





































Is Reality Really Real


DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 385 

Article  
Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem,  

Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 
 

Graham P. Smetham
*
 

 

Abstract 
The supporters of the hardcore materialist MUD worldview tend to consider, without actually 

thinking too much (if at all), that anyone involved in scientifically investigating the nature of 

quantum reality and its relationship to the ‘observer’ as being so irredeemably infected with what 

these ‘rationalists’ call ‘woo’ that they should not be taken seriously. In this article we take a 

more in depth look at the crucial issues raised by the paper that Tsakiris unsuccessfully 

attempted to draw to the unwilling attention of Jerry Coyne.  For physicists such as Bohm, 

Planck, Schrödinger, Heisenberg and others, consciousness, or potential consciousness, is an 

innate and inseparable aspect of the quantum immaterial realm which underlies the apparently 

material realm.  Furthermore, as Bohm states, “every part of the universe is related to every other 

part but in different degrees;” this interconnection accounts for a deep level of the evolutionary 

interrelationships between creatures and environments.  Because of the deeply connected nature 

of the quantum field there must be a quantum informational interconnection between 

environments and the creatures within them. 

 

Keywords: materialist, nonlocality, quantum gene, Bell’s theorem, quantum entanglement, 

consciousness, evolution, Darwinism. 

 

 

In this article we take a more in depth look at the crucial issues raised by the paper that Tsakiris 

unsuccessfully attempted to draw to the unwilling attention of Jerry Coyne.  Figure 1 shows the 

upper half of the first page of the paper ‘An experimental test of non-local realism.’ The paper, 

as can be seen, is written by seven physicists, physicists who make up a world renowned team of 

experimenters at the ‘Erwin Schrödinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics’ based 

in Vienna. Given the credentials of these physicists I think it is beyond dispute that, as Tsakiris 

says to Coyne, the paper in question can be considered as not being “too out-there, woo-wooish, 

fringy.”  

Unfortunately, however, the supporters of the hardcore materialist MUD (Materialist Ultra-

Darwinian) worldview tend to consider, without actually thinking too much (if at all), that 

anyone involved in scientifically investigating the nature of quantum reality and its relationship 

to the ‘observer’ as being so irredeemably infected with what these ‘rationalists’ call ‘woo’ that 

they should not be taken seriously.  Coyne, having managed to deflect any possibility of having 

to confront the evidence of ‘quantum woo’, posted to his blog associated with his WET (Why 

Evolution is True) book: 

 

                                                      

*
 Correspondence: Graham Smetham, http://www.quantumbuddhism.com E-mail: graham.smetham@gmail.com    

http://www.quantumbuddhism.com/
mailto:graham.smetham@gmail.com


DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 386 

 
                                                          Figure 1 

 

Alex Tsakiris: woomeister and coward 

Well, after my fractious interview at Skeptiko with Alex Tsakiris, in which he failed to 

get me to admit to the existence of any number of woo-ish phenomena, he got lambasted 

in the comments, something he’s not used to from his usual gaggle of ESPers, near-

death-experiencers, and quantum wowsers. What does he do when faced with an 

onslaught of rationalism?
1
 

The charge that Tsakiris is a ‘coward’ is based on the claim that, according to Coyne, he closed 

off the online discussion too early in order to avoid the massed ranks of ‘rationalists’ who 

wanted to give him what they mistakenly consider to be the ‘true’ facts. When I went to the site 

to have a look it appeared that this was not the case, there seemed to be a reasonable length of 

opinion. It might be the case however, that Tsakiris reopened the discussion.   

One of the first comments from a Coyne supporter is: 

One of the worst interviews I ever wasted my time listening to.  It’s clear the host has an 

agenda and is only interested in forcing everything to fit it.  You had as your guest one of 

the most renowned evolutionary biologists in the world, and all you can do is push your 

own wacky pet theories about consciousness?  … What a disgrace.
2
 

Tsakiris, of course, was actually asking Coyne to take into account the possible implications of 

the quantum discoveries which have been made by Zeilinger and his team, experimental results 

which confirm remarkable quantum metaphysical insights about the ultimately immaterial nature 

of reality. This is a conclusion that has been increasingly inescapable since the inception of 

quantum physics. So it seems appropriate to consider whether Zeilinger might have been infected 

with the dreaded ‘woo’, whatever that might be. According to Wikipedia Anton Zeilinger (fig.2): 



DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 387 

…has held positions at the University of Innsbruck, the Technical University of Munich, 

the Technical University of Vienna and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

(MIT) and distinguished visiting positions at Humboldt University in Berlin, Merton 

College of Oxford University and the Collège de France in Paris. Zeilinger received 

many awards for his scientific work, among the most recent being the King Faisal Prize 

(2005), and the first Newton Prize of the IOP (2007). He is a member of six Scientific 

Academies. Anton Zeilinger is currently Professor of Physics at the University of 

Vienna and Scientific Director of the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum 

Information of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Since 2006, Zeilinger is the vice 

chairman of the board of trustees of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria, an 

ambitious project initiated by Zeilinger's proposal. … In 2005 Anton Zeilinger was 

among the “10 people who could change the world”, elected by the British newspaper 

New Statesman.
 
In 2010 he received the Wolf Prize in Physics. Anton Zeilinger’s 

achievements have been most succinctly described in his citation for the Isaac Newton 

Medal of the Institute of Physics (UK): “For his pioneering conceptual and experimental 

contributions to the foundations of quantum physics, which have become the 

cornerstone for the rapidly-evolving field of quantum information.”
3
 

One would have thought, then, then Zeilinger would be safe from being infected with ‘woo’! 

Whatever that might be. 

 

 
 

Figure 2 – Zeilinger with some experimental apparatus.
4
 

 

 

The abstract to the ‘An experimental test of non-local realism’ paper begins:  

Most working scientists hold fast to the concept of ‘realism’- a viewpoint according to 

which an external reality exists independent of observation. But quantum physics has 

shattered some of our cornerstone beliefs. 

Already we have an extraordinary and disturbing intimation. It seems that the most precise and 

delicate experiments carried out at the quantum level of reality, experiments which have been 

carried out in different variations over and over again, indicate that an “external reality” which 

is “independent of observation” does not exist! And, furthermore, if this should turn out to be 

correct then it must be the case that the consciousness or consciousnesses of ‘observers’ are 

interconnected in some way with the production of what appears to be an external reality. In fact 



DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 388 

Zeilinger has elsewhere referred, in his discussion of the importance of the work of the twentieth 

century physicist John Wheeler, that we must appreciate Wheeler’s: 

…realisation that the implications of quantum physics are so far-reaching that they 

require a completely novel approach in our view of reality and in the way we see our role 

in the universe.  This distinguishes him from many others who in one way or another 

tried to save pre-quantum viewpoints, particularly the obviously wrong notion of a 

reality independent of us.
5
 

In other words we must now conclude that quantum theory, the most fundamental level of the 

physical investigation of the process of reality, has proved that there is no external reality which 

is entirely independent of consciousness.  Another important and highly regarded physicist and 

philosopher, Bernard d’Espagnat, has indicated the situation in clear terms: 

The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of 

human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and with facts 

established by experiment. 
6
 

The majority of significant physicists have reached similar conclusions. 

 

The paper Tsakiris refers to concerns an experiment which sets out to test ‘non-local realism’, 

which means that it tests the notion that there are ‘real’ ‘hidden’ connections between every part 

of reality which are independent of mind and minds. In other words if we allow ‘reality’ to be 

such that all points of reality are instantaneously interconnected by ‘real’ external links we can 

then also assume that there is an external reality which is independent of observers. And the 

answer is that such an objectively ‘real’ external world, independent of observation, does not 

exist. This means accepting a thoroughly and spookily interconnected world and we must 

abandon “certain intuitive features of realism.” One aspect of this situation is that there are no 

definite properties of quantum systems prior to measurement. The experiment confirms spooky 

instantaneous quantum non-local interconnections, which may take place over cosmic distances, 

and it also confirms the fact that a reality which is entirely independent of consciousness does 

not exist. This conclusion, as Tsakiris suggests and Coyne willfully remains ignorant of, 

undermines the position of metaphysical materialism that is maintained by Coyne by ignoring 

the evidence.  How ironic it is that Coyne in his WET blog claims that it is Tsakiris who is 

“deeply and willfully ignorant.”
7
 

The phenomenon of quantum entanglement, which is the fact that quantum ‘particles’ can be 

interconnected as potentialities smeared out over large distances until an observation 

disentangles them, was first highlighted by Schrödinger who wrote that: 

Attention has recently been called to the obvious but very disconcerting fact that even 

though we restrict the disentangling measurements to one system, the representative 

obtained for the other system is by no means independent of the particular choice of 

observations which we select for that purpose and which by the way are entirely 

arbitrary. It is rather discomforting that the theory should allow a system to be steered or 

piloted into one or the other type of state at the experimenter's mercy in spite of his 

having no access to it.
8
 



DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 389 

In other words when we have an ‘entangled’ quantum situation wherein two systems are part of 

the entanglement, observation of one system, which disentangles the system from its quantum 

state of potentiality, will instantaneously disentangle the other system, even though it may be 

vast distances away.  

 

Quantum entanglement, then, occurs when two or more particles interact in a way that causes 

their fates to become linked. It becomes impossible to consider, or mathematically describe, each 

particle’s condition independently of the others. They constitute a single quantum state of 

potentiality, which means that there are no fully existent ‘particles’ but only potential particles. 

Two entangled particles often must have opposite values for a property - for example, if one is 

spinning in “up” direction, the other must be spinning in the “down” direction. If someone 

measures one of the entangled particles and, by doing so, measures it into an ‘up’ state, this 

causes the entangled partner to become spin ‘down.’ Making the measurement ‘here’ affected the 

other particle ‘over there’ instantaneously, even if the other particle was a million miles away. 

And this observational effect involves a conscious decision to perform the observation. 

 

The questions which immediately become relevant are 1) how does the distant particle ‘know’ its 

partner has been measured, and 2) how does it ‘know’ what attribute its partner has adopted?  A 

crucial debate which was raised in a famous paper written by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen, 

called the EPR paper, ‘Can Quantum Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered 

Complete?’ was as to whether entangled particles could be thought of as having, or indeed 

whether they did have, on board pieces of information which determined their behaviour.  This is 

the way that Einstien thought reality must be, it must consist, at some level, of definite entities, 

‘elements of reality’ he called them, which are both independent of other entities and 

independent of the minds of the observers. As Schrödinger had pointed out with his famous cat 

thought experiment which he outlined to Einstein in a letter ( denotes the quantum 

mathematical wavefunction of quantum potentiality):  

Confined in a steel chamber is a Geiger counter prepared with a tiny amount of 

uranium, so small that in the next hour it is just as probable to expect one atomic decay 

as none.  An amplified relay provides that the first atomic decay shatters a small bottle 

of prussic acid.  This and – cruelly – a cat is also trapped in the steel chamber.  

According to the -function for the total system, after an hour … the living and dead 

cat are smeared out in equal measures.
9
 

In other words because the quantum world hovers in a state of undetermined potentialilty, when 

unobserved the macroscopic world should theoretically also hover in indeterminacy. It is only 

when a measuring ‘observation’ is made that the quantum ‘superposition’, which means a 

potentiality of both possibilities, of the live and dead cat can be disentangled to become one or 

the other. Einstein was never happy with such a view which is why he considered quantum 

theory to be ‘incomplete.’ Quantum theory, however, clearly suggested that Einstein’s definite 

‘elements of reality’, a concept sometimes referred to as ‘hidden variables,’ do not exist and 

therefore quantum entanglement is a fundamental aspect of reality.  And if this turned out to be 

the way that unobserved reality really was it would mean that ‘reality’ would not fully exist but 

would be a kind of quantum soup of potentiality containing all possibilities, until, that is, it is 

‘observed.’ 

 



DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 390 

The influential high energy physicist John S. Bell was dissatisfied with the fact that this situation 

seemed to be beyond resolution and he spent some time considering a method by which the issue 

could be resolved one way or another.    In 1964 he published a paper entitled ‘On the Einstein-

Podolsky-Rosen paradox’
10

 which transformed the study of the foundation of quantum 

mechanics. The paper showed that no “physical theory which is realistic and also local in a 

specified sense can agree with all of the statistical implications of Quantum Mechanics.”
11

 This 

means that the implications of quantum theory contradicts a locally real world, which is a world 

wherein ‘elements of reality’ have definite properties independent of observation and there are no 

faster than the speed of light interconnections.  From his assumptions about how a locally real 

world, which is a world without spooky interconnections, must function Bell proved an 

inequality, later called  “Bell's Inequality”, which is violated by the quantum mechanical 

predictions made from an entangled state of a composite system. 

 
                                                                         Figure 3 

 

An inequality is a mathematical formulation which indicates that a certain sum on one side of the 

inequality musts be less than or equal to a certain number.  Consider the case of a source 

emitting entangled polarized photons, one to the right the other to the left (figure 3) towards two 

polarization filters, PD1 and PD2. In the experiment the filters can either be set to correspond 

with each other of turned to an offset of 30 degrees or -30 degrees. What Bell showed was that if 

there were ‘hidden’ on board information, corresponding to Einstein’s ‘elements of reality’, then 

the following inequality must be satisfied: 

 

N(PD1= -30, PD2=30) <= N(PD1= -30, PD2= 0) + N(PD1= 0, PD2= 30) 

 

Where N(X) indicates the number of photons which pass with the detectors set in the 

configuration X.  Quantum theory (at the time it was called ‘quantum mechanics’) predicted that 

reality would fail this test, indicating that Einstein’s belief in a local world of ‘real’ externally 

independent bits and pieces of reality, which were independent of the minds of observers, was 

false.  

 

In his book The Dance of the Photons Zeilinger presents an intriguing derivation of Bell’s 

inequality for polarization of entangled photons based on the notion of identical twins which are 

assumed to be carrying fully determinate ‘genes’. In this case the ‘genes’ are representative of 

Einstein’s ‘elements of reality.’  We consider pairs of identical human twins instead of entangled 

quantum ‘particles.’ Identical twins, of course, have ‘on board’ information; their features do not 

hover in potentiality prior to observation, so they stand in for quantum ‘particles’ which are 

considered to have definite features prior to observation. And we can derive a Bell type 

inequality which must be obeyed by such an ‘inherently real’ situation. 

  

The three polarization measurements (0, -30, or 30) are identified with the observation of three 

features of the twins, their height, hair color, and eye color, and we set this up so that we use two 



DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 391 

valued features: tall or short (we can set a height to divide our sample into two groups), blue eyes 

or brown eyes, blond hair or brunet hair. Because the twins are identical we know that if one of 

the twins is tall, blue-eyed, and brunet, we also know that the other twin will be tall, blue eyed, 

and brunet. From the perspective of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, these three properties - 

height, eye color, and hair color - are ‘elements of reality’ that we predict with certainty for the 

second twin upon observation of the first twin. We also assume that the reason for these 

correlations is that the twins carry the same genes. These hypothetical ‘genes’ correspond to the 

‘local hidden variables’ we postulate might be operational in the quantum situation. 

We can now look at all the possible combinations in a large sample of these twins: 

 Tall, blue-eyed, brunet 

 Tall, blue-eyed, blond 

 Tall, brown-eyed, brunet 

 Tall, brown-eyed, blond 

 Short, blue-eyed, brunet 

 Short, blue-eyed, blond 

 Short, brown-eyed, brunet 

 Short, brown-eyed, blond 

 

Now we can make some very simple and obvious statements about the numbers involved. For 

instance: 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
[Exp 1]          

 

The equality (Expression 1) should be obvious, as the hair colours blond and brunet cover all the 

twins there cannot be any tall, blue-eyed twins with another hair colour. From this equation we 

can derive the following inequality, the symbol ‘≤’ means that the number on the left hand side is 

less than or equal to the number on the right hand side: 

 

 

 
     [Exp 2] 

 



DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
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 392 

 

The reason that this inequality must be true is because both of the bracketed sets on the right 

hand side of Exp 2 must be larger than the corresponding bracketed sets in Exp 1. This is 

because extra pairs of twins are added in. In the case of the first bracket on the right hand side 

pairs of twins who are tall, brunet with brown eyes are added in; and in the case of the second 

bracketed set on the right hand side we have added in pairs of twins with blue eyes, blond hair 

and are short. This is indicated in the diagram below: 

 

 
 

 

Now we suppose that we can only observe one property on each twin, we can write down Exp 2 

as follows: 

 

[Exp 3] 
 

 

Why does this work?  Consider the set on the left hand side. The number of pairs of twins where 

one is tall and the other is blue eyed must be the same as the number of tall twins with blue eyes 

because they are twins. If the twin of a tall twin has blue eyes then the tall twin must have blue 

eyes also because they are twins. The same reasoning applies to the sets on the right hand side; 



DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 393 

so Exp 3 is equivalent to Exp 2 but expressed in a different form. Exp 3 is Bell’s Inequality for 

Twins. 

  

Now the point of this inequality is that it must be satisfied by a ‘Reality’ which conforms to our 

everyday notions concerning reality, which is that ‘Reality’ is made up of individual, separately 

existing things which have their features inherently attached to them independently of 

observations. In fact this inequality must be passed by reality if ‘genes’ can be considered to be 

independent and self-enclosed ‘elements of reality.’  

 

Zeilinger comments upon Bell’s achievement in devising this possibility for performing 

‘experimental metaphysics’: 

How is it possible that a statement as simple as Bell’s inequality might not hold in 

nature? The problem we have is that the considerations that led us to Bell’s inequality 

were extremely simple. I would argue that they are so simple that the Greek philosopher 

Aristotle could already have derived Bell’s inequality had he known that this was an 

interesting and nontrivial problem. We did not have to use quantum mechanics for its 

derivation. But Aristotle would never have expected that this could be an interesting 

problem. In contrast, he probably would have said that this is quite uninteresting, 

because nature obviously has to behave in a way so as not to violate the inequality. 

As Daniel Greenberger commented, to think that nature could possibly function in a manner to 

violate Bell’s inequality is surely “crazy”.
12

 This is because we are all conditioned by our 

dealings with our everyday world to simply believe that the apparently ‘external’ world and the 

objects within it must be independent of our minds, having absolutely no dependence on mind or 

minds in any way. Also the notion that every piece of the apparent ‘matter’ within the universe 

might be quantumly connected through quantum entanglement is also hard to conceive of. We 

tend to believe the ‘classical’ view of reality is the way reality really is. 

 

Zeilnger transform this ‘twins and genes’ analysis into the quantum situation and derives Bell’ 

inequality for pairs of entangled quantum particles: 

 

                      
 

In this version we can take: x = -30, y = 0, z = 30,   ‘+’ indicates the photon passes through the 

filter,  ‘-’ indicates it does not. 

Bell’s inequality must be satisfied for a ‘locally real’ ‘Reality’ to be functioning, which is a 

‘Reality’ with ‘real’ individuated and separate ‘things’, or ‘elements of reality,’ to ultimately 

exist independently of observations, and independently of all other apparent ‘things.’ This point 

is crucial and needs emphasizing. In a ‘classical’ type world, which is the type of world Darwin 



DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 394 

assumed he inhabited and Coyne still thinks is essentially operative, a world wherein ‘matter’ is 

the straightforward ‘matter’ conceived of by Newton and Descartes, a ‘matter’ which is entirely 

independent of the minds of observers, Bell’s inequality cannot be violated.  Quantum theory 

predicts that Bell’s inequality must be violated; and it turns out that in all experiments (except an 

early one which certainly was defective) quantum physics has been validated and Bell’s theorem 

violated. 

 

 
                                                                   Figure 5

(13)
 

 

In his excellent book Sneaking a Look at God’s Cards, physicist GianCarlo Ghirardi, in the final 

paragraph of his ’Telepathy or Cheap Trick’ section, which discusses quantum entanglement and 

Bell’s theorem, writes: 

I would like to conclude this section with a quotation from Einstein that is particularly 

apt for the example just discussed, and shows how lucidly he intuited (even while 

refusing to accept) the deepest implications of the theory, long before Bell’s own 

analysis: “It seems hard to sneak a look at God's cards. But that He plays dice and uses 

‘telepathic’ methods (as present quantum theory requires of Him) is something that I 

cannot believe for a single moment.”
14

 

Indeed, it seems remarkable that Einstein, who was the first to take the notion that ‘Reality’ at its 

deepest physical level was quantum in nature, when he used the idea to solve the puzzle of the 

photoelectric effect, and was the person, of course, who overturned notions of absolute space and 

time with his relativity theories, simply could not, and would not accept that independent and 

completely separate ‘elements of reality’ ultimately do not exist.   

Ghirardi, however, tells us that the evidence tells us that “the photons themselves must be 

telepathic.”
15

  Experiments of extraordinary delicacy and precision have been carried out, many 

of them by Zeilinger and his team, to probe the phenomenon of the telepathic nature of quantum 

entanglement. Ghirardi describes one carried out by Alain Aspect and collaborators, who carried 



DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

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 395 

out one of the first precise demonstrations of the violation of Bell’s inequality, that involved a 

system which precluded any form of hidden message being transmitted at the speed of light and 

he concludes:  

Personally, I take the experiment of Aspect and his collaborators as conclusive: photons 

really are telepathic, or to use more scientific terminology they cannot be considered as 

possessing any local characteristics that determine whether or not they will pass the test 

before the test is carried out. Nevertheless, they still react the same way for the same 

test.
16

 

In other words they are instantaneously interconnected at the deep quantum level of reality. And 

this kind of deep interconnection applies to all kind of ‘particles’. Zeilinger concludes that:  

Quantum particles do not behave like identical twins. Even though they always show the 

same results when they are measured for the same property, we are not allowed to 

explain this by saying that they carried that property before and independently of 

observations.
17

 

Note the clear indication that the properties which are finally manifested are not independent of 

observation. The properties that the apparent particles adopt are in some way measured into 

existence by observation. This situation clearly indicates the fact that consciousness is in some 

way interconnected with the quantum realm. 

 

In their excellent book Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness Bruce Rosenblum 

and Fred Kuttner give a summary of the implications of the Bell violation: 

Bell’s theorem in a nutshell: Suppose our world to have physical real properties that are 

not created by their observation. Further, suppose that objects can be separated from 

each other so that what happens to one cannot affect the other. (For short, we call these 

two suppositions “reality” and “separability”) From only these two premises – both 

assumed in classical physics but denied by quantum theory – Bell deduced that certain 

observable quantities could not be larger than certain other observable quantities. This 

experimentally testable conclusion of Bell’s theorem, which must be true in any world 

with reality and separability, is Bell’s inequality. If Bell’s theorem is shown to be false in 

any situation, one or both of the premises leading to it (reality and separability) must be 

false.  … In what we will call a “reasonable” world, objects have physically real 

properties (not merely properties created by their observation). Moreover, in such a 

reasonable world, objects are separable. That is they affect each other only by physical 

forces, which cannot travel faster than the speed of light (not by “spooky actions” 

traveling infinitely fast). The Newtonian world described by classical physics is, in a 

sense, a reasonable one. The world described by quantum physics is not. Bell’s theorem 

allows us to test to see whether perhaps it’s just quantum theory’s description of our 

world that’s unreasonable, and that our actual world is in fact a reasonable one. … When 

the experiments were done, Bell’s inequality was violated. … Our world therefore does 

not have both reality and separability. It’s, in this sense, an “unreasonable” world.
18

 

This means that the ultimate quantum nature of the ‘stuff’ of reality, what Zurek calls “dream-

stuff”, is not Newtonian ‘classical’ type stuff.  The term “unreasonable,” however, is slightly 

misleading, the quantum world is only “unreasonable” for someone, like Coyne, who expects the 



DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
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www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 396 

world to be comprised of tiny billiard balls. Coyne wants to brush all this “unreasonableness” 

aside and pretend that he can carry on as if living in Darwin’s ‘classical’ times. He says: 

It’s as if you’re saying we can’t play billiards and we can’t shoot rockets to the moon 

because of this stuff that happens on a micro level.  The fact is that assuming that these 

phenomena apply on most of the levels of reality that we deal with renders everything 

wrong is simply incorrect. For most macro phenomenon, Newtonian or classical 

mechanics works fine. For most micro-phenomenon you’re turning to quantum 

mechanics. It works fine. And in terms of evolution I don’t see how this quantum 

mechanics affects evolution at all.
19

 

And this is an extraordinary and ignorant statement because we are discussing biology at the 

micro level of genes and DNA, not moon-shots. Photosynthesis, a central mechanism for the 

maintenance of life, is now known to operate by a quantum ‘look-ahead’ mechanism. And this 

mechanism, described by Feynman’s sum over histories approach to quantum phenomena, is 

fundamental to the quantum world. As physicist Neil Turok, Director of the Perimeter Institute 

for Theoretical Physics, has pointed out: 

According to quantum theory, the world is constantly exploring all of its possible 

classical states all of the time, and is only appearing to us as any one of them with some 

probability.
20

 

It would be remarkable if this fundamental quantum mechanism was not an aspect of the 

process of evolution. 

 

It is at this point that it is important to be clear that the nature of this interconnection is an issue 

of controversy. This is why Coyne is able to claim that the notion that consciousness is in some 

way involved at the quantum level is ‘controversial’. But this just indicates his ignorance. The 

fact that the disentanglement of properties depends in some way upon observation is not 

controversial, which is why Zeilinger writes that the breakdown of local realism means: 

…the property of a particle observed in a specific experiment is not an element of 

physical reality before the measurement is performed. In the end this means that the 

reality depends upon the decision of the observer… 
21

 

And yet at the same time a few pages earlier Zeilinger also says that: 

It is dangerous – and not supported by the physics of the quantum measurement process 

– to claim, as is sometimes claimed, that it is the mind of the observer that influences the 

quantum state.
22

  

One can only conclude that even Zeilinger is confused as to the actual nature of the dependence 

of the manifestation of quantum properties on the decisions of observers. As has been pointed out 

earlier Zeilinger elsewhere has clearly indicated that the ‘classical’ notion that the material world 

is independent of observers is “obviously wrong.” The above quote, however, would suggest that 

Zeilinger does not want to suggest that the mind of an individual observer can directly affect 

quantum reality, and therefore reality in general.  Or, perhaps Zeilinger is worried about sticking 

his neck out too far on the issue of the interconnectedness of consciousness and the quantum 

realm. The problem is indicated by Wojciech Zurek, instigator of the ‘quantum Darwinism’ 

paradigm, as follows: 



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…while the ultimate evidence for the choice of one alternative resides in our illusive 

“consciousness,” there is every indication that the choice occurs much before 

consciousness gets involved and that, once made, the choice is irrevocable.
23

  

In other words the ultimate evidence of quantum experimentation and theory indicates that 

consciousness is clearly implicated in the choices of which potentialities emerge from the 

quantum realm. And yet the mechanism through which this occurs is such that as time goes by 

these choices become solidified in a manner such that the functioning of the apparently external 

material world appears to be independent. 

 

Zurek’s ‘quantum Darwinism’ paradigm provides an insight into how this happens. According to 

Zurek the ultimate ‘stuff’ of reality is ‘quantum dream-stuff’ which ‘epiontically’ created the 

appearance of the external world and its inhabitants. The term ‘epiontic’ indicates that perception 

creates ontology. This reiterates the quantum fact stated by Zeilinger that the external world is 

not independent of observations. Wheeler stated also stated this quantum fact:   

Directly opposite to the concept of universe as machine built on law is the vision of a 

world self-synthesized.  On this view, the notes struck out on a piano by the observer 

participants of all times and all places, bits though they are in and by themselves, 

constitute the great wide  world of space and time and things.
24

   

In other words it is the internal ‘epiontic’ observing processes of the collective consciousness of 

the sentient beings within the universe that ‘chooses’, to use a word used by Hawking and 

Mlodinow, which potentialities to unfold. 

 

Prior to the evolution of such observers the universe itself is clearly epiontically creating the 

conditions and paving the way for the emergence of such high level observers. The mechanism 

which underlies this process is the quantum amplificatory Zeno effect, which is the implied 

quantum fact that the more often a particular quantum state is observed, or ‘registered’ to be a 

particular way the more likely it is to be observed in the same way in the future.  Zurek describes 

his view as follows: 

The main idea of quantum Darwinism is that we almost never do any direct 

measurement on anything … the environment acts as a witness, or as a communication 

channel. … It is like a big advertising billboard, which floats multiple copies of the 

information about our universe all over the place.
25

 

But what he does not seem to home in on is the amplificatory aspect. The quantum advertising 

campaign for the classical world get more solidified the more it is ‘bought into.’  

The ’Quantum Amplificatory Zeno Effect’ is an extension of the accepted quantum Zeno effect. 

An amplificatory mechanism of this sort must be operational at the dream quantum level in 

order to account for the emergence of Zurek’s ‘preferred states’ from the potentiality of the 

quantum field.  In his discussion of the “axioms that provide a textbook summary of quantum 

foundations” Zurek lists them as follows: 

1) The state of a quantum system is represented by a vector in its Hilbert space.    

2) The evolution of the vector is unitary as generated by the Schrödinger equation. 

3) Immediate repetition of a measurement yields the same result. 



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4) The measurement outcome is one of the orthonormal states – eigenstates of the measured 

observable.  

As Zurek points out, it is the incompatibility of the first two with the second two which 

constitutes the “measurement problem” - how is it that the many quantum alternatives 

‘collapse’, apparently in interaction with consciousness, into one actuality. Zurek considers that 

he has at least partially solved this problem with the notion of einselection (environment 

induced superselection): 

…einselection is caused by the transfer of information about selected observables. 

Hence, the ontological features of the state vectors - objective existence of the 

einselected states - is acquired through the epistemological “information transfer”.
26

  

It is this ‘objective’ information transfer’ which Zurek suggests takes place independently of 

observing consciousnesses. This seems to be the case. 

However, this does not rid the universe of some deeper level of consciousness which epiontically 

produces the preferred states which are imprinted into the quantum “advertising billboard” which 

is responsible for doing the ‘einselecting.’ It is this deeper level of non-individualized 

consciousness which eventually becomes embodied to various degrees in sentient beings. It is no 

surprise therefore that the manner in which the consciousnesses of human beings appear to 

interact with the quantum level of potentiality within quantum experiments at the micro level 

gives a clue to the way in which the “advertising billboard” of the quantum matrix of the 

‘classical’ world came into being.  The clue to this mechanism lies in the third quantum axiom, 

which is the quantum fact that immediate repetition of a measurement yields the same result. This 

is called the quantum Zeno effect. Given a superposition expressed in some basis: 

 

                                   |Ψ> = P1|b1> x P2|b2> x P3|b3> … x Pn|bn> … 

When a measurement is performed this will ‘collapse’ into one of the eigenstates and all the other 

possibilities disappear. At the exact moment of collapse the state will be:  

  |Ψ> =  Px|bx>    where Px=  1 and |bx> is the resulting eigenstate.    

 

As time progresses this state will smear out into a spread of possibilities but if measured again 

immediately the same result will be obtained precisely because the probability is one.  Thus 

quickly repeated measurements can pin a quantum state into ontological stability. If, additionally, 

there is an amplificatory aspect then ontology would be solidified as time progressed. 

There is also an inverse Zeno effect which was originally proposed by Aharonov and Vardi who 

showed that, by performing a dense sequence of measurements along a presumed path, a quantum 

system can be forced to follow an arbitrarily chosen path. Johnjoe Mcfadden has proposed that 

the inverse quantum effect may be a crucial factor in the evolutionary process: 

Both the quantum Zeno effect and the inverse Zeno effect are really aspects of the same 

phenomenon: the ability of quantum measurement to interact with, and shape the 

dynamics of a system. The special relationship between quantum objects and quantum 

measuring devices draws out classical reality from the quantum world. … measurement 

of a quantum system draws out from the quantum superposition of all possible states, a 



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single reality for the physical world. As Niels Bohr said, ‘one must never forget that in 

the drama of existence we are ourselves both actors and spectators’. 
27

  

This is consistent with Hawking and Mlodinow’s participatory account of the way the universe 

evolves: 

In this view, the universe appeared spontaneously, starting off in every possible way.  

Most of these correspond to other universes …. Some people make a great mystery of 

this idea, sometimes called the multiverse concept, but these are just different 

expressions of the Feynman sum over histories. … The histories that contribute to the 

Feynman sum don’t have an independent existence, but depend on what is being 

measured.  We create history by our observations, rather than history creating us.
28

 

The actual spread of probabilities must change over time in an excruciatingly slow evolution of 

potentialities over vast time periods. There is no other way to account for the evolution of the 

universe. Repeated ‘registrations’, ‘interactions’, correlations’ ‘observations’ within quantum 

dream stuff must make the potentiality for the same quantum possibility increase to an 

unimaginably tiny extent, and over vast time periods this mechanism builds up the quantum 

“advertising billboard” of classical reality.  In this way the apparent solidity and immutability of 

the ‘external’ and ‘material’ world, as well as the beings inhabiting this world, is built up over 

time. 

 

In his final section ‘What Could That Mean?” of his book Dance of the Photons Zeilinger further 

investigates what he considers to be the implications of the quantum violation of Bell’s 

inequality. He begins by asserting that at least one of the assumptions about “Reality” which 

were used to derive Bell’s inequality must be wrong. These assumptions he lists as follows: 

1) Realism: This is the idea that an experimental result reflects in some way the ‘inherent’ 

features of the particles that we measure. 

2) Locality hypothesis: the assumption that the real physical situation of the measurement 

at apparatus B including particle b must be independent of the kind of measurement 

done at the same time to the distant particle a using measurement apparatus A. 

3) Counterfactual nature of reality: Zeilinger writes: “There is a third assumption, which 

we used implicitly but did not express in detail. It is the assumption that it makes sense 

to consider what kind of experimental result would have been obtained if one had 

measured a different property than the one that was actually measured. For the case of 

twins the assumption means that it makes sense to assume that, for example, blue-eyed 

blond twins must be either tall or short, even if we do not check their height.” 

Zeilinger then writes that: 

We now discuss some of the possible conceptual consequences of the breakdown of 

local realism. One possibility is that the reality assumption is not correct. This would 

mean in principle that the property of a particle observed in a specific experiment is not 

an element of physical reality before the measurement is performed. In the end, this 

means that reality depends on the decision of the observer - of the experimentalist - 

about which measurement to perform. The breakdown of realism would mean that the 

measured result does not reflect any kind of property that existed before and 

independently of observation. 



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Another possibility would be that the locality hypothesis is not correct. Such a 

breakdown of locality could, for example, mean that something is wrong with our 

picture of space and time. A quantum system that consists of two or more entangled 

particles remains an unseparated entity regardless of how far the individual components 

of the system are separated from each other. 

A breakdown of the third assumption would mean that one is only allowed to talk 

about the properties of systems when these properties are indeed measured. Expressed 

very simply, the question “What if?” would be illegal. This would certainly contradict 

our everyday experience. We always consider different possible alternatives, and we 

base decisions on the possible consequences of these alternatives. For example, to know 

what will happen if we cross a superhighway during rush hour with our eyes closed, it is 

not really necessary for us to perform that experiment.   

At present, there is no agreement in the scientific community as to what the 

philosophical consequences of the violation of Bell’s inequality really are. And there is 

even less agreement about what position one has to assume now. Nearly all physicists 

agree that the experiments have shown that local realism is an untenable position. The 

viewpoint of most physicists is that the violation of Bell's inequality shows us that 

quantum mechanics is nonlocal. This nonlocality is exactly what Albert Einstein called 

“spooky”; it seems eerie that the act of measuring one particle could instantly influence 

the other one. 

The other possibility would be for us to give up the picture of a world that exists in all 

its properties independent of us. That would mean that we have a very essential 

influence on reality just by deciding which measurement to perform. There are indeed 

hints that this might be the message we have to accept.
29

  

In the above quote Zeilinger says that there “is no agreement in the scientific community as to 

what the philosophical consequences of the violation of Bell's inequality really are.”  The reason 

for this seems to be that there is a general desire to minimize as much as possible any ‘mystical’ 

implications. When one investigates the evidence of quantum theory and the metaphysical 

debates surrounding it, it is impossible not to notice that there is a tendency to try and produce 

what Henry Stapp calls ‘conservative’ accounts as a matter of principle. Coherent ‘conservative’ 

accounts, however, are difficult to come by, which is why Zeilinger indicates that we may need 

to accept the message that “we have a very essential influence on reality just by deciding which 

measurement to perform.” 

 

The violation of Bell’s theorem, which has been experimentally verified over and over again 

with astonishing degrees of precision, indicates that the realm of what was once thought be 

independent ‘matter’ and the realm of mind are not separate but interpenetrate in a nonlocal 

quantum field of potentiality.  

 

One implication of Bell’s theorem is the correctness of quantum field theory as the most 

fundamental physical and metaphysical account of ‘Reality’. As the physicist and philosopher 

Bernard d’Espagnat, who has pondered, investigated and written about these issues over a long 

period, writes:  

…what, from a philosophical standpoint, is by far the most remarkable feature of 

quantum field theory is that it reduces the (scientifically unmanageable) notion 



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“creation” [of particles] to the (scientifically tractable) notion “state change.” And the 

point that is relevant to the here considered issue is that it succeeds in doing so by 

making primary some concepts of a general nature - such as fields associated with types 

of particles - and secondary the concept of individualized particles. Consequently, if we 

are on the lookout for some concept, or “mathematical algorithm,” that this theory could 

be identified as referring to the “basic stuff,” we can find none except, conceivably, the 

element the state of which changes when a particle gets “created” or “annihilated”. … 

Now, in the theory, there are not myriads and myriads of such elements. Indeed there is 

just one! Which means that, conceptually speaking, the theory is as far from atomism as 

it is conceivably possible for a theory to be.
30

 

It would seem that the most obvious conclusion is precisely that which is indicated by quantum 

field theory conjoined with the obvious conclusion that the ultimate quantum field must have 

mind-like qualitative features; otherwise none of us would have minds.  In other words the 

fundamental ‘stuff’ of reality is a vast non-local quantum field of potentiality which has an 

internal qualitative aspect of non-individuated consciousness, awareness or cognizance.  Not only 

is this conclusion “as far from atomism as it is conceivably possible for a theory to be” it is also 

completely inconsistent with any kind of crude metaphysical materialism adopted by Coyne with 

his “Yeah - those are solid things” approach. 

 

The above outline is an unbiased and correct account of the current evidence according to 

quantum theory, which is the most fundamental and precise account of the ultimate nature of the 

‘physical’ world currently available to us. However, the comments made by Coyne supporters on 

Tsakiris’ website
31

 would seem to indicate that they, like Coyne himself, do not bother to 

familiarize themselves with the evidence before dashing to defend crude materialist views. The 

following are a selection of comments (which I comment on): 

One of the worst interviews I ever wasted my time listening to.  It’s clear the host has an 

agenda and is only interested in forcing everything to fit it.  You had as your guest one 

of the most renowned evolutionary biologists in the world, and all you can do is push 

your own wacky pet theories about consciousness? 

The ideas that Tsakiris is trying to make Coyne consider as significant for his own field of 

investigation are not Tsakiris’ “wacky pet theories about consciousness”, they are notions 

suggested by the quantum evidence and considered as very real implications by many physicists. 

In fact some of the early founding fathers of quantum mechanics came to such conclusions. 

According to Schrödinger, for instance: 

Mind has erected the objective outside world … out of its own stuff.
32

  

And Max Planck came to a similar conclusion: 

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force... We must assume behind this 

force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all 

matter.
33

 

More recently quantum cosmologist Andre Linde has suggested: 

Is it possible that consciousness, like spacetime, has its own intrinsic degrees of 

freedom, and that neglecting these will lead to a description of the universe that is 



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fundamentally incomplete?  What if our perception is as real as (or maybe in a certain 

sense, are even more real than) material objects?
34

 

But committed MUDs simply dismiss such views by calling it “wacky” or full of “woo”: 

The idea that quantum effects change any previous observation of non quantum 

processes is just nonsense. It is the stuff of woo and charlatanism, not science. 

Such assertions, however, are just not true. It is becoming clear now that quantum processes are 

found in situations where previously it was, dogmatically, asserted they were impossible. 

Research on the internet will uncover articles in scientific journals announcing such discoveries 

as the possibility that “quantum entanglement that holds our DNA together”
35

 and “Nobel Prize 

for medicine in 2008, Luc Montagnier, is claiming that DNA can send ‘electromagnetic imprints’ 

of itself into distant cells and fluids which can then be used by enzymes to create copies of the 

original DNA”
36

, and “DNA Can Discern Between Two Quantum States, Research Shows”
37

, 

and: 

Who said only plants are capable of photosynthesis? A study shows that an insect is also 

able to convert energy from sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into food. The study, 

entitled “Light-induced electron transfer and ATP synthesis in a carotene synthesizing 

insect“, published on August 16, shows that the pea aphid (Acyrthosiphon pisum) can 

absorb energy from the sun and transfer it to a type of “cellular machinery” involved in 

energy production.
38

 

 

 
Figure 5 - Pea aphid

39
 

 

The extent to which quantum effects operate in biological mechanisms is a matter (or non-

matter) for scientific investigation, not dogmatic abuse.  In MUD forums, however, dogmatic 

abuse to a large extent rules the day: 

This was very frustrating. The host has a profound misunderstanding of evolution, 

neurobiology and physics. Then he tries to mush them all together to create an 

alternative reality with absolutely no evidence to back it up (and no, quoting papers you 

don’t understand doesn’t count as evidence). I don't know his background, but he surely 

appears completely deluded by his desire and perception that the “materialistic 

worldview is about to be overturned”, whatever that means. He should never interview a 

scientist again. Just bring people like Deepak Chopra and have some fun in woo woo 

land.  

 



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Although, as we have seen, there is serious and compelling scientific evidence that crude 

materialism cannot be true, those stuck in the MUD worldview, without looking into the details 

of the evidence, assert that the notion that materialism has been undermined is nothing more than 

a ‘belief system’:    

 After listening to a number of episodes of Skeptico it is obvious to me that far from 

being an objective and dispassionate examination of the subjects examined, it is in fact a 

vehicle for propaganda in the service of your belief system. But you have stooped to 

new depths in claiming that quantum non-locality defeats materialism  

How does this claim match up with the facts described above, and the further fact that the most 

fundamental level of reality, the quantum field, is “insubstantial?”
40

 

 

Here is another attempted MUD defense: 

The quoted extract from the abstract appears to me to give the wrong impression out of 

its context.  But don’t take my word for it read the complete abstract is here… Scopus 

lists 90 articles citing this article and there are probably many others.  No doubt Alex, 

using his extensive knowledge of the literature of quantum theory, will be able to inform 

us precisely which ones cite it as “the final nail in the coffin of Materialism.” 

Again we find what seems to be either an inability to appreciate, or a wilful avoidance of, the 

obvious implications of assertions clearly made in the cited paper. Here is a relevant passage 

from the abstract of the cited paper:    

Most working scientists hold fast to the concept of ‘realism’ - according to which an 

external reality exists independent of observation. But quantum physics has shattered 

some of our cornerstone beliefs. According to Bell’s theorem, any theory that is based 

on the joint assumption of realism and locality (meaning that local events cannot be 

affected by actions in space-like separated regions) is at variance with certain quantum 

predictions.
41

 

To make the point more pointedly one might rewrite this for Coyne and his infatuated MUD 

fans: 

Working scientists such as evolutionary biologists, Jerry Coyne being a case in point, 

hold fast to the concept of ‘realism’ - according to which an external reality exists 

independent of observation … 

And, it should be apparent to anyone with moderate intelligence that the kind of materialism 

embraced by Coyne does not include a type of ‘matter’ which is dependent upon observation! 

 

The fact is that the demonstration of the violation of Bell’s inequality does undermine crude 

materialism. But the contributors to MUD blogs never look into the evidence and arguments in 

the detail required to appreciate the facts. One might make a case that perhaps Tsakiris was not 

as acute and incisive in his approach as he might have been, but this is a different issue. 

However, Tsakiris’ suggestion that quantum discoveries must have implications for our 

understanding of the process of evolution is entirely reasonable.  

 



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In his introductory essay, A Quantum Origin of Life?, for the collection of exploratory essays, 

Quantum Aspects of Life, physicist Paul Davies suggests there are three possible configurations 

of the relationship between the classical level and the quantum level in the evolutionary process: 

1)  Quantum mechanics played a key role in the emergence of life but then became subsidiary 

to classical processes. 

2) Life began classically and then somehow evolved a few quantum mechanisms to enhance 

efficiency.  

3)  Life started out as a classically complex system, but later evolved towards “the quantum 

edge.”
42

 

But the notion that life started out classically and then discovered some quantum tricks is absurd. 

According to Hawking and Mlodinow “we are the result of quantum fluctuations in the early 

universe” so the entire process of the evolution of the universe and life had its origin in the 

quantum realm. In the light of this, and the fact that one of the most significant processes for life 

– photosynthesis – uses a fundamental quantum process, the notion that life had to hang around 

for the classical world to solidify and then later rediscovered the greater efficiency of quantum 

processes is ridiculous.  

 

Furthermore, given the fact that quantum theory does undermine crude materialism, as the 

violation of Bell’s theorem indicates, there is every reason to suppose that quantum effects might 

be important in life processes, including evolution.  According to the geneticist Steve Jones: 

DNA speaks a digital rather than analogue language and inheritance is based … on 

particles – genes – that can be recovered unchanged at any time.
43

   

However, as Tsakiris pointed out to Coyne, particles can also be quantum waves and quantum 

effects have now been found to be significant in ‘particles’ at the molecular level of genes.  

Overall, then, there is good reason to suppose that quantum effects may be significant in the 

process of evolution. But such issues are brushed aside as a matter of dogmatic belief by Coyne 

and his supporters as irrelevant.  Here is another defender of Coyne’s materialist MUD 

worldview:  

Alex Tsakiris: It’s the observer effect, Jerry. It’s the double-slit experiment. It’s our… 

Dr. Jerry Coyne: Yeah, okay, what does that have to do with… 

Alex Tsakiris: Are photons waves or particles, right? So it’s like… 

Dr. Jerry Coyne: What does that have to do with evolution? 

Alex Tsakiris: It has to do with evolution because what we find is that it’s consciousness. 

If we put our consciousness one way or another it measures this way or that way. 

What a lousy interviewer. … making up references about quantum effects on evolution … 

Here our doughty MUD, starting out with an advance barrage of attempted satire and then taking 

his or her (almost certainly a ‘he’) lead from Coyne’s performance, deploys a ridiculous 

avoidance tactic. Because the paper cited by Tsakiris does not explicitly state that quantum 

discoveries have implications for evolution theory, Coyne and his followers claim that Tsakiris is 

“making it up.”  But this claim is absurd. The discovery that reality is not as ‘real’ as classical 

physics treated it as being, clearly has undermining implications for the materialist worldview. 

And classical physics was the kind of physics extant in Darwin’s time, Darwin lived in a 

mistaken ‘classical’ scientific worldview and Darwinism is a ‘classical’ theory.  As we have 



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seen, there is good reason to think that the violation of Bell’s theorem means that entirely 

isolated self–enclosed information cannot be carried by independent gene units. It also implies, 

because of being dependent upon observation, that all matter is entangled with consciousness. 

This is why quantum decoherence theorist Wojciech Zurek has clearly said with regard to the 

‘choice’ of quantum alternatives that: 

…the ultimate evidence for the choice of one alternative resides in our illusive 

“consciousness”
44

  

And Roger Penrose tells us that with regard to the quantum ‘collapse of the wavefunction’: 

…at the large end of things, the place where ‘the buck stops’ is provided by our 

conscious perceptions.  …
45

 

None of this subtlety, however, has any interest for the defenders and proponents of MUD:  

If anybody wonders who has the agenda here, this should make it obvious. Care to show 

us that quote in the Nature paper, Alex? Nonlocality is deep and profound, but it has 

nothing to do with evolution. And almost surely has nothing to do with consciousness 

either. 

Such assertions would seem to indicate a deep and impressive commitment to the cause of 

ignorance.  

Here is another misguided MUD comment: 

So how have you managed to persuade yourself that consciousness might quite feasibly 

pre date life? Surely consciousness is not a ‘thing’ that can (say) move around, but a 

property of (conscious) things such as brains. So just as a lamp (when switched off) does 

not become a lamp plus `brightness` which then floats away, so too does a brain, when 

unconscious, become an (unconscious) brain, not a brain and some free floating 

consciousness! If you do not believe that consciousness is a property of the brain but is 

somehow separate from it and irreducible (a la Descartes), then how do you account for 

periods of unconsciousness, such as when in non-dream sleep or under anaesthesia? 

Why on your woo model are you not still fully conscious, though temporarily unable to 

control your brain?  If you think that consciousness might pre date life, then what 

exactly was conscious back then?   

But it is not the case that the new perspective required by the quantum evidence requires that we 

think, “a la Descartes” that consciousness and matter are separate aspects of the process of 

reality, with consciousness being some kind of immaterial “free floating” field of awareness. It is 

vital to be aware that Descartes and the other pre-quantum Western philosophers did not have 

access to full knowledge of the nature of the ‘physical’ world. For them the quantum level was 

entirely hidden and therefore they essentially considered that the apparently ‘material’ world 

actually is as it appears - solidly extended immutable ‘stuff’ with no subtle internal structure.  

Even Max Planck, the instigator of quantum theory, at the beginning of his career thought that 

matter was internally continuous with no atomic structure
46

.  From this perspective the apparent 

ontological aspects of ‘matter’ and ‘mind’ seem absolutely irreconcilable. The quantum 

revolution changes this situation dramatically for, as Stapp points out, we now know that: 



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We live in an idealike world, not a matterlike world.’  The material aspects are 

exhausted in certain mathematical properties, and these mathematical features can be 

understood just as well (and in fact better) as characteristics of an evolving idealike 

structure.  There is, in fact, in the quantum universe no natural place for matter.  This 

conclusion, curiously, is the exact reverse of the circumstances that in the classical 

physical universe there was no natural place for mind.
47

    

In the new paradigm of the ‘quantum universe’ the apparent independent solidity of matter, 

which is an illusion (matter is 99.9999999999999% empty space!), is a solidification of quantum 

‘dream-stuff’ which is a kind of infinite energetic potentiality. Furthermore Stapp indicates that 

this energy field is “idealike” and immaterial, a view which is shared by many significant 

physicists.  

 

Certainly we know that the quantum fields which underlie the manifestation of the material 

world are insubstantial and immaterial. The evidence also suggests that they must also have a 

potentiality to produce consciousness and cognition within organic organisms.  This further 

means that at the quantum field level there has to be vast potentiality and potential awareness. 

This is why Planck, at the end of his career, said: 

 I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from 

consciousness.
48

  

This does not mean, however, that Planck thought that the quantum field is conscious in the same 

qualitative way that human beings are conscious, plotting and designing sentient beings in order 

to get a foothold in the material world so to speak.  The immaterial ground quantum field of the 

process of reality is most appropriately conceived of as a vast ‘ocean’ of energetic potentiality 

that has an internal quality of the potential awareness of consciousness.  The physicist David 

Bohm described this as the holomovement within an ‘implicate order’: 

I propose something like this: Imagine an infinite sea of energy filling empty space, with 

waves moving around in there, occasionally coming together and producing an intense 

pulse. Let’s say one particular pulse comes together and expands, creating our universe 

of space-time and matter. But there could well be other such pulses. To us, that pulse 

looks like a big bang; in a greater context, it’s a little ripple. Everything emerges by 

unfoldment from the holomovement, then enfolds back into the implicate order. I call the 

enfolding process “implicating,” and the unfolding “explicating.” The implicate and 

explicate together are a flowing, undivided wholeness. Every part of the universe is 

related to every other part but in different degrees.
49

 

And for Bohm, as for Planck, Schrödinger, Heisenberg and other physicists, consciousness, or 

potential consciousness, is an innate and inseparable aspect of this immaterial realm which 

underlies the apparently material realm.  Furthermore, as Bohm states, “every part of the 

universe is related to every other part but in different degrees;” this interconnection accounts for 

a deep level of the evolutionary interrelationships between creatures and environments.  Because 

of the deeply connected nature of the quantum field there must be a quantum informational 

interconnection between environments and the creatures within them. 

  



DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 407 

  
                                                      

1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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“It” from bit”? A participatory universe? Three far-reaching challenges from John Archibald Wheeler and their 

relation to experiment.’ 
6
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7
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8
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9
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10
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11
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14
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15
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16
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17
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18
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19
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20
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21
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22
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23
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Alamos Science Number 27 2002   
24

  John D., Davies, Paul C. W., Harper, Charles L. (eds) (2004) p577 – Wheeler, J A (1999) ‘Information, physics, 

quantum: the search for links.’ In Feynman and Computation: Exploring the Limits of Computers, ed. A. J. G. Hey, 

p309 (314). Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books. 
25

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Institute) November 10, 2009. 
26

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27

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28

 Hawking, Stephen & Mlodinow, Leonard (2010), 136-140 
29

 Hawking, Stephen & Mlodinow, Leonard (2010), 286 
30

 d’ Espagnat, B (2003), p317 
31

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32

 Schrödinger, E. (1944) p121. 
33

 Das Wesen der Materie” (The Nature of Matter), speech at Florence, Italy, 1944 (from Archiv zur Geschichte der 

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797) 
34

 Barrow, John D., Davies, Paul C. W., Harper, Charles L. (eds) (2004) p451 – Andrei Linde: ‘Inflation, quantum 

cosmology and the anthropic principle.’ 
35

 http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-06/quantum-entanglement-may-hold-dna-together-new-study-says 
36

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37

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38

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39

 http://myrmecos.net/insects/Aphid4.html 
40

 Allday, Jonathan (2009) 
41

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42

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http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&field-author=ABBOTT%20DEREK%20ET%20AL&search-alias=books-uk&sort=relevancerank


DNA Decipher Journal | July 2013 | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | pp. 385-408 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Genes[?]: Bell’s Theorem, Quantum Entanglement, Consciousness & Evolution 

 

ISSN: 2159-046X DNA Decipher Journal 
Published by QuantumDream, Inc. 

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 408 

                                                                                                                                                                           

44
 Zurek Wojciech H.(2002). ‘ Decoherence and the Transition from Quantum to Classical – Revisited’ in Los 

Alamos Science Number 27 2002   
45

 Penrose, Roger (1995), 309 
46

 Al-Khalili, Jim (2003) 
47

 Stapp, Henry (2004), 223 
48

 The Observer (January 25th, 1931) 
49

 Interview with David Bohm, conducted by F. David Peat and John Briggs, was originally published in Omni, 

January 1987. 


