"A scientific world-view which does not profoundly come to terms with the problem of conscious minds can have no serious pretensions of completeness. Consciousness is part of our universe, so any physical theory which makes no proper place for it falls fundamentally short of providing a genuine description of the world."
                                                                                       Sir Roger Penrose, Shadows of the Mind

 

Where is physics headed in this century? For many scientists this type of question will most likely evoke answers revolving around quantum relativity, the birth and likely evolution of the universe, the physics of black holes or the nature of dark matter. The significance and lasting fascination of these issues are incontestable - however, for a growing  minority of physicists an even greater question looms on the horizon: the enduring problem of consciousness. 

The information revolution of the past few decades has impacted our lives in deeper ways than are immediately evident:  from fundamental physics to quantum computation to biophysics and medical research, there is a rising awareness that information is profoundly and subtly encoded in every fiber of the material universe, that the control mechanisms we are used to studying on purely mechanical bases are no longer adequate. In many labs around the world, scientists are quietly probing this mind-matter interface and sketching the first lines of a new world-view.

We asked two such scientists to share their vision of  what this  paradigm shift means for theoretical physics and the type of experimental work that is likely to yield the most significant breakthroughs. Matti Pitkanen earned his PhD in mathematics in1983 and taught in the Physics Department at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Over the past 24 years he has developed, written several books and  numerous articles, and been invited to speak at many international conferences on Topological Geometrodynamics - a new mathematical and cosmological theory with deep implications for particle physics, biological control mechanisms and neurophysiological models of consciousness. Alex Kaivarainen obtained his PhD in biophysics at the USSR Academy of Science in 1974, followed by  a Doctorate of Science in Physics and Mathematics (1989). He has authored five books and more than 100 scientific papers, several innovations including a comprehensive optoacoustic analyzer of condensed matter,  and has developed a Unified Model of Bivacuum, Elementary Particles and Fields - which introduces the notion of Bivacuum as a dynamic matrix of the Universe with superfluid and nonlocal properties. In 2000, he received a Best Paper Award for his presentation at the CASYS International Conference in Liege, Belgium.  He is currently with the University of Turku, Finland. 

 

For Pitkanen interview see www.emergentmind.org/PDF_files.htm/pitkanen.pdf
For Kaivarainen interview see www.emergentmind.org/PDF_files.htm/Kaivarainen.pdf

 

References:

* 1.  Germine, Mark   Scientific Validation of Planetary Consciousness. JNLRMI I (3). 
URL: www.emergentmind.org/germineI3.htm

2.   Germine, M.  Experimental Evidence for Collapse of the Wavefunction in  the Whole Human Brain. 
URL www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc

**  1.  P.P.Gariaev, G.G.Tertishny, A.M. Iarochenko, V.V.Maximenko, E.A.Leonova The spectroscopy of biophotons in non-local genetic regulation 

2.     Peter P. Gariaev, George G. Tertishny, Katherine A. Leonova  The Wave, Probabilistic and Linguistic Representation of Cancer and HIV  URL:  www.emergentmind.org/gariaevI2.htm

3.    P.P. Gariaev, U. Kaempf, P. J. Marcer, G.G. Tertishny, B. Birshtein, A. Iarochenko, K.A. Leonova   The DNA-Wave Biocomputer     URL: http://www.bcs.org.uk/siggroup/cyber/dna.htm