Scientific Committee for Geonomy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
(36 1) 3922222/3387, lukacs@rmki.kfki.hu
Secretary: Katalin Barlai, Konkoly Observatory, H-1525 Bp. 114 Pf. 67
(36 1) 3919338, barlai@konkoly.hu
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Consciousness and Its Evolution
Symposium on May 27, 2005, Budapest
Extended Abstract
FROM FREE-SWIMMING EUBACTERIA TO FREE WILL VIA SERIAL ENDOSYMBIOSIS?
B. Lukács
A putative synthesis of Quantum Gravity, Margulis’ SET and Cavalier-Smith’s large scale taxonomy
Penrose & Hameroff recently suggest that breakdown of superposition (Objective Reduction) is behind Conscience. If so, it is a Quantum Gravity effect. Let us see the picture from our own bird’s eye viewpoint.
1) Buridan’s Donkey
It seems that tubulin & microtubules play central role in the processes behind Conscience. But they are central in elementary motion processes as well. The double role may quite well not be accidental, as the age-old Gedankenexperiment of Buridan’s Donkey demonstrates.
Under many circumstances no real decision is needed, and the living organism can operate as an automaton. However in well-balanced situations some real decisions are needed, whose explanation has problems in the context of Determinism. Quantum Mechanics, being also deterministic until Measurement, does not help. If the original situation offers a best choice, it can be reached without decision, via e.g. Tropism. But between two equally good possibilities the deterministic system cannot choose.
But Quantum Gravity must be stochastic, even without Measurement (of either an external Mind or an external macroscopic apparatus). See Lukács, in the Abstracts.
2) Passive vs. Active
Compare a big nonactive microorganism to a smaller swimming one. The big passive one may take the currents of the fluid, can detect food coming near and can swallow them. But for the active swimmer it is a matter of life or death not to be trapped as Buridan’s Donkey. Motility & Decision.
3) Objective Reduction
In (Newtonian) Quantum Gravity (see the other Lukács Abstract) Superposition breaks down if the size of the part of the system with coherent wave function Ψ approaches
M3R = h2/G
In terrestrial environs this is cca. 10 billion dalton. So eukaryotes can decide. However for an average prokaryote this is very doubtful. How did this ability evolve?
4) The Dual Origin of Eukaryotes according to Cavalier-Smith
According to Cavalier-Smith (and some others) many organelles of the eukaryotes originated from Gram-negative bacteria, while the “body” (the original host) was an extreme heat tolerant Thermotoga-like organism, kin to Gram-positives. The host was not too aggressive, so it swallowed but did not digest the purple bacterium, the ancestor of mitochondrion, the blue-green alga, ancestor of chloroplast, &c.
5) The Serial Endosymbiosis Theory of Lynn Margulis (earlier Sagan)
The endosymbiont origin of mitochondria & chloroplasts were originally suggested to Lynn Margulis/Lynn Sagan. However she suggested a more earlier endosymbiosis as well. In it a big, passive, maybe heat-tolerant and Gram-positive host incorporated several free-swimming Gram-negative bacteria, similar to Spirochetae, or rather Hollandina, “the tubule-maker”. First the symbiosis was transient, the swimmers acted as transient propellers of the “amoeboid”, and they shared the prey. Later Spirochetae became the undulipodia (evolving into flagellae and/or cilia). The nucleus is a product of long evolution, whose more primitive stage is the karyomastigont. Among recent microorganisms parallels are the consortium “Thiodendron”, or Mixotricha paradoxa (in the hindguts of termites).
6. Does a Picture Emerge?
Postulate two prokaryotes, a big, passive Gram-positive “amoeboid” and a small, active, Gram-negative swimmer. The first may acquire several of the second for mutual advantage, and this happened certainly many times in the past. However if the swimmers contained tubulin, or its precursor, as now Spirochaeta and Hollandina do, then Objective Reduction may have happened efficiently. (This sentence substitutes the partially unknown details.) But when the big one swallowed the 11th (approx.) swimmer, and they took accidentally a good geometry inside, the host exclaimed:
Look, cogito, ergo sum!
Smooth decisions then led to higher survival.
Literature, formulae, details, evolutionary trees &c. will come in the lecture.
My HomePage, with some other studies, if you are curious.