates remain about the profound understanding of their manifestation. Further, these concepts have been enabling a quantum technological revolution. This meeting aims at gathering the most relevant recent advances on the foundations of quantum mechanics, highlighting their multidisciplinary impact on contemporary society. (Meeting Abstract)

Adler, Stephen. Quantum Theory as an Emergent Phenomenon. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Difficulties and qualms persist in this field to the extent that a basic rethinking is in order. In this regard, Adler, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, looks generally to the statistical mechanics of matrix models, among other theoretical aspects, to propose a “deeper level of dynamics” which display scale invariant and holographic properties.

Aerts, Diederik and Sandro Sozzo. What is Quantum? Unifying Its Micro-Physical and Structural Appearance. arXiv:1405.7572. We cite this posting by Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies, theorists as an example of the 2010s worldwide expansion of this primal realm. Two aspects may be noted – a reinterpretation of micro quantum phenomena away from arcane terms and strangeness to admit complex systems, and their effect in macro, classical scales from proteins and cells to psychology and economies. Consider also these arXiv papers: Quantum Structure in Economics (1301.0751) and Quantum Structure in Cognition (1104.1322) by the authors, Quantum Structure in Competing Lizard Communities by Aerts, et al (search, 1212.0109), and On the Foundations of the Theory of Evolution (search Aerts, 1212.0107). Continue on with Liane Gabora, Jerome Busemeyer, others as you find them. In our 2014 midst, the daunting quantum divide is being breached to achieve a true natural wholeness of universe and human.

We can recognize two modes in which 'quantum appears' in macro domains: (i) a 'micro-physical appearance', where quantum laws are assumed to be universal and they are transferred from the micro to the macro level if suitable 'quantum coherence' conditions (e.g., very low temperatures) are realized, (ii) a 'structural appearance', where no hypothesis is made on the validity of quantum laws at a micro level, while genuine quantum aspects are detected at a structural-modeling level. In this paper, we inquire into the connections between the two appearances. We put forward the explanatory hypothesis that, 'the appearance of quantum in both cases' is due to 'the existence of a specific form of organisation, which has the capacity to cope with random perturbations that would destroy this organisation when not coped with'. We analyse how 'organisation of matter', 'organisation of life', and 'organisation of culture', play this role each in their specific domain of application, point out the importance of evolution in this respect, and put forward how our analysis sheds new light on 'what quantum is'. (Abstract)

Aguirre, Anthony, et al, eds. Questioning the Foundations of Physics. Berlin: Springer, 2015. A collection of award-winning essays in the Foundational Questions Institute 2012 contest with this title. Max Tegmark is its director. The first prize went to Robert Spekkens (Perimeter Institute) for The Paradigm of Kinematics and Dynamics Must Yield to Causal Structure, and second prizes to George Ellis for Recognizing Top-Down Causation and Patterns in the Fabric of Nature by Steven Weinstein. Julian Barbour, Giacomo D’Ariano, and Giomanni Amelino-Camelia are among the other authors. The content ranges from older physical concepts, which need review, to notices of an informational essence. The closing chapter Is Life Fundamental? by Sara Imari Walker goes on to join this vital quality with J. A. Wheeler’s theories. As a follow up, see It From Bit or Bit From It?: On Physics and Information, a collection of 2013 essay winners (search Aguirre).

Aharonov, Yakir, et al. Completely Top-down Hierarchical Structure in Quantum Mechanics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115/11730, 2018. In a paper reviewed by Paul Davies and Leonard Susskind, with a commentary note Top-down Causation and Quantum Physics by George Ellis, physicists YA and Jeff Tollaksen, Chapman University, CA and Eliahu Cohen, University of Ottawa are seen to achieve a strongest proof to date of the presence of later retro-influences upon natural phenomena. Earlier referenced versions are Top-down Causation: An Integrating Theme within and across the Sciences? by G. Ellis, et al in Interface Focus (2/1, 2012) and Quantifying Causal Emergence Shows that Macro can Beat Micro by Erik Hoel, et al in PNAS (11019790, 2013). In some real way this universe to humankind emergence does stratify, shift and pass on to an increasing degree of aware self-creation.

Can a large system be fully characterized using its subsystems via inductive reasoning? Is it possible to completely reduce the behavior of a complex system to the behavior of its simplest “atoms”? In this paper we answer these questions in the negative for a specific class of systems and measurements. After a general introduction of the topic, we present the main idea with a simple two-particle example, which leads to surprising effects within atomic and electromagnetic systems. We conclude that under certain boundary conditions, higher-order correlations within quantum mechanical systems can determine lower-order ones, but not vice versa. This supports a top–down structure in many-body quantum mechanics. (Abstract excerpt)

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