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DNA Decipher Journal | November 2018 | Volume 8 | Issue 3 | pp 166-180 
Smith, S. P.,  Time, Life & the Emotive Source 

 
ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 

Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

166 

Article 

Time, Life & the Emotive Source 
 

Stephen P. Smith*  
 

Abstract 

A Panpsychism, or neo-vitalism, is presented having to do with the penetration of time in living 
organism. Time is described having bifurcated or polarized into two windows: one that looks 
forward in time and follows a chain of determinism, and one that looks backward in time to 
frequencies and past habits. The emotive source is described as a singularity, the timeless 
middle-term holding the two windows together. This view is related to the laws of physics, the 
second law of thermodynamics, genetics and epigenetic switches. Warm-body quantum 
mechanics is implicated broadly, and in particular with the creation of adaptive mutations that 
are coxed by epigenetic cues. 
 

Keywords: Time, life, emotive force, panpsychism, neo-vitalism, living organism, determinism, 
bifurcation, thermodynamics, genetics, epigenetics, quantum mechanics, creation. 
 

 

1. Introduction 
 
The visionary and counter-culture proponent1, Terence McKenna (1946-2000), defined life as 
something that time got into.2 Saw the legs off a chair, and throw the pieces on the ground, and 
nothing will happen, he noted. Come back the next day, and the pieces are still there where you 
left them, unchanged. Do that with something living, he noted, and it will bleed and die as time 
unfolds. Cutting body parts off of something living, he concluded, is to interrupt time and its 
connection to life. 
 
In this paper, McKenna’s hypophysis is taken serious, but without any intended cruelty of 
animals. Surprisingly so, his view is found very compelling, that time has gotten into life. The 
view sees time bifurcated in life into two windows. From life emerged mind and the view see 
time bifurcated in our psychology. The two-sided time implies a timeless middle-term, hinting of 
a panpsychism or the emotive source. 
 
The philosophical proposal of panpsychism, as well as scientific accounts of consciousness 
based on quantum mechanics, are becoming more acceptable today as serious endeavors. To 
these we can add the emerging field of quantum biology. Regarding biology, its reasonable to 
assume that panpsychism becomes a neo-vitalism if there is any truth to panpsychism. To 
proceed, this paper reissues the second law of thermodynamics in Section 2 in terms that are 
friendly to neo-vitalism, without diminishing the law-like drive that increases entropy with time 

                                                
Correspondence: Stephen P. Smith, Ph.D., Independent Researcher.  E-mail: hucklebird@aol.com  Note: This article was first 

published in Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research 9(8): pp. 707-721 (2018).  
 

1 This paper makes no endorsement of McKenna’s advocacy of psychedelics.  
2 By comparison, Immanuel Kant viewed time as an internal intuition.  



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2018 | Volume 8 | Issue 3 | pp 166-180 
Smith, S. P.,  Time, Life & the Emotive Source 

 
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passage. Genetics is described in Section 3, but in summary form. An account of time-impacted 
life based only on genetics, while missing epigenetics, is stilted at best. Therefore, Section 4 
describes epigenetics, but in summary form. To relate neo-vitalism to what known about physics, 
including the 2nd law, it is necessary to reissue all these laws in Section 5. An account of how 
time possibly leaves its mark on epigenetic switching is presented in Section 6, including a 
universal grammar that engages proto-emotion and hinting of a necessary warm-body quantum 
mechanics. This leads to the possibility of some testable science, and a discussion of such 
possibilities are presented in Section 7.  
 
 

2. Second Law of Thermodynamics 
 
The second law of thermodynamics describes the fall of energy from an ordered state (low 
entropy) to a disordered state (high entropy), in a universe where energy is otherwise conserved. 
The 2nd law is irreversible, in that energy has never been observed to flow in the opposite 
direction, from a disordered state to an ordered state that’s more that just a minor occurrence. A 
good example is a ball that is perfectly balanced on top of a hill (Figure 1). The balanced state 
represents a perfect symmetry, where the path to be taken in the down-hill role is still not 
determined. This symmetry represents an impartiality in the future possibilities, but its highly 
unstable. The slightest wind will tip the balance and break the symmetry, causing the ball to start 
rolling in some particular direction. Initially, the ball has high potential energy representing the 
a-prior order. As the ball starts rolling, the potential energy deceases and is transformed into 
some waste heat and kinetic energy when the ball accelerates. Eventually that ball will come to 
rest in one of four valleys, and at that point all of the incremental change in potential energy is 
transformed into waste heat. The one-way flow has never been observed to go in reverse, where 
the ball absorbs waste heat from the surroundings and rolls up hill, and then finds itself perfectly 
balance at the apex of the hill. 
 

 
Figure 1. Energy landscaped showing black ball balanced on top of a hill, ever-ready to be 
tipped and to roll into one of four possible gullies before coming to rest in one of the respective 
valleys. 

 
Statistical mechanics can represent the 2nd law as the behavior of free bodies inside a closed 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2018 | Volume 8 | Issue 3 | pp 166-180 
Smith, S. P.,  Time, Life & the Emotive Source 

 
ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 

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168 

ensemble.3 The free bodies can float around unrestricted, in random directions, bouncing off 
each other like Newtonian billiard balls. The migrations are restricted by transitions that are 
determined by probability. If all the free bodies are located in one corner of the ensemble 
initially, neatly stacked side by side, then that would represent a highly ordered state. With time 
passage the ordered state would decay and fall into a disordered state where the free bodies are 
smeared out in any such direction, almost uniformly over the space of the ensemble but deeply 
haphazardly. The 2nd law dictates that energy transitions from low entropy to high entropy, and 
never in reverse, and if you believe statistical mechanics this one-way flow is a matter of 
probability. 
 
When the probabilistic version of the 2nd law is interpreted as a universal law, however, what is 
discovered are deep contradictions having to do with the low entropy of the initial conditions 
(Price 1996, Chapter 2). This made Boltzmann and others rethink the probabilistic law as a 
universal. If thermodynamic equilibrium is the normal state of affairs when the universe began 
Boltzmann figured, then statistical mechanic paradoxically predicts that entropy was much 
higher at some time in the distant past than today and coming with high probability, a direct 
contradiction of the 2nd law (Price, page 30). Or we can assume that the initial conditions, now 
given as the birth of the universe, came with low entropy (Albert 2000, Chapter 4). Where did 
that initial high order come from?  
 
Smith (2008) described the 2nd law as two-sided, and holding the fatal equivocation of the 
meaning of “representation” given by statistical mechanics and the meaning of “recognition” 
given by a space that dissipates waste heat. William James Sidis (1925) made similar 
observations, and predicted a new principle that works in reverse of the 2nd law and existed in 
some pockets of the universe, and related this new principle to life and life’s teleology4.  
 
Given that Kauffman (2008) describes a “ceaseless creativity” emerging at the criticality 
separating order and disorder, the 2nd law described by statistical mechanics can only be a one-
sided interface showing the fall into disorder. The other side of the demarcation is where disorder 
is found uniting into order again, forming larger wholes, but agreeing with Sidis (1925) this must 
necessary happen in reverse-time to maintain consistency with both sides. Moreover, Sidis found 
the 2nd law to be a psychological law that’s necessary to keep track of apparent forward 
causation. David Hume believed that our understanding of causation came to us by regularities 
discovered with past experiences rather than by reason.5 Time is found polarizing into two 
psychological windows, then. One side looks forward deductively and recognizes deterministic 
chains as Sidis found, but the other side looks backward to find itself in inductive habits, 
generalities and past frequencies as Hume believed. The two windows of time are necessarily 
unified by a middle-term that’s undeclared by law, a middle-term that’s necessarily timeless6 and 

                                                
3 This formulation is due to Ludwig Boltzmann, coming from his address to a meeting of the Imperial 

Academy of Science, 1886. 
4 In a similar vein, Price (1996) also considers causal asymmetries implied by the 2nd law and postulated 

a possible backward causation or advanced action that involves quantum mechanics. 
5 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 
6 In the sense that photos are timeless (Russell 2003). Photons act as messenger particles that 

communicate the electromagnetic force, and are also massless and spaceless. Gluons and postulated 
gravitons are also massless and also act as messenger particles for the strong force and gravity, 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2018 | Volume 8 | Issue 3 | pp 166-180 
Smith, S. P.,  Time, Life & the Emotive Source 

 
ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 

Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

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169 

represents a deep singularity. The middle-term is also implicated as the emotive source7; i.e., if 
Alfred North Whitehead is correct in his belief that causality can be directly prehended by 
experiential occasions, however vague a feeling but an emotion laden feeling nevertheless.8 
 
The 2nd law describes the behavior of mindless free-bodies that risk the heat death, and Sidis’s 
psychological law translates into the emotional warning: remain mindful or bad things will 
happen. It’s the kind of advice that a father will give to his son to stay on the straight and narrow 
path. It’s the watchful eye of the shepherd that looks after the flock and plans ahead. Hume’s 
version of the same law, but on the receiving side, is more feminine: we are all in this together; 
and harmony is preferable to strife. 

 
 
3. Genetics and the Fitness Landscape 
 
Wright (1932) was the first to describe the fitness landscape for a population where its average 
fitness is given by a position on a topology that’s dependent on gene frequency. Natural selection 
and genetic drift can both influence gene frequency changes that can occur in a population over 
time, from one point on the topology to the next, presumably climbing higher on the landscape. 
Figure 2 provides an illustration of a simple fitness landscape that applies on the population 
level, but there are other varieties of fitness landscapes that have been studied (e.g., Kauffman 
1993).  
 

 
 

Figure 2. Hypothetical fitness landscape given by the height dimension and overlaying a two-
dimensional surface that depicts gene frequency at two independent loci. 

 
Independent of how variation offers itself to natural selection, the fitness landscape drives 
evolution. It represents a genetic determinism that points to a possible future state of a population 
that is more adapted. However, the fitness landscape is just one possible driver of evolution 
                                                                                                                                                       

respectively. 
7 Rather than describing this as a panpsychism, or a panexperientalism, preference is given to proto-

emotionality as the fundamental because this is arguable less anthropomorphic and yet it carries the 
essential meaning that preferred directions are sought non-passively.  

8 Process and Reality, Chapter VII. 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2018 | Volume 8 | Issue 3 | pp 166-180 
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among genetic drift, genetic recombination, mutation and the survival instinct that’s innate in 
life. It’s a gross oversimplification to imply these processes are blind and indifferent, particularly 
if evolution is to now be connected to the mysterious 2nd law of thermodynamics (e.g., Wicken 
1987; Brooks and Wiley 1988; Chaisson 2001), particularly if life’s adaptability is found relating 
to quantum mechanics and the collapse of the quantum wave function (Goswami 2008; 
McFadden 2000), and particular if mutations are found not random but life-directed and even 
adaptive (Cairns,  Overbaugh and Miller 1988; Martincorena and Luscombe 2013). Mutations 
that are accidental, or haphazard, tend to be detrimental to such an extent that natural selection is 
unable to remove them in numbers that can improve the adaptation of living organisms (Stanford 
2008, Chapter 4). It is necessary for cells to utilize error correcting capabilities when mutations, 
or copying errors, occur in DNA (Radman and Wagner 1988).   
 
The fitness landscape joints the energy landscape (Figure 1) in that both imply a direction in 
time. Genes found in the zygote somehow predict heritable traits that may be selected in the 
adult by natural selection. In that evolution of novelty can emerge unexpectedly from Darwinian 
pre-adaptions (Kauffman 2008), the fitness landscape must be able to coax the novelty into 
existence as if the landscape carried a remarkable foresight. Nevertheless, the fitness landscape is 
a tool of the one-sided rational mind that sees a chain of causation in a world well described by 
Newtonian billiard balls that bounce off of each other.   
 
 
 

4. Epigenetics and the Waddington Landscape 
 
Epigenetics controls developmental biology by way of switches that are actually put on the 
DNA. The switches turn genes off with methylation (Siegfreid and Cedar 1997), or they slow or 
accelerate the gene with a connection using histones by acetalyzation (Eberharter and Becker 
2002). In other words, the epigenetic switches act as frequency modulators on the DNA by 
determining the frequency profile of protein production.  
 
The genetic material, or DNA, was never well described as a blue print or program. Epigenetics 
reveals that genetic determinism is better described by the metaphor provided by a Fourier 
analysis of a time series that depicts gene function as an action in time, where the time series is 
described as a linear combination of a set of basis vectors (now the original DNA backbone), and 
where the linear coefficients are spectral frequencies attached to each gene by epigenetics. 
 
After fertilization the zygote divides and becomes a blastocyst, differentiated only into an inner 
cell mass (ICM) and the outer trophectoderm. The ICM and the trophectoderm will differentiate 
further into the embryo and placenta, respectively. When ICM cells go through differentiation 
they specialize into tissue types, liver, brain, blood, hair, etc. While each cell in the body has the 
same DNA, they have a different combination of epigenetic switches. In the process of cell 
division, these switches are passed on to the daughter cells, i.e., the switches are more the less 
permanent. However, the daughter cells can have new switches added if the daughter cells 
differentiate further from the parent, in a process that is not reversible9; i.e., the new epigenetic 

                                                
9 There are notable exceptions. When animals are cloned, or when stem cells are generated experimental 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2018 | Volume 8 | Issue 3 | pp 166-180 
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ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 

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switches are added during some of the steps of embryonic development where changes among 
cell types occur. The differentiation of cells during early development, starting with the zygote, 
resembles the irreversible fall into disorder having to do with the 2nd law of thermodynamics 
(Figure 1), a pattern of future possibilities provided by the Waddington landscape depicted in 
Figure 3. This characterization of irreversible differentiation as a ball rolling down an epigenetic 
landscape is due to Waddington (1957). Ferrell (2012) relates the dynamics carried by the 
Waddington landscape with an attractor, an observation that is not lost in Section 6. 
 

 
 

Figure 3. One cell (dark dot) from a blastocyst set to roll down the Waddington landscape and 
undergo irreversible differentiation following one of three paths that are provided by the two 
forks shown here. When the cell undergoes division it then assumes the identity of one of the 
daughter cells artificially, thus permitting a logical passage down the entire landscape. 

 
Cells in the blastocyst are possibly in some still unexplored quantum entangled state, particularly 
if differentiation is recognized as partially a collective process but admitting to possible degrees 
of entanglement. This implies that daughter cells remain quantum entangled after cell division. 
With this interpretation, the blastocyst represents a quantum supper-position of possible 
realizations, differentiation being the collapse of respective wave functions when epigenetic 
switches are added to DNA (e.g., Asano et al., 2017). Jorgensen (2011) also implies that 
epigenetics involves quantum mechanics, even suggesting a backward in time flow of 
information from the environment.  

 
Epigenetics is more complicated than presented in this summary, and a broad overview of the 
emerging subject is presented by Carey (2012) that also includes a description of the following 
side notes:  
 

1. Some epigenetic switches can also be passed through sexual reproduction (e.g., 
Migicovsky and Kovalchuk 2013). A parent can acquire an epigenetic change that makes 
its way to the germ line, then past that change to a child that inherits the same 
characteristics in a Lamarckian sense.  

2. Sperm and egg cells can also be imprinted differentially by epigenetic switches, in a way 

                                                                                                                                                       
from non-stem cells, the epigenetic switches are removed somewhat where experimental methods are 
discovered how to reverse epigenetic changes. 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2018 | Volume 8 | Issue 3 | pp 166-180 
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ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 

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that’s essential for development.  
3. There is epigenetic regulation having to due with the deactivation of one X-chromosome, 

a necessary regulation for females that carry two X chromosomes. 
4. The non-protein coding DNA, which is 98% of the DNA, transcribes into RNA that acts 

in epigenetic switching. These processes are not well understood. 
 
 
5. Two-sided Laws and Quantum Mechanics 
 
Einstein’s special and general relativity are symmetric in time. The action principles of unified 
field theory look identical under CPT inversion10, which includes time. In summary, all of the 
laws of physics are found symmetric in time as Sidis (1925) noted, apart from the asymmetrical 
2nd law that is arguably two-sided. That is, the laws that come as action principles look the same 
in reverse time as they do in forward time, and they even hint of a possible teleology (Helrich 
2007). Teleology can be recovered from the two-sided 2nd law as hypothesized in Section 2. 
 
Something must also be said about symmetry breaking, because laws that look the same in both 
time directions, that look the same in their own specified symmetry so polarized to provide two 
views, say very little about how the laws themselves came into being by a process of symmetry 
breaking. In the grand unification epoch, the universe is thought to have expanded and cooled 
from a big bang (Chaisson 2001, pp 242-247). During this expansion, the four forces of nature 
emerged in the order gravity, the strong force, weak force, electromagnetism. This process 
involved spontaneous symmetric breaking, leaving the laws behind but coming with selected 
constants that modulate and calibrate the action of the laws. In the wake of these breaks we find: 
the speed of light, the cosmological constant for a flat universe, the relative strengths of the four 
forces of nature, the masses and coupling constants, Planck’s constant. These are the affinities 
that nature selected. Most of these are thought fine-tuned for life (Barrow and Tipler 1986). The 
question comes, were these selections the result of random occurrences when symmetries broke, 
or were they innate preferences selected by the ground of being? The Weak Anthropic Principle 
tries to enforce the belief that it is all accidental, because we would not be here to ask questions 
if the selections were different, we are just very lucky.  
 
The symmetrical laws themselves look to be taking part of a greater symmetry breaking once a 
boarder view is taken on how they act. The broader view changes with law-restrained action, but 
something remains that’s unchanged called the law. First understand, that from the point of view 
of agency that carries information, symmetry is when everything looks the same from all points 
of view. After symmetry breaks things stop looking the same as natures arrives at an affinity or 
preference, and this implies there needs to be some kind of polarity before symmetry breaking 
that holds the two sides together in an indistinguishable state. Symmetry breaking leads to a state 
of natural discernment, where one side becomes visible while the other disappears. In this view, 
that part of reality that became invisible does not mean necessarily that the unselected part of 
reality stops existing. Because the middle-term is beyond law and cannot be excluded from 
reason, it only means that the unselected part of reality becomes part of a shadow. For example, 

                                                
10 CPT is an acronym for Charge, Parity and Time. CPT inversion changes a particle into its anti-particle, 

changes an image into its mirror reflection, and changes forward time into reverse time. 



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the existence of dark energy and dark matter may be the left-over shadow that followed in the 
wake of symmetry breaking occurring in the early universe.    
 
The broader view of symmetry breaking may very well be synonymous with the collapse of the 
quantum wave function, in these cases the collapse of the universe's own wave function by the 
action of gravity. This view is a restatement of John Wheeler’s (1990) particpatory universe, 
where the constants of physics were selected by the ground of being because something was 
preferred to nothing; i.e., preferred by proto-emotion that connects time over a very wide 
duration. The collapse of the quantum wave function, more localized in brain tissues and 
involving microtubules in cells, has already been implicated as something fundamental to 
consciousness (Hameroff and Penrose 2014). Strapp (2007) also implicates the quantum wave 
function and its collapse to the phenomenon of consciousness, but Strapp points to the quantum 
Zeno effect within synapses rather than microtubules, and Strapp further relates his theory to 
Whitehead’s process philosophy. Perhaps unsurprisingly now, the collapse of the quantum wave 
function may be the real driver behind irreversibility and the 2nd law (Albert 2000, Chapter 7), 
implying that order and disorder relate directly to quantum coherence and decoherence. 

 
If our experience of free will is real, then it must be possible to transcend the apparent flow of 
forward causation, to reach back and set initial conditions by a reverse causation that is 
modulated by our emotions. Otherwise, Benjamin Libet’s (1985) timing experiment will spell the 
end of our imagined freewill. Freewill is saved by quantum mechanics again, because its 
quantum mechanics that permits a reverse causation over a time duration (Wolf 1998). 
 
In summary, the laws of physics are found two-sided, and the middle-term that holds the sides 
together is undeclared by law and is possibly the source of proto-emotion. Therefore, the 
historical and premature rejection of vitalism is now recognized as the fallacy of excluded 
middle. The possibility of reverse-mode causation necessarily implicates quantum mechanics, 
and the collapse of the wave function. For the same reasons, quantum mechanics is implicated in 
gene action and epigenetics, in all probability. 
 
 

6. When Time Finds Itself 
 
Up to this point, a mechanism has not been described how proto-emotion that’s completely 
confounded with time is found relating to genetics and epigenetics. The proposed hypothesis is 
that the mechanism is part of a universal grammar given that time presents two windows. Only 
with the universal grammar better described can evidence be gathered to support this hypothesis.  
 
The backward in time window relates to a signal sensitivity given by past frequencies that 
modulate the effect of DNA. This modulation is precisely what is found with the epigenetic 
switches provided by methylzation and acetalyzation. Epigenetics is not limited by the DNA 
modulation, however, because something epigenetic may be on top of DNA modulation, and 
something may be on top of that.11 At any rate, the backward in time window is closely matches 

                                                
11 Lipton (2005, Chapter 3) describes proteins that are embedded in the cell membrane, and act as 

information gates that relate to the outside environment and also impact on epigenetic signals inside 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2018 | Volume 8 | Issue 3 | pp 166-180 
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with the frequency domain that characterizes time series analysis. The other type of time series 
analysis is called the time domain which is characterize by a forward progression such as the 
Markov chain. 
 
The time domain or the forward in time window has to do with the forward flux of cause and 
effect given by the genetic determinism that presents itself: be it a population that’s navigating 
the fitness landscape; or cells undergoing division and embryonic differentiation by navigating 
the Waddington landscape; or it’s a cell involved with its mature metabolic function thereby 
following an energy landscape. 
 
The two time windows will permit negative feedback in forward time, where the chain of 
determinism may reach back and reset epigenetic switches. This is classically defined regulation 
that still represents something habitual. However, this is not the emotive balancing act described 
next that will actually carry a reverse-time connection.  
 
The more speculative part of the grammar has to do with the creation of new functions. This is 
described as the great centering of proto-emotion to arrive at the critical point separating order 
and chaos.12 It must be that the backward and forward windows come together as time finds 
itself in a process of targeted synchronisation, the two widows oscillate. This brings a tension 
leading to an emotive climax where something new erupts on time’s manifold and comes into 
being so targeted: a new mutation or an alteration in an epigenetic switch. This coming into 
being involves the collapse of the quantum wave function so hypothesized, with a time duration 
and quantum non-locality that is significant enough to likely enhance the utility of the targeted 
change that was sought by proto-emotion.13 
 
Strict or quasi genetic and epigenetic determinism14 is inadequate during periods of crisis by 
definition, leading to exhaustion, stress, and even proto-emotional surrender. The response that 
comes in the wake of the eventual release is hypothesized as part of the universal grammar, 
which is the aforementioned coming together and synchronisation of time’s windows, and this 
grammar is followed by the cell and by human psychology15. There is known genetic regulation 
that can kick into gear during periods of stress, inducing adaptive mutation (e.g., Hopkins et al., 
2013; Chen, Lowenfeld and Cullis  2009; Tadderi et al., 1997). But is this the result of relaxing 

                                                                                                                                                       
the cell. Moreover, Pert (1997, Chapter 9) postulates that peptides circulating in the body 
communicate emotions. 

12 What Vattay, Kauffman and Niiranen (2012) describes as the “Poised Realm”.  
13 Specifics are lacking, but particulars of warm-body quantum mechanics are better provided by future 

investigations. Unknown are where on DNA, RNA or proteins are regions of quantum supper-
position? Is a quantum collapse limited to biochemicals inside one cell? Or are there any non-locality 
and entanglement effects among cells, among organisms?  

14 A strict-determinism is a one-sided set of entailments that enforce the principle of excluded middle as 
Kauffman (2014) describes, whereas a quasi-determinism permits an emotive middle-term that has 
achieved a high level of fidelity in a learned route. Given that all physical laws are context dependent 
and are two-sided with undeclared middle-terms, this distinction is probably moot. Nevertheless, a 
learned route that involved something emergent (beyond known laws) is probably better characterized 
as a quasi-determinism. 

15 Benjamin Franklin is quoted, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” 



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the error correcting capabilities of the cell as Keller (2000, page 34) implies? Where genetic 
stability and mutability are otherwise held in a delicate balance (e.g., Chen et al., 2010) because 
they are complementary epigenetic effects that modulate the same genes? And what is “stress,” if 
not a non-preferred state from the point of view of proto-emotion? The mere fact that these 
serious questions can be raised in the face of the aforementioned references in primal facial 
evidence that supports the contention that mutability and genetic stability is the work of proto-
emotional centering and synchronisation leading to switching. If the delicate balance is broken 
because of an innate one-sidedness that has developed, then the emotive centering may fail. 
 
Note that mothering of baby rats creates a mood disposition in adult rats, all related to epigenetic 
methylation found in the brain that impacts on how adult rats relate to stress (Weaver et al., 
2004). Rats can either be calm and tranquil, or easily agitated, when reacting to a stressful 
situation. Epigenetics is again found cultivating the hypothesized proto-emotion, but now to 
determine an emotional response in adult rats. The recurring balancing act implies that proto-
emotion is necessarily two-sided, corresponding to time’s two windows. This regulation reaches 
into human emotions. Mindfulness meditation, that will necessarily bring with it emotive 
centering, can improve health by impacting on epigenetic switching (Kaliman et al., 2014). 
 
Not that the great centering is limited to periods of stress and new creations, rather once a route 
is explored the coming-together that led the way can give itself over to genetic and epigenetic 
quasi-determinism and become a learned route as part of the Waddington landscape. Gould 
(1977) describes how ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, perhaps only as an approximation, but 
an approximation made possible because the proto-emotive centering that occurred in biological 
evolution also gave its self to the Waddington landscape to be expressed as a quasi-determinism. 
Mitosis describes chromosomes that double in number during interphase, and line up on the 
equatorial plane during metaphase, that is, they center. The cell divides as chromosomes are 
pulled by spindle fibers (aggregates of microtubules), this being the eruption on time’s manifold 
coming with the emotive climax. Meiosis is more complicated, but also involves centering on the 
equatorial plane. Arguably, mitosis and meiosis have become part of the genetic and epigenetic 
quasi-determinism, taking with them emotive centering. 
 
Lastly, there is an issue that relates to how epigenetic layers may stack one on top of the other. 
Perhaps the layers are all related by this syntax, an alternating pattern: frequency modulation 
leading  to a localized determinism (more strict than quasi), on top is more frequency modulation 
and an additional implied layer of determinism, etc. This layering is open to experimental 
investigation and discovery, but somehow they must all be connected by warm-body quantum 
mechanics. Furthermore, the layering cannot be replaced by an overlaying strict-form 
determinism that ignores the emotive middle-terms that represent jumps beyond one-sided 
entailments, because those bridges cannot be “pre-stated” as Kauffman warns (2014); at best, the 
layers can only be united by a quasi-determinism. Therefore, finding such a layering 
experimentally that is alternating (from frequency to determinism) hints of the deep singularity 
connecting to the timeless.16 A quantum system poised on the edge of order and chaos (and 

                                                
16 Critics may even concede such a layering, if only because frequency switches followed by an implied 

determinism is all that has ever been discovered. However, it is possibly difficult to experimentally 
differentiate between strict and quasi determinism. 



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coincidentally between coherence and decoherence) can support warm-body coherence of 
quantum waves over an extended duration, by synchronizing an incoming wave-form to system 
frequencies that swing between regularity and chaos making a system resonance (Vattay, 
Kauffman and Nirranen 2012). Hameroff (2014) sees the vibrations found in microtubule 
supporting warm-body coherence, and permitting the reality of conscious experience. Vibrations 
are needed in a “goldilocks zone” to maintain coherence, and re-coherence, a goal that is in reach 
of biological evolution (Lloyd et al., 2011). To the extent that the eventual fall into decoherence 
represents an implied determinism, we find that frequency modulation does support a variety of 
determinism, even a sequence of restrained Zeno effects representing transitions (McFadden and  
Al-Khalili, 2016, pages 292-298). The entire system must necessarily be composed of multiple 
layers, however, assuming that warm-body coherence is more widespread in the body. This 
stacking of layers is agreeable with Kauffman’s (2014) alternative quantum mechanics, where 
new “possibles” (i.e., new states of coherence) present themselves in the wake of “actuals” that 
form (when decoherence arrives). 
 
 

7. Discussion 
 
Section 6 can be seen as an alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics having to do with 
the collapse of the quantum wave function as the synchronisation of time’s widows, when time 
looks back to find itself as an emotional interplay. However, the main fucus should remain on 
finding evidence, supporting the hypothesis or otherwise refuting it, and looking to alternative 
views of quantum mechanism may be less productive given all the varieties already described by 
Herbert (1985). This is not to say that what is proposed is radically different or incompatible with 
Goswami, Reed and Goswami’s (1993) monistic idealism, or even with Kauffman’s (2014) 
understanding that admits to a possible preference-laden panpsychism. As with Kauffman’s 
proposed theory that carries the very significant triad17, the hypothesis described in this paper is 
open to some testable science. 
 
Warm-body quantum phenomena have already been found in biology (McFadden and  Al-Khalili 
2014); i.e., beyond the enzymatic reactions that utilize electron and proton tunneling. 
Photosynthesis is found involving coherent waves (rather than particles) that are able to 
efficiently reach reaction centers in green bacteria (Engle et al., 2007). The migratory pattern in 
birds may relate to quantum entanglement (Ritz et al., 2004). The sense of smell is possibly a 
quantum assisted phenomenon (Brookes et al, 2007). Microtubules have quantum properties 
enough to strongly implicate them in the orchestrated objective reduction model of 
consciousness (Hameroff 2014; Hameroff and Penrose 1996). The fact that quantum biology has 
become an entrenched science indicates some support for the ideas in Section 6. So there is 
general support for Section 6 given that quantum biology is real, and given references already 
sited in Section 6. Specifics are missing that relate to the proposed quantum-level action, and 
those are a matter of future investigations. Nevertheless, if consciousness is now so strongly 
implicated with quantum mechanics in the brain, implying even a preference-driven 
panpsychism, one has to wonder how such a system could evolve without a parallel neo-vitalism 

                                                
17 Actuals, Possibles and Mind represent a very important advance beyond scientific monism and 

Cartesian dualism. 



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of a kind hinted at in Section 6? Seems unlikely! 
 
The now vindicated Terence McKenna believed that evolution was taking us to an endpoint. His 
“transcendental object at the end of time” was acting as a strange attractor and pulling us into the 
future and our end of days. He was possibly wrong about the attractor being stuck at the end of 
time, when proto-emotion is possibly timeless and no less a strange attractor. What’s nice about 
strange attractors is that they leave evidence behind in the substrate of evolution given as 
reflections, on all levels being a fractal pattern. Therefore, we might look to the evidence coming 
as reflections of the timeless pull on time’s two windows, to support the view of Section 6. 
Remarkable so, we do find such evidence. The philosophy of Taoism is remarkable on how it 
relates to our psychology, and how it relates to the more deductive Yang and the more inductive 
Yin,18 all agreeing more or less with Section 6 as a universal grammar. This reflection is found 
impacting depth psychology of a kind promoted by Peterson (1999). Not merely is the reflection 
found in psychology, but also in the way our asymmetrical brain is wired together in a left and 
right hemisphere that specialized differently to look forward and backward in time, respectively. 
The brain’s asymmetrical hemispheres are well described in McGilchrist (2009). 
 
Religious traditions based on love19 relate well to the timeless pull of a proto-emotionality, that 
comes with a universal grammar turned golden rule, and comes with a relational view of the 
world that agrees more or less with Whitehead’s process philosophy. 

 
A closing question: what came first, genetics or epigenetics? The possibility is that they co-
evolved together, in a grand centering near the criticality where time was able to find itself 
through a process of synchronization. If the middle-term is the pristine source of all that is 
emotive, then the centering of proto-emotion is part of a universal grammar and far from a cheap 
variety of post-modernism. This implies that evolution carried its own direction and was highly 
non-passive, far from indifferent and blind as implied by Dawkins (1996). 
 

 

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