Quantum zeno effect (Introduction)

by dhw, Tuesday, August 27, 2013, 20:44 (3894 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: You might be interested in Lynn Margulis view that all living things are conscious to a degree, even without a brain:-http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=154324-Two significant quotes:-Of course, "bacterial awareness is more limited than that of a human mind," she says. "I don't want to seem simpleminded." Nonetheless, Margulis thinks all organisms, especially microscopic ones, deserve billing on the marquee of consciousness. "I've watched conscious bacteria for hours," she enthused recently, "seeing things about which everyone would scream if they saw them. Unbelievable diversity! A microscopic theater with thousands of beings all interacting, dying, killing, feeding, excreting, and sexually provoking each other--all activities most people think are so specifically human." Gazing at that scene, she says, "The idea that only people are conscious makes me laugh."
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...16/ai_14372875-http://www.annalsnyas.org/cgi/content/abstract/929/1/55-I am indeed interested. Thank you. The above quotes speak for themselves. My own thinking has been greatly influenced by Margulis' emphasis on cooperation as a key to evolution, and if I remember rightly, it was she who called for investigation into the degree to which cells are conscious. (Even if it wasn't her, she clearly did her own investigating.) Once we accept the idea of intelligent cells combining into increasingly complex forms, all the mysteries of evolution disappear, and the only remaining puzzle is how it all started. Lynn Margulis was, of course, an agnostic.