Life--warm, wet and noisy?: Comment on "Consciousness in the universe: a review of the 'Orch OR' theory" by Hameroff and Penrose.

One of the most far-reaching questions in the science of living systems is that of the nature of consciousness. Whilethe field of biology has made enormous progress through the application of Newtonian physical principles, significantunanswered questions abound in many facets of biological function, ranging from the inception of life all the way tofree will, and potentially further into the metaphysical realm of human capabilities. It is not clear that we presentlyhave the right tools and foundation to address such ethereal concepts. The mystery of life is readily highlighted, inmany cases, when one attempts to apply known physical laws, established for non-living matter, to biological systems.

[1]  Alan E Mark,et al.  Penrose-Hameroff orchestrated objective-reduction proposal for human consciousness is not biologically feasible. , 2009, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[2]  Luís A. Nunes Amaral,et al.  From 1/f noise to multifractal cascades in heartbeat dynamics. , 2001, Chaos.

[3]  L. Turin,et al.  A spectroscopic mechanism for primary olfactory reception. , 1996, Chemical senses.

[4]  J. Klinman,et al.  Tunneling and dynamics in enzymatic hydride transfer. , 2006, Chemical reviews.

[5]  Harry B Gray,et al.  Electron tunneling through proteins , 2003, Quarterly Reviews of Biophysics.

[6]  H. Pollack.  Action of Picric Acid on Living Protoplasm. , 1927 .

[7]  T. Mančal,et al.  Evidence for wavelike energy transfer through quantum coherence in photosynthetic systems , 2007, Nature.

[8]  C. Robertson McClung,et al.  Plant Circadian Rhythms , 2006, The Plant Cell Online.

[9]  R. Mantegna,et al.  Statistical mechanics in biology: how ubiquitous are long-range correlations? , 1994, Physica A.

[10]  P. Hore,et al.  Chemical magnetoreception in birds: The radical pair mechanism , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[11]  Gregory D. Scholes,et al.  Coherently wired light-harvesting in photosynthetic marine algae at ambient temperature , 2010, Nature.

[12]  A M Stoneham,et al.  Could humans recognize odor by phonon assisted tunneling? , 2007, Physical review letters.

[13]  Jeffrey M. Hausdorff,et al.  Fractal dynamics in physiology: Alterations with disease and aging , 2002, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[14]  Philip Ball,et al.  Physics of life: The dawn of quantum biology , 2011, Nature.

[15]  L. Glass.  Synchronization and rhythmic processes in physiology , 2001, Nature.