Consciousness Redux

John S. Torday
Professor of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology
Evolutionary Medicine
University of California- Los Angeles
Email: jtorday@ucla.edu  

Presented on Zoom.  You must be a SSE member to register for this free event.

To register, login and then click the registration link.

More information about MAVERICK talks.

Synopsis:

The consensus is that we are conscious of something greater than ourselves, as if we are derived from some tandem set of primordial principles. Classical or Newtonian physics is based on the Laws of Nature. Conversely, in a recent series of articles, it has been hypothesized that the cell was formed from lipid molecules submerged in the primordial ocean that covered the earth 100 million years after it formed. Since lipids are amphiphiles, with both a positively- and negatively-charged pole, the negatively-charged pole is miscible in water; under the influence of earth's gravity, the lipid molecules stand up perpendicularly to the surface of the water, packing together until their negative charge neutralizes the Van der Waals force for surface tension, causing the lipid molecules to 'leap' into the micellar form as a sphere with a semi-permeable membrane. Particles in the water freely enter and exit such spheres based on mass action. Over time such protocells evolved Symbiogenesis, encountering factors that posed existential threats, assimilating them to form physiology to maintain homeostatic control, bearing in mind that mathematics is concomitantly assimilated from the Cosmos. Empirically, when differentiated lung or bone cells are exposed to microgravity, they lose their phenotypic identity in their evolved state (Torday, 2003), which has been interpreted as transiting from local to non-local consciousness, consciousness emerging from physiology, referring in retrograde to the environment based on the commonly-held mathematics of physiology and cosmology. Ultimately, consciousness has evolved from the elements formed by stars as Stellar Nucleosynthesis (Hoyle, 1946).

Biography:

John S. Torday received his MSc (1971) and PhD (1976) from McGill University. He has been on the faculties of Harvard Medical School (1976-91); University of Maryland Medical School (1991-98), and UCLA (1998-present). He is Director of the Guenther Research Laboratory, Lundquist Institute. He has authored >250 peer-reviewed articles and 16 monographs on the cellular origin of consciousness to date. He has given lectures concerning the necessity for gravity in evolution in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France and Germany. His ground-breaking article on ‘quantum entanglement’ and consciousness launched a special issue of Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology in 2024.