Quantum Karma: Bohm’s Implicate Order and the Mind-Only Buddhist Ground Consciousness (Alayavijnana)


DNA Decipher Journal | November 2011 | Vol. 1 | Issue 3 | pp. 351-382 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’ Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 

 

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

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 351 

Article  
Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’  

Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 
 

Graham P. Smetham
*
 

 

Abstract 
In this exploration of Ramachandran’s account of metaphor and language, taking account of 

the actual evidence provided by evolutionary development biology and quantum physics, we 

find that his naïve materialist perspective of how brain functioning creates the world of 

meaning is nothing more than a phantom in his brain. Yet again it will be shown that the 

primary process of evolution is not that which takes place over time on the material plane but, 

rather, it is that process of development which cascades from a deep quantum level of 

intentionality through a sequence of immaterial and subtle “implicate orders” of 

“unfoldment”, to use the terminology of David Bohm. 

 

Keywords: Ramachandran, Sean B. Carroll, Dawkins, Dennett, Stapp, Hawking, Wheeler, 

Bohm, materialism, evolution, evo-devo, language, synesthesia, metaphor, consciousness, 

intelligent design, creationism. 

 

Early on in his recent work The Tell-Tale Brain V. S. Ramachandran recounts a conversation 

that he once had with a member of a ‘creation science institute’, a vocation which 

Ramachandran indicates must be oxymoronic.  Having established the mental defectiveness 

of his interlocutor by association with the notion of creationism Ramachandran proceeds to 

tells us about the account given by the ‘distinguished looking man’ of the process of vision: 

There is an optical image of the chair in my eye – on my retina. The image is 

transmitted is transmitted along a nerve to the visual area of the brain and you see it. 

Of course, the image is upside down, so it has to be made upright again before you 

see it.
1
   

This account, Ramachandran tells us, ‘embodies a logical fallacy called the homunculus 

fallacy’, which is the mistaken view that there must be a ‘little man – a homunculus – inside 

you head looking at the image and interpreting or understanding it for you.’
2
 Now, although 

one might accept that the creationist’s account of the mechanism of vision is somewhat 

vague, imprecise and perhaps inept, given that he is addressing someone he might know to be 

a researcher into neurological mechanisms, it does not explicitly require the adoption of the 

notion of a homunculus inside the skull. Our unfortunate target for Ramachandran’s implicit 

ridicule might just as likely, if pressed, in fact more likely if you think about it for a moment, 

to have suggested that there must be some kind of brain mechanism doing the job of reverting 

the image, rather than an interpretative inhabitant inside the skull. However, I guess that 

creation scientists are oxymoronic enough to warrant the odd lampoon. 

                                                      

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

http://www.quantumbuddhism.com/
mailto:qb@delysid.bltc.net


DNA Decipher Journal | November 2011 | Vol. 1 | Issue 3 | pp. 351-382 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’ Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 

 

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

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 352 

An interesting side effect of this unkind treatment on the part of Ramachandran is the 

standard that it sets for the evaluation of Ramachandran’s own somewhat cavalier accounts of 

the mechanisms which he thinks are responsible for the remarkable phenomena he describes 

in his book. Consider this account from an earlier part of the book of why a patients’ phantom 

limb was exorcised along with the associated pain by the patient using a mirror in order to 

make his mind and brain ‘think’ that his remaining arm, reflected in the mirror, was the 

missing limb, a technique or  trick Ramachandran calls ‘mirror visual feedback’: 

When faced with such a welter of conflicting sensory inputs-no joint or muscle 

feedback, impotent copies of motor-command signals, and now discrepant visual 

feedback thrown in via the mirror box-the brain just gives up and says, in effect, “To 

hell with it, there is no arm.” The brain resorts to denial.
3
  

Sounds like the kind of explanation a neuroscientist might come up with at a dinner party to 

entertain non specialists.  

Ramachandran is quite exuberant with his metaphoric and anthropomorphic treatment of the 

brain and elements of the brain such as neurons. Does the fact that when the region of the 

brain called the angular gyrus is damaged a patient can no longer do simple arithmetic 

indicate that the ability to 'know number' and perform arithmetic is 'neatly packaged in the 

small tidy confines of the angular gyrus'? 
4
  Damage to this area also leads to a loss of ability 

to use metaphor, so we know that Ramachandran’s angular gyrus is in good working order. 

Does the fact that certain ‘mirror neurons' in the brain of a monkey ‘fire’ in response to the 

observation of another member of the species performing some task actually mean that the 

mirror neurons are: 

adopting the other animal's point of view. These neurons … were for all intents 

and purposes reading the other monkey’s mind, figuring out what it was up to.
5
 

Admittedly Ramachandran, in places, indicates that his brain is operating with the neurons 

responsible for employing metaphors firing vigorously: 

It is as if higher brain functions are reading the output from [mirror neurons] and 

saying (in effect), "The same neuron is now firing in my brain as would be firing 

if I were reaching out for a banana; so the other monkey must be intending to 

reach for that banana now'. It is as if your mirror neurons are nature's own virtual-

reality simulations of the intentions of other beings.
6
 

But the relentless use of this kind of personification of various areas of the brain and 'neural 

circuits' leads to the image of various bits and pieces of the brain behaving like little 

homunculi interpreting or understanding inputs, messages and so on. And on some occasions 

he invokes the metaphorical empathizing power of the mirroring capacity of some neurons 

quite literally: 

Imagine the head surgeon's astonishment when he found that the sensory pain 

neuron he was monitoring responded equally vigorously when a patient watched 

another patient being poked! It was although the neuron was empathizing with 

someone else. ... I like calling these cells "Gandhi neurons" because they blur the 

boundary between self and others - not just metaphorically, but quite literally, 

since the neuron can't tell the difference.
7
 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2011 | Vol. 1 | Issue 3 | pp. 351-382 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’ Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 

 

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

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 353 

But a few paragraph on Ramachandran' metaphor neurons (probably in his inferior parietal 

lobule) are firing at full capacity when he offers an possible explanation as to why the 

empathetic firing of sensory mirror neurons don't cause us to ‘feel everything we witness’: 

…perhaps the null signal ("I am not being touched") from skin and joint receptors 

in your own hand block the signals from your mirror neurons from reaching 

conscious awareness. The overlapping presence of the null signals and the mirror 

neuron activity is interpreted by the higher brain centers to mean "Empathize, by 

all means, but don't literally feel that other guy's sensations.
8
 

According to Ramachandran the phenomenon of metaphor is crucial to the evolution of 

language. So important is the function of ‘cross-sensory association’ that he speculates that 

the necessity to develop such a capacity may be responsible for the evolution of the angular 

gyrus: 

This leads me to wonder whether the angular gyrus may have originally evolved 

for mediating cross-sensory associations and abstractions but then, in humans, 

was coopted for making all kinds of associations, including metaphorical ones.
9
  

And, as he views and presents his vision against the background of a deeply entrenched belief 

in a hardcore materialist version of evolution - the evolutionary paradigm associated with 

Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett - it is useful to examine the naïve evolutionary 

perspective that he adopts.   

At the outset of his discussion of the evolution of language Ramachandran remarks that: 

With so many interlocking parts working in such a coordinated manner, it’s hard 

to figure out, or even imagine, how language could have evolved by the 

essentially blind process of natural selection. (By “natural selection,” I mean the 

progressive accumulation of chance variations that enhance the organism ability 

to pass on its genes to the next generation). It’s not difficult to imagine a single 

trait, such as a giraffe’s long neck, being a product of this relatively simple 

adaptive process. Giraffe ancestors that had mutant genes conferring slightly 

longer necks had better access to tree leaves, causing them to survive longer or 

breed more, which caused the beneficial genes to increase in number down 

through the generations. The result was a progressive increase in neck length. 
10

 

As we can see Ramachandran’s presentation of the process of evolution is indeed ‘relatively 

simple’ and certainly glosses over the fact that in recent years the original simplistic version 

of materialist Darwinism has had to be radically overhauled in ways which undermine the 

materialist basis of the usual view of ‘natural selection’.  Most significantly the assumption 

that the genes in each species must be essentially different has been shown to be mistaken. 

For instance the molecular biologist Sean B. Carroll writes in his excellent account of the 

evolutionary-development revolution Endless Forms Most Beautiful that the notion that the 

same solution to the development of various types of eye structure, the same solution being 

found in widely differing species, was due to different evolutionary paths has clearly been 

shown to be radically incorrect. The evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr wrote in the 1960’s 

that: 

Much that has been learned about gene physiology makes it evident that the 

search for homologous genes is quite futile except in very close relatives. If there 

is only one efficient solution for a certain functional demand, very different gene 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2011 | Vol. 1 | Issue 3 | pp. 351-382 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’ Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 

 

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

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 354 

complexes will come up with the same solution, no matter how different the 

pathway by which it is achieved. The saying “Many roads lead to Rome” is as 

true in evolution as in daily affairs. 
11

 

However, this assumption, which Mayr so confidently asserted was ‘evident’, has now been 

shown by the evolutionary-development revolution in biology to be completely false, there 

was absolutely nothing ‘evident’ about it at all!  As Carroll writes: 

The first shots in the Evo Devo revolution revealed that despite their great 

differences in appearance and physiology, all complex animals - flies and 

flycatchers, dinosaurs and trilobites, butterflies and zebras and humans - share a 

common “tool kit” of “master” genes that govern the formation and patterning of 

their bodies and body parts. … The important point to appreciate from the outset 

is that this discovery shattered our previous notions of animal relationships and of 

what made animals different, and opened up a whole new way of looking at 

evolution.
12

 

In other words, all animals, of whatever species whatsoever, share a fundamental genetic 

structure which underpins a hierarchical development of differentiation: 

Because parts of the genetic tool kit are shared among most branches of the 

animal kingdom, they must date back, at least, to some common ancestor of those 

branches. That would place their origin far back in time, before the Cambrian 

explosion that marked the emergence of large, complex animal bodies, more than 

500 million years ago.
13

 

This clearly means that the fundamental gene template structure underlying all forms of 

animal life was in place at the very beginning of evolutionary diversification. As Carroll’s 

explanation of the operation makes clear, the evolution through ‘random mutation’ producing 

the long neck of giraffes or the long truck of elephants and so on applies to the manner in 

which the basic template becomes modified, apparently through interaction with the 

environment, although, as we shall see, the notion that this is a mechanism mediated purely 

on the gene level, or that the entire process is essentially ‘random’, is now beginning to look 

suspect, there is evidence that intentional-like quantum processes, or ‘quantum epiontic’ 

processes, may be involved.  

An example of the fact that the various species are the result of variations based upon the 

theme of a fundamental animal template is provided by Hox genes:  

A large body of work—on birds, frogs, mammals, and snakes, as well as insects, 

shrimp, and spiders—has proved that shifts in where Hox genes are expressed in 

embryos are responsible for the major differences among both vertebrates and 

arthropods. Those shifts account, for instance, for the way a snake forms its 

unique long body, with hundreds of rib-bearing vertebrae and essentially no neck, 

in contrast to other vertebrates [see photograph (below – fig 1)]. The shifts 

explain why insects have just six legs and other arthropods have eight or more. 

The new imagery of evo-devo can pinpoint when and how the development of 

these animals diverges. The study of Hox genes has shown how, at an entirely 

new and fundamental level, these animals are the products of variations on 

ancient body plans—not wholly independent inventions.
14

 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2011 | Vol. 1 | Issue 3 | pp. 351-382 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’ Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 

 

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

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 355 

 

Fig 1 - Hox genes determine the form, number, and evolution of repeating parts, such as the number and type 

of vertebrae in animals with backbones. In the developing chick (left), the Hoxc-6 gene controls the pattern of 

the seven thoracic vertebrae (highlighted in purple), all of which develop ribs. In the garter snake (right), the 

region controlled by the Hoxc-6 gene (purple) is expanded dramatically forward to the head and rearward to the 

cloaca.
15

 

The point is that both the chick and the garter snake body morphology develop from the same 

fundamental template through the alteration of the way that the Hoxc-6 gene is expressed, 

and the expression is in turn determined by the activity of previously expressed genes, down 

through a hierarchical development of gene expression which takes place upon the basis of a 

fundamental animal ‘template’, a basic blueprint for sentient existence which Carroll refers to 

as ‘ancient body plans’.  As Carroll says: 

…it is now clear that most body-building genes were in place long before most 

kinds of animal body plans and complex organs emerged.
16

 

The question which immediately arises, of course, is that of the origin of the ‘ancient body 

plans’. Now a hardened believer in materialist evolution would probably want to say that the 

primordial template for animal existence itself must have evolved. However, this will not do 

because the evidence of the evo-devo paradigm clearly indicates, as Carroll points out, that 

evolution requires somewhere back in the distance mists of the primeval swamp there is a 

‘common ancestor’ which provides the basic gene template, so somewhere back in the chain 

there must be some prototypical ultimate common ancestor. 

The crucial issue, however, is whether or not we are to believe that there were at some point 

in the mists of the distant evolutionary past some kind of primal animal, swimming, roaming, 

slithering or, to employ an idiom instigated by Susan Blackmore, blobbing
17

 around a 

primeval landscape.  A good example to consider is the case of the distal-less gene complex 

which has a remarkable range of applications.  Simon Conway Morris describes the situation 

as follows: 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2011 | Vol. 1 | Issue 3 | pp. 351-382 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’ Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 

 

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

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 356 

As with Pax-6 the original function of this gene is not certain, but some evidence 

suggests that its primary role was linked with the development in the embryo of the 

nervous system, and especially the sensory organs. Now it so happens that in 

arthropods many of the sensory organs are located on the appendages, and 

accordingly when there was need for improved sensory perception so parts of the 

body protruded to extend the sensory range of the sensory cells. Only later were such 

outgrowths on occasion employed for such purposes as locomotion. The widespread 

expression of the gene distal-less is, therefore, effectively a reflection of the 

recurrent and independent evolution of such limbs: in a sense distal-less hitchhikes 

as a sensory protrusion and is subsequently transformed to allow an additional 

function such as a leg or an antenna.
18

 

So it appears that the same gene complex responsible for organizing protrusions for extending 

the range of sensory apparatus were ‘only later’ ‘employed for such purposes as locomotion.’ 

The impression which is easily gleaned from such presentations is that there must be a 

sequence of animals across which a sense protrusion is, due to chance random mutation, 

gradually transformed into walking apparatus. But the notion that there could have been an 

intermediate animal which used the same protrusion to see and walk, or smell and walk, or 

hear and walk etc. is clearly difficult to contemplate seriously. This sense of dissonance is 

even more pronounced with the transformation which is supposed to have taken place, via 

‘natural selection’, from gills to wings. Carroll tells us that: 

The gill-to-wing theory always had evidence in its favor (just not enough weight to 

settle the matter).  But, if indeed insect wings came from crustacean gill branches, 

does this mean that some kind of crayfish or shrimp just crawled onto land and 

started flying? No, not at all. There were many evolutionary steps between animals 

that carried a set of respiratory appendages and the origin of powered insect flight on 

two pairs of wings as we know it today.
19

 

But such a dogmatic belief in the power of gradualist ‘natural selection’ cannot mask the fact 

that, if this account were to be correct, there must be a point in the evolution from gill to wing 

when the final creature in the evolutionary sequence abandoned the gill function completely 

and threw in its lot with a life on the wing so to speak, and also, just as a few mutations back, 

there must have been an animal using its wings for extracting the odd fix of oxygen from 

water. Does this sound plausible?  

For Carroll, however, the fact that the same gene complex is responsible for limbs, gills and 

wings indicates that the one must have somehow transformed into the other through a fully 

materialized process of animal transformation through intermediate stages, which clearly 

means that there must have been an animal around at some walking and flying with the same 

appendage (the bat, of course does cling with its wings, but that is hardly walking!): 

In addition to showing how evolution can change the number and kind of 

repeated body structures, evo-devo is shedding light on how novel structures and 

new patterns evolve. Bird feathers, for instance, are prominent examples of 

novelties that have emerged from changes in the ways tool-kit genes are 

expressed. So are the hands and feet of four-legged vertebrates, the insect wing, 

and the geometric color patterns on the wings of butterflies. It is easy to imagine 

that insects invented “wing” genes, or birds “feather” genes, or vertebrates 

“hand” and “finger” genes. But there is no evidence that such genes ever arose. 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2011 | Vol. 1 | Issue 3 | pp. 351-382 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’ Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 

 

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

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 357 

On the contrary, innovation seems to be more a matter of teaching old genes new 

tricks.
20

 

The notion here is that there was a first in the lineage of appendages, the original appendage 

whose ‘genes’ subsequently learnt ‘new tricks.’ If we accept the view then there ought to be a 

straight forward progression, and there are many suggestive snippets of clearly connected 

sequences such as the development of insect wings, supposedly from the ‘gill-like 

appendages’ of now extinct aquatic nymph forms, shown in fig 2 which is reproduced from 

Endless Forms Most Beautiful
21

.  

 

Fig 2 

However, the view proposed by Carroll and other who wish to defend a thorough going 

materialist Darwinism is that it is the direct material interaction between the activity of the 

aquatic nymph form and its putative descendents and the environment which drives the purely 

material functioning of material gene structure underlying the entire process. Thus the 

sequence in fig 2 is   considered to be an evolution over time which is taking place purely on a 

fully materialized level, somehow directly affecting the way in which a fundamental gene 

structure underlying all animal forms is expressed. 

However, this one dimensional interpretation is not necessarily correct because it is clearly 

mediated by the desire to fit a mainstream Darwinian interpretation onto the evidence, ruling 

out other, more plausible, viewpoints. In fact we can detect here exactly the same 

determination to remain within the materialist Darwinian paradigm that led Mayr to 

confidently proclaim the ‘many roads to Rome’ view of genetic development which later 

turned out to be completely wrong. As Carroll says the evo-devo revolution ‘vaporized many 

previous ideas about how animals differ from one another.’
22

 

 As we shall see it is far more likely that the morphogenetic template which underlies both the 

expression of wings or gills lies on a deeper intentional structure of reality perhaps residing at 

the quantum level as quantum ‘probability structures’ or ‘implicate’ organizational structures.  

The term ‘implicate’ was employed by the quantum physicist David Bohm who indicated that 

the evidence of quantum theory suggests a deep, hidden quantum level of reality from which 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2011 | Vol. 1 | Issue 3 | pp. 351-382 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’ Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 

 

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

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 358 

the life forms within the material world emerge. The quantum ‘implicate’ levels which 

contains traces of previous events and activities which occurs at the manifested ‘explicate’ 

level. In this case, rather than having to believe in a fantastic sequence of transformational 

animals each having a mixed appendage doing two jobs, the percentage devoted to one 

increasing whilst the percentage allocated to the other decreases, we consider that there may 

be a feature of the deeper organizational template, probably located within quantum 

‘implicate’ orders, within which a protrusion appendage may be employed for various 

purposes, such as having an eye at the end or, on the other hand so to speak, walking. This 

multipurpose template is then ‘expressed’ in the appropriate form depending upon the animal 

and the particular part of the animal being expressed. Such a viewpoint does not rule out 

evolution across time but it does not dogmatically assert this aspect to be the only or even 

primary cause. The evo-devo evidence fits this scenario far more closely (see my article 

Quantum Evo-Devo Universe: Quantum Evolution and the Evidence of Evolutionary-

Developmental Biology in DNA Decipher Journal, Vol 1, No 2 (2011)); however there seems 

to be an in built desire, perhaps a product of evolution itself, within the practitioners of the 

biological sciences to keep the evolutionary perspective fully materialistic and mechanistic in 

demeanor. 

This tendency is nicely illustrated by Carroll’s discussion of the transition from ‘many gills to 

a pair of wings’. The origin of insect wings, Carroll tells us, had for a long time been a 

‘contentious mystery,’ there were a couple of proposals but no consensus and no clinching 

evidence. But then, apparently, evo-devo came to the rescue with the discovery of the proteins 

involved in producing wings: Apterous and Nubbin: 

In order to test the theory that wings might be derived from the gill branches of 

crustaceans, Michalis Averof and Stephen Cohen traced how the Apterous and 

Nubbin proteins were expressed in the appendage of other arthropods, especially 

crustaceans. They found, quite strikingly, that apterous and nubbin were 

selectively expressed in the respiratory lobe of the outer branch of crustacean 

limbs. The best explanation for this observation is that the respiratory lobe and 

insect wing are homologous-that is, the same body part in different forms in the 

two animals. … The most probably scenario is that Apterous and Nubbin were 

used in making respiratory lobes in an aquatic crustacean ancestor of insects and 

have stayed on the job ever since…
23

    

But the fact that the respiratory lobe of the crustacean and the insect wing are homologous as 

Carroll describes does not necessarily prove that crustaceans are ancestors of insects, it more 

plausibly suggests that there is an ‘implicate’, or quantum level (or somewhere between the 

deepest quantum level and full materiality), animal template which can vary according 

various factors including environment, the particular animal forms which end up in various 

environments over vast tracks of time will obviously depend upon environment. So over long 

time periods it would appear as if a purely linear materialist type of evolution were taking 

place where in reality a lot happens to be going on at deeper, hidden, perhaps quantum 

implicate levels. 

It is intriguing to note the way in which current evo-devo enthusiasts are desperately trying to 

fit the new evo-devo evidence, evidence which by Carroll’s own admission contradicts the 

hardcore or ‘ultra-Darwinian’ perspective (although it does not contradict Darwin’s 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2011 | Vol. 1 | Issue 3 | pp. 351-382 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’ Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 

 

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

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 359 

fundamental insights, only the hardcore interpretation of these), into the Darwinian paradigm. 

Thus Carroll tells us that: 

Advances in the new science of evolutionary developmental biology—dubbed 

“evo-devo” for short—have enabled biologists to see beyond the external beauty 

of organic forms into the mechanisms that shape their diversity. Much of what has 

been learned, about animal forms in particular, has been so stunning and 

unexpected that it has profoundly expanded and reshaped the picture of how 

evolution works. In the same stroke, evo-devo delivers some crushing blows 

against the outdated rhetoric of those who doubt that complex structures and 

organisms arise through natural selection.
24

 

In other words the dogmatic beliefs that were foisted onto the simple Darwinian insight into 

the appearance of a purely materialist type evolution of species apparently driven by 

(selfish!) genes as ultimate units of existence (although such a view was never very plausible, 

despite its popular appeal) have clearly been shown to be what they always were, mistaken 

assumptions based on the prior acceptance of a materialist-mechanist worldview. But, Carroll 

is quick to point out that the new insight, having demolished the mistakes of the old style 

Darwinism, still, he thinks, delivers a ‘crushing blow’ to those who disbelieve ‘natural 

selection.’  The question he fails to address, however, is how different the evo-devo ‘natural 

selection’ is from the old, Dawkins style, perspective.  In particular do the new insights allow 

room, or even suggest, that the operation of some kind of intelligence at work in the process 

of evolution.  

The most plausible and coherent explanation of the evo-devo phenomenon is that the 

primordial template was never a fully materialized animal but, rather, resided as what Rupert 

Sheldrake calls quantum ‘virtual’ morphogenetic field  within what quantum physicist David 

Bohm called a quantum implicate order. Sheldrake describes the process of embryonic 

development as follows: 

The development of multicellular organisms takes place through a series of stages 

controlled by a succession of morphogenetic fields.  At first the embryonic tissues 

develop under the control of primary embryonic fields.  Then … different regions 

come under the influence of secondary fields, in animals those of limbs, eyes, ears 

etc. … Generally speaking, the morphogenesis brought about by the primary fields is 

not spectacular, because it establishes the characteristic differences between cells in 

different regions that enable them to act as the morphogenetic germs of the organ 

fields. Then in the tissues developing under their influence, germs of subsidiary 

fields, fields which control the morphogenesis of structures within the organ as a 

whole…
25

 

Thus the development of the embryo is controlled by a nested hierarchy of morphogenetic 

fields, which are, according to Sheldrake, ‘quantum probability fields’
26

 akin to Bohm’s 

implicate orders. This is exactly what we should expect in a Quantum Evo-Devo Universe; 

the development of the embryo cascades through hierarchical levels of quantum 

morphogenetic fields in the same way that evolution also took place through a sequence of 

quantum implicate orders. 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2011 | Vol. 1 | Issue 3 | pp. 351-382 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’ Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 

 

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

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 360 

A crucial implication of this viewpoint is that we should expect to find that aspects of animal 

morphology should anticipate what is to ‘evolve’ later, a situation which throws the entire 

materialist evolutionary paradigm into a questionable light. According to Conway Morris this 

is exactly what we can find when we look without the blinkers of a presupposed materialist-

evolutionary perspective: 

To give one example: the central nervous system of amphioxus is really rather 

simple. It consists of an elongate nerve chord stretching back along the body, 

above the precursor of the vertebral column (our backbone, consisting of a row of 

vertebrae) and a so called brain. The brain can only be described as a 

disappointment. It is little more than an anterior swelling … and has no obvious 

sign in terms of its morphology of even the characteristic threefold division seen 

in the vertebrate brain of hind-, mid-, and fore-sections. Yet the molecular 

evidence, which is also backed up by some exquisitely fine studies of 

microanatomy, suggests that, cryptically, the brain of amphioxus has regions 

equivalent to the tripartite division seen in the vertebrates. 

     The clear implication of this is that folded within the simple brain of 

amphioxus is what can almost be described as a template for the equivalent organ 

of the vertebrates: in some sense amphioxus carries the inherent potential for 

intelligence.
27

 

This insight, that it is ‘molecular evidence’ that indicates a tripartite division within the brain 

of the amphioxus is precisely what one would expect on the basis of Bohm’s implicate order 

hypothesis, which is the notion that seeds of future development would be ‘enfolded’, which 

is the term Bohm used, into the quantum level, which resides, as it were, just beneath the 

molecular. So, here, as Conway Morris suggests, we can see ‘the foundations of the 

molecular architecture which underpins our brains and sentience’
28

 Intriguingly the 

amphioxus-like animals were extant during the Cambrian period so may perhaps be 

considered to be one of the earliest fully materialized manifestations of  a pre-Cambrian 

virtual ‘common ancestor’. Indeed, in the same way that aquatic crustaceans are suggested as 

beings ‘ancestors’, or ‘predecessors’ of insects, amphioxus is assumed to be the beginning of 

a line of evolution leading to the vertebrates.
29

 However, as we have see, the notion that such 

a development is purely and simply a matter of a materialist-mechanistic accidental random 

continuous rearrangement of essentially lifeless material stuff is wearing thin, there is 

significant evidence that there are deeper levels of life-giving dimensions. 

 

 



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 Fig 3 – The amphioxus animal 

 

At this point it is worth considering the issue of what kind of ‘stuff’ the evolutionary process 

is made of so to speak. Daniel Dennett, possibly the monarch of materialist thought, tells us 

that: 

The prevailing wisdom, variously expressed and argued for, is materialism: there is 

only one sort of stuff, namely matter – the physical stuff of physics, chemistry and 

physiology – and the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon.  In 

short the mind is the brain.
30

  

The notion that ‘the mind is the brain’ will find a willing believer in Ramachandran, but if 

Dennett really believes that the stuff of physics is ‘matter’, as the term is generally conceived 

of is incorrect. In his recent book Quantum Reality: Theory and Philosophy Jonathan Allday, 

in a section he entitles ‘Substance Abuse’, tells us that within quantum field theory, at the 

lowest level so to speak, there is no substance, the quantum field is actually ‘empty’ of 

substance. He writes: 

Now, from a philosophical point of view, this is rather big stuff.  Our whole manner 

of speech … rather naturally makes us think that there is some stuff or substance on 

which properties can, in a sense, be glued.  It encourages us to imagine taking a 

particle and removing its properties one by one until we are left with a featureless 

‘thing’ devoid of properties, made from the essential material that had the properties 

in the first place. Philosophers have been debating the correctness of such 

arguments for a long time. Now, it seems, experimental science has come along and 

shown that, at least at the quantum level, the objects we study have no substance to 

them independent of their properties.
31

  

Because there is no substantiality (and here Allday is using the term ‘substance’ to indicate 

‘matter’ as physicists and philosophers have generally understood the term) within quantum 

field theory the term ‘particle’ is dropped and the term ‘quanta’ is used, and these are 

‘objects which have properties but not substances’.
32

 

Another fundamental feature of quantum field theory is that fields are said to capable of 

creating and destroying quantum states; mathematically this is represented by creation and 



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 362 

destruction operators.  But can we give some indication of what is really going on?  What is 

actually doing the creating or destroying? According to the recent ‘quantum Darwinism’ 

perspective: 

…quantum states, by their very nature share an epistemological and ontological 

role – are simultaneously a description of the state, and the ‘dream stuff is made 

of.’  One might say that they are epiontic.  These two aspects may seem 

contradictory, but at least in the quantum setting, there is a union of these two 

functions.
33

  

In other words the quantum ‘dream stuff’ of reality, which is the non-substantial quantum 

field,  is capable of producing the seeming solidity of the material world and the processes 

within it from out of  ‘epiontic’ (epistemology creates ontology) acts of quantum perception. 

According to the quantum Darwinism perspective: 

…focuses on the fact that proliferation of certain information throughout the 

environment makes its further proliferation more likely.
34

 

According to this interpretation the more often a quantum event becomes manifest the more 

likely it is to proliferate throughout the environment.  This new quantum perspective 

indicates that: 

… the appearance of the classical reality can be viewed as the result of the 

emergence of the preferred states from within the quantum substrate through the 

Darwinian paradigm, once the survival of the fittest quantum states and 

selective proliferation of the information about them throughout the universe 

are properly taken into account.
35

 

The ‘classical reality’ is the appearance of the everyday ‘material’ world and its apparent 

processes, including evolution; it therefore would seem to be the case that the appearance of 

classical level Darwinian evolution is ‘the result of the emergence of the preferred states 

from within the quantum substrate through’ the quantum Darwinian paradigm, a paradigm 

which requires the recognition of a minimalist intentionality capable of driving the epiontic 

process which creates the emergence of the classical realm from out of the quantum field of 

potentiality. This is a dramatic conclusion because it means that the confident assertions of 

materialist philosophers such as Dennett are shown to be false. Thus Dennett’s strange 

glorification of mindlessness: 

An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery 

is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence 

consciousness, in the universe.
36

   

Cannot be taken seriously, physics clearly shows us that there is at least a minimalist epiontic 

intentionality driving the process of evolution. 

The influential physicist John Wheeler anticipated the quantum Darwinian epiontic paradigm 

when he wrote that he could only conclude from the evidence of quantum theory that:  

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.
37

  



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So for Wheeler: 

… the universe is fundamentally an information-processing system from which 

the appearance of matter emerges at a higher level of reality.
38

 

And the ubiquity with which significant physicists support this kind of view is impressive.  

Here’s Martin Rees, Cambridge University professor and Astronomer Royal: 

In the beginning there were only probabilities.  The universe could only come into 

existence if someone observed it.  … The universe exists because we are aware of 

it.
39

 

And Henry Stapp, who in his early career worked and discussed these ideas with Werner 

Heisenberg: 

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 circum-stances that in 

the classical physical universe there was no natural place for mind.
40

    

At the beginning of his scientific career Planck thought that ‘matter’ was the solid, 

continuous and independent material ‘stuff’ of reality, whereas at the end of his quantum 

investigation of the matter of the stuff of reality he came to the conclusion that:  

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

consciousness.
41

  

He also said: 

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.
42

 

And Schrödinger can to a similar conclusion: 

Mind has erected the objective outside world … out of its own stuff.
43

  

More recently the physicists Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner, in their important book 

Quantum Enigma: Physics encounters consciousness, are clearly making a parallel claim 

regarding the far reaching implications of quantum theory: 

The physical reality of an object depends on how you choose to look at it.  Physics 

had encountered consciousness but did not yet realize it.
44

 

And: 

Consciousness and the quantum enigma are not just two mysteries; they are the two 

mysteries; … … Quantum mechanics seems to connect the two.
45

 

In their recent book The Grand Design Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow also 

indicate the necessary entanglement of consciousness at the quantum level. They present 

their conclusion is as follows: 



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 364 

Quantum physics tells us that no matter how thorough our observation of the 

present, the (unobserved) past, like the future, is indefinite and exists only as a 

spectrum of possibilities.  The universe, according to quantum physics, has no 

single past, or history. 

 The fact that the past takes no definite form means that observations you make on 

a system in the present affect its past. [p82]  

And they press the point home with a description of the Wheeler cosmic delayed choice 

experiment which shows the reality of determination of the past on the quantum level and 

conclude: 

…the universe doesn’t have just a single history, but every possible history, each 

with its own probability; and our observations of its current state affect its past and 

determine the different histories of the universe, just as the observations of the 

particles in the double-slit experiment affect the particles’ past. 

In the light of all this, one can only wonder how anyone can possibly still maintain a naïve 

version of materialism as Ramachandran certainly appears to do. Indeed Henry Stapp displays 

a modicum of exasperation with the situation when he observes that: 

The only objections I know to applying the basic orthodox principles of physics to 

brain dynamics are, first, the forcefully expressed opinions of some  non-physicists 

that the classical approximation provides an entirely adequate foundation for under-

standing brain dynamics, in spite of the physics calculations that indicate the 

opposite; and, second, the opinions of some physicists that the hugely successful 

orthodox quantum theory …  should, for philosophical reasons, be replaced by 

some theory that re-converts human consciousness into a causally inert witness to 

the mindless dance of atoms.  Neither of these opinions has any rational scientific 

basis.
46

   

This is not to say that understanding brain structure and functioning at the classical level has 

no validity or use, such a claim would be ridiculous. Ramachandran’s research and work, for 

instance, clearly has a great deal of use and has helped many people. However, at several 

points in his recent book The Tell-Tale Brain he indicates that he thinks that his classical level 

(as opposed to quantum level) investigations, together with anthropomorphic (‘the brain just 

gives up…’) and metaphoric explanations or descriptions of brain functioning, will solve the 

deepest mysteries of the universe: 

I recount my investigations of various aspects of our inner mental life that we are 

naturally curious about.  How do we perceive the world? What is the so-called 

mind-body connection? … What is consciousness? How can we account for all 

those mysterious faculties that are so quintessentially human, such as art, 

language, metaphor, creativity, self-awareness, and even religious sensibilities?
47

 

But most of Ramachandran’s  questions, such as ‘What is consciousness?’, require ultimate 

answers, and if we assume, as has generally been assumed in our academic culture, that 

ultimate scientific answers as to the ultimate nature of reality is the realm of physics, then 

Ramachandran, who investigates the structure and functioning of the brain, seemingly 

assuming with Dennett that the brain somehow is, or at least generates, consciousness, is 

surely starting out down an evolutionary dead-end, for from an ultimate quantum point of 

view, as Stapp points out:  



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 365 

…no such brain exists; no brain, body, or anything else in the real world is 

composed of those tiny bits of matter that Newton imagined the universe to be 

made of.
48

  

Furthermore, one would have expected Ramachandran to be aware of these issues because in 

his introduction he writes that: 

The past two hundred years saw breathtaking progress in many areas of science. 

In physics, just when the late nineteenth-century intelligentsia were declaring that 

physical theory was all but complete, Einstein showed that space and time were 

infinitely stranger than anything dreamed of in our philosophy, and Heisenberg 

that at the sub atomic level even our most basic notions of cause and effect break 

down. As soon as we moved past our dismay, we were rewarded by the 

revelations of black holes, quantum entanglement and a hundred mysteries that 

will keep stoking our sense of wonder for centuries to come. Who would have 

thought the universe is made up of strings vibrating in tune with “God’s 

music”?
49

 

And in his epilogue he writes in a similar vein: 

Many of the greatest physicists of this century-Werner Heisenberg, Erwin 

Schrodinger, Wolfgang Pauli, Arthur Eddington, and James Jeans-have pointed 

out that the basic constituents of matter, such as quanta, are themselves deeply 

mysterious if not downright spooky, with properties bordering on the 

metaphysical. So we need not fear that the self might be any less wonderful or 

awe inspiring for being made of atoms. You can call this sense of awe and 

perpetual astonishment God, if you like.
50

 

But, although Ramachandran is prepared to allow the use of the term ‘God’ to merely indicate 

a sense of awe in the face of what he mistakenly describes as a ‘self’ which ‘made of atoms’ 

(quantum physics tells us that ultimately atoms are not independent of mind – they are, as he 

himself says, ‘downright spooky’), he is keen to try and debunk the debunkers who propound 

‘intelligent design’: 

Many complex, interwoven systems in biology have been held up by would be 

debunkers of evolutionary theory to argue for intelligent design – the idea that the 

complexities of life could only occur through divine intervention or the hand of 

God.
51

 

But it is clear that he identifies ‘intelligent design’ with ‘creationism’, which means that he 

seems to operate within the confines of two dogmatic extreme views when considering issue 

of the ultimate nature of reality: either an independent creator ‘God’ or a naïve materialism, 

and, remarkably, this naïve materialism seems to be maintained despite an awareness of the 

remarkably subtle insights into the ultimate nature of reality offered us by modern physics. 

According to Ramachandran, in line with the outmoded views of all materialist minded 

proponents of the orthodox Darwinian perspective, the evolutionary process is totally blind - a 

dark, mindless, random churning of molecular machinery which in essence is antithetical to 

life but by some mindless mystery creates mind and life.  With regard to the development of 

the eye for instance Ramachandran asks: 



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 366 

…how could a vertebrate eye evolve via natural selection? A lens and retina are 

mutually necessary, so each would be useless without the other. Yet by definition 

the mechanism of natural selection has no foresight so it couldn’t have created one 

in preparation for the other.
52

 

The answer, we are told, is supplied by Richard Dawkins who has, apparently, shown that 

there is a ‘logical evolutionary sequence that leads from the simplest possible light-sensing 

mechanism-a patch of light-sensitive cells on the outer skin-to the exquisite optical organ we 

enjoy today.’
53

 But the existence of a logical progression of steps is beside the point, it would 

be truly, truly amazing if there were not such a progression, the issue is why on earth 

‘mindless’ matter, which by definition should have absolutely no desire to see, feel, walk 

around, eat, reproduce, produce consciousness and language, or survive in any form 

whatsoever, should suddenly become desperate to survive in various formations. The 

materialist paradigm offered us by Ramachandran, Dawkins and Dennett and others requires 

us to conceive of the ultimate bits of reality to consist of ‘mindless little scraps of molecular 

machinery’ which when accidentally and randomly happen to conglomerate into certain 

formations suddenly and magically become desperate to survive.  Not only is such a view  

incoherent, it is also contrary to the evidence of quantum physics which indicates that there is 

at least a minimalist ‘epiontic’ intentionality operating within the quantum field of reality.  

In his book Life Without Genes Adrian Woolfson presents us with a poetic vision of the sort 

of field of potentiality that he imagines must have ‘existed’ before the dawn of life within the 

universe: 

In the beginning there was mathematical possibility. At the very inception of the 

universe fifteen billion years ago, a deep infinite-dimensional sea emerged from 

nothingness.  Its colourless waters, green and turquoise blue, glistened in the non-

existent light of the non-existent sun … A strange sea though, this information sea.  

Strange because it was devoid of location …
54

 

Woolfson’s, strangely haunting, suggestion is that there must have been some kind of field of 

potentiality at the inception of the universe.  This field can only be the quantum field of 

potentiality that contains: 

…all possible histories … through which the universe could have evolved to its 

present state…
55

 

In the beginning, of course, the quantum field of the universe would contain the templates for 

all the future evolutionary possibilities:  

The information sea is thus a quantum mechanical sea, composed from infinite 

repertoires of entangled quantum descriptions.
56

 

Within this all encompassing wavefunction all possibilities for evolutionary manifestation are 

encoded.  From out of the vast entangled web of infinite possibilities for manifestation only 

certain privileged members will actually make it into reality, so to speak:   

An information space of this sort would furnish a complete description of all 

potentially living and unrealizable creatures…
57

  

It therefore follows that there must be a sort of design woven into the potentialities for 

evolution; it is a vast complex design of all possible manifestations written into the quantum 

wavefunction of the universe standing on the very edge of time.  



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 367 

But such a field of potentiality is not sufficient to explain the origin of life; in addition there 

must be the internal ‘epiontic’ intentionality to unfold the potentialities into actualities. In 

Buddhist Dzogchen (Great Perfection) thought this is referred to an innate ‘excitatory 

intelligence’ or ‘pristine cognitiveness’ which operates to unfold fields of meaning and 

apparent materiality. The following is from Herbert V. Guenther’s translation and 

explanations, in his brilliant although metaphysically challenging book The Matrix of 

Mystery: Scientific and Humanistic Aspects of rDzogs-chen Thought, of the Dzogchen 

writings of the remarkable Tibetan philosopher-meditator Longchenpa: 

The root of our material-mental universe is this self-existent pristine cognitiveness, 

a point instant virtual singularity; since its facticity is open-dimensioned and not 

discernable as any concrete thing, it is a meaning-saturated field as pristine 

cognitiveness.  The radiation field of this open dimension is the intrinsic photic 

character of pristine cognitiveness.
 58 

Here we find a description of the metaphysically early virtual energetic manifestations of 

‘dynamically pulsating’ ‘pristine cognition fields’ which radiate out from the ‘point-instant 

virtual singularity’ due to its innate ‘excitatory intelligence (rigpa) whose high energy is 

termed sheer lucency’.  And it is this kind of account of the origins of the astonishing variety 

of life, which includes a field of quantum  potentiality together with an epiontic ‘excitatory 

cognitive intelligence’, which accords with both evidence of quantum physics and the 

discoveries of evo-devo. 

The following is Conway Morris’ brilliant parody of the kind of image that is regularly 

resorted to by television programmes devoted to expounding the origin of life: 

…images of warm ponds, seething volcanic springs, and massive thunderstorms 

rumbling across a deserted yet pregnant landscape are used to feed the 

imagination. At this stage, life has yet to exercise its peculiarly specific grip, its 

spinning of the genetic code, its weaving of biochemical complexities; but no 

matter: despite the vast pot-pourri of resultant chemicals, the nascent processes of 

Darwinian selection are already winnowing and reaping, the inappropriate is 

steadily devoured in chemical competition with the winners. Metaphorically the 

molecules slug it out by tooth and claw. Cycles develop, life emerges, and four 

billion years later one species invokes the marvels of autocatalysis and emergent 

properties to cap the argument. These ideas are the bread and butter, so to speak, 

of a substantial part of the origin-of-1ife industry.
59

 

And ‘feeding the imagination’ is precisely correct, the materialist paradigm relies heavily on 

the technique of lacing their descriptions and explanations with words and phrases indicating 

intentionality where there should be nothing but blank mechanism, and because materialism 

is still, despite the weight of contrary evidence, the dominant cultural and academic 

paradigm, often very weak arguments and analogies pass muster for want of clear 

philosophical analysis.  

We shall find examples of such during the course of Ramachandran’s account of his theory 

of the evolution of ‘language competence’:  

This competence is controlled by genes that were selected for by the evolutionary 

process. Our questions in the rest of this chapter are, Why were these genes 

selected, and how did this highly sophisticated competence evolve? Is it modular? 



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How did it get started? And how did we make the evolutionary transition from the 

grunts and growls of our apelike ancestors to the transcendent lyricism of 

Shakespeare?
60

 

The usual materialist assumption that evolution is a process of the accidental transformation 

of absolute meaninglessness into a world of ‘transcendent’ meaning, and this is the paradigm 

which Ramachandran operates within. However, it must be pointed out that in this 

introductory snippet the picture offered is one of a transition from a ‘lower’ level and much 

reduced field of meaning-awareness to a much ‘higher’ one. Admittedly the difference is 

dramatic; the ability to use the abstractions inherent within language competence apparently 

confers a remarkably heightened degree of self-awareness and awareness of the complexity 

of reality, but that does not mitigate the fact that the majority of the grunts and growls of our 

apelike ancestors are not ‘meaningless’. We are dealing, rather, with a more immediate non-

abstract realm of meaning. Ramachandran, however, is able to rely upon the fact that he has 

been ‘feeding the imaginations’ of his readers a rich diet of materialist metaphors on his way 

to his current point three-quarters of the way through the book so the implication that some 

way back in the evolutionary process there was absolutely no meaning of any kind around in 

the universe. A universe which has no intelligence within its design can hardly have any 

kind of in-built meaningfulness. 

As a point of contrast consider the conclusion drawn from quantum theory by David Bohm 

who is adamant that ‘meaning is fundamental to what life actually is’, and, furthermore, this 

insight can be extended: 

…to the cosmos as a whole. We can say that human meanings make a contribution 

to the cosmos, but we can also say that the cosmos may be ordered according to a 

kind of “objective” meaning.  New meanings may emerge in this over-all order. That 

is, we may say that meaning penetrates the cosmos, or even what is beyond the 

cosmos. For example, there are current theories in physics and cosmology that imply 

that the universe emerged from the “big bang.” In the earliest phase there were no 

electrons, protons, neutrons, or other basic structures. None of the laws that we 

know would have had any meaning. Even space and time in their present well-

defined forms would have had no meaning. All of this emerged from a very different 

state of affairs. The proposal is that, as happens with human beings, this emergence 

included a creative unfoldment of generalized meaning. Later, with the evolution of 

new forms of life, fundamentally new steps may have evolved in the creative 

unfoldment of further meanings.  That is, we may say that some evolutionary 

processes occur which could be traced physically, but we cannot really understand 

them without looking at some deeper meaning which was responsible for the 

changes. The present view of the changes is that they are random, with selection of 

those traits that were suited for survival, but that does not explain the complex, 

subtle structures that actually occurred.
 61

 

Thus we see that the conclusion that Bohm draws from the quantum evidence is that the ‘big 

bang’ was not a meaningless explosion so to speak, rather it could only have been 

accompanied by an ‘unfoldment of generalized meaning’. Furthermore, it can only follow that 

the ‘evolution of new forms of life’ was in essence also a ‘creative unfoldment of further 

meanings. Therefore we see that, in the same way that the quantum evidence clearly 

undermines the notion that mind somehow emerges from mindlessness, it also clearly shows 



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that meaning does not magically emerge from meaninglessness, the universe itself emerges 

from a quantum ground of pure undiluted meaningfulness which explodes into the infinite 

play of the meanings of the experiential world.  

This view is also suggested by John Wheeler’s assertion concerning the evolution of the 

universe:  

Law without law.  It is difficult to see what else than that can be the plan of 

physics.  It is preposterous to think of the laws of physics as installed by Swiss 

watchmaker to endure from everlasting to everlasting when we know that the 

universe began with a big bang.  The laws must have come into being.  Therefore 

they could not have been always a hundred percent accurate. That means that they 

are derivative, not primary … Events beyond law.  Events so numerous and so 

uncoordinated that, flaunting their freedom from formula, they yet formulate firm 

form … The universe is a self excited circuit.  As it expands, cools and develops, 

it gives rise to observer-participancy.  Observer-participancy in turn gives what 

we call tangible reality to the universe … Of all the strange features of the 

universe, none are stranger than these: time is transcended, laws are mutable, and 

observer participancy matters.
62

 

Laws do not emerge from meaninglessness, but they can emerge from potentiality through 

the development of ‘epiontic’ ‘observer participancy’. The term ‘epiontic’ indicates, as does 

‘observer participancy’, that epistemological acts, which are acts of knowing, acts of 

intentionality, which are also acts of meaning, give rise to ontology. 

Bohm, therefore, concludes that ‘meaning’ can be considered to be the ultimate constituent 

of the process of the universe because it ‘enfolds’ the other primary aspects of ‘matter’ and 

‘energy’ (fig 4 – reproduced from Bohm’s essay Soma Significance and the Activity of 

Meaning): 

 
Fig 4 

 

 

However, in some sense the enfoldment by meaning seems to be more 

fundamental … meaning refers to itself directly, and this is in fact the basis of the 

possibility of that intelligence which can comprehend the whole, including itself. 



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… if there is a generalized kind of meaning intrinsic to the universe, including our 

own bodies and minds, then the way may be opened to understanding the whole as 

self-referential through its “meaning for itself” …
63

 

For both Bohm and Wheeler, then, the universe can be considered to be a self-referential, 

thereby self-creating process within which infinite meaningful acts of internal cognition create 

a multitudinous field of dualistic experience within an overall field of pure undifferentiated 

meaning, which we may identify with the quantum ground.  It is truly remarkable how this 

quantum perspective maps precisely onto the Buddhist Dzogchen view that the ultimate 

source of the process of reality is a ‘meaning-saturated field as pristine cognitiveness’ (see 

above).  

 

The materialist view on the matter, however, starts with a meaning-unsaturated field; in fact it 

is difficult to figure out what kind of field can possibly form the basis for any kind of 

materialism because the quantum field, as we have seen, is devoid of substantiality. However, 

in order to pursue the matter let us grant Ramachandran’s apparent and mistaken belief in 

ultimately existent, spooky yet devoid of meaning, atoms of the material kind which manage 

to club together to produce brains housed in various sentient creatures. We now await the 

generation of meaning from the meaningless. 

 

Ramachandran’s ‘framework for thinking about language evolution’ is called ‘synesthetic 

bootstrapping theory’
64

 . This framework, we are told: 

…provides a valuable clue to understanding the origins of not only language, but 

also a host of other uniquely human traits such as metaphorical thinking and 

abstraction. In particular, I’ll argue that language and many aspects of abstract 

thought evolved through exaptations whose fortuitous combination yielded novel 

solutions.
65

 

The notion that language evolved through the process of ‘exaptations’ is an extraordinary, and 

as we shall see, ridiculous, claim. An exaptation is ‘a feature that performs a function that was 

not produced by natural selection for its current use.’
66

 The idea here is that some feature of 

an organism which, according to current mainstream evolution theory, has developed for 

some particular purpose, a purpose so necessary for survival that evolution, supposedly 

utilizing fortuitous random gene mutations, quickly gets on the job of supplying it, is later 

‘coopted’ to do something completely different. This wildly counter intuitive notion, that 

evolution is to a large degree ‘happenstantial’ – seeing if it’s got anything already evolved 

that it can press into service in a new niche as it were, gets a rave review from Ramachandran: 

You will see me arguing that many of our unique mental traits seem to have 

evolved through the novel deployment of brain structures that originally evolved 

for other reasons. This happens all the time in evolution. Feathers evolved from 

scales whose original role was insulation rather than flight. The wings of bats and 

pterodactyls are modifications of forelimbs originally designed for walking. Our 

lungs developed from swim bladders of fish which evolved for buoyancy control. 

… I argue that the same principle applies with even greater force to the evolution 

of the human brain. Evolution found ways to radically repurpose many functions 

of the ape brain to create entirely new functions. Some of them – language comes 

to mind – are so powerful that I would go so far as to argue they have produced a 



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species that transcends apehood to the same degree by which life transcends 

mundane chemistry and physics.
67

 

The notions that feathers directly evolved from scales or human lungs from fish bladders with 

intermediate stages, and others like them, must be some of the most bizarre, if not absurd, 

notions within the dismal story of the appropriation of Darwin’s original insights by the 

mechanistic-materialist academic cadre still operating to mislead the public as to the nature of 

reality (I hasten to add I am not a creationist). When Darwin started on his musings as to the 

manner in which the diversity of life took the various courses that they did the notion that 

there might be a deep level of reality completely at variance with the apparently material 

structures and processes of the ‘classical’ realm was roughly a hundred years in the future. 

The idea that the edifice of the material world would dissolve into quantum emptiness (which 

is not nothingness but ‘empty’ potentiality) would have been incomprehensible to the 

scientists of his day. Indeed many scientists of the early twentieth century had great difficulty 

understanding it.  Given the evidence Darwin had access to, and the state of science at his 

time, his work was indeed brilliant and Darwin is deservedly considered to have been a 

genius.  

The situation today, however, is very different and scientists and philosophers should know 

better. Stapp has pointed out that: 

Philosophers of mind appear to have arrived, today, at less-than-satisfactory 

solutions to the mind-brain and free will problems, and the difficulties seem, at 

least prima facie, very closely connected with their acceptance of a known-to-be-

false understanding of the nature of the physical world, and of the causal role of our 

conscious thoughts within it.
68

 

The crucial phrase here is, of course, ‘known-to-be-false’.  The astonishing fact is that, for 

some incomprehensible reason, the academic community has decided to allow some of its 

members, some of them neuroscientists, to flagrantly misrepresent the truth of contemporary 

physics in order to defend obviously incorrect, ‘classical’ positions which are redolent of the 

worldview of the late nineteenth century. As Stapp points out: 

…the re-bonding [between mind and matter] achieved by physicists during the first 

half of the twentieth century must be seen as a momentous development: a lifting of 

the veil.  Ignoring this huge and enormously pertinent development in basic 

science, and proclaiming the validity of materialism on the basis of an inapplicable-

in-this-context nineteenth century science is an irrational act.
69

  

Stapp refers to a re-bonding between mind and matter which occurs precisely because within 

quantum theory ‘matter’ becomes an aspect of mind.  We can also quantumly re-bond ‘life’ 

and ‘mundane chemistry and physics’ so that we come to see the truth of the fact that these 

two are not dramatically at variance, as Ramachandran seems to think, a variance which 

requires that life ‘transcends’ the ‘mundane’ machinations of the ‘mindless molecules’ of 

chemistry and physics. The ‘lifting of the veil’ reveals to us that the processes described by 

chemistry and physics are the processes through which the deep, up until the twentieth 

century hidden, field of fecund, life-producing, epiontic quantum intentionality or teleology, 

acting upon an infinite pool of potentiality for the production of sentient beings of manifold 

varieties, activates the evo-devo ‘implicate’ templates of life which must lie within the field of 

potentiality. 

 



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The American cognitive scientist and philosopher Jerry Fodor, Professor of Philosophy at 

Rutgers University, in a recent essay Why Pigs Don’t Fly, has questioned the neo-Darwinian 

assumption of random ‘adaptationism’ and has indicated that there are perhaps more viable 

alternatives: 

Everybody thinks evo-devo must be at least part of the truth, since nobody thinks that 

phenotypes are shaped directly by environmental variables. Even the hardest core 

Darwinists agree that environmental effects on a creature’s phenotype are mediated 

by their effects on the creature’s genes: its ‘genome’. Indeed, in the typical case, the 

environment selects a phenotype by selecting a genome that the phenotype expresses. 

Once in place, this sort of reasoning spreads to other endogenous factors. Phenotypic 

structure carries information about genetic structure. And genotypic structure carries 

information about the biochemistry of genes. And the biochemical structure of genes 

carries information about their physical structure. And so on down to quantum 

mechanics for all I know.
70

 

And it is now to the quantum level that we must turn for the secrets of life. It has been 

discovered, for instance, that photosynthesis employs a quantum ‘look-ahead’ technique for 

choosing the most efficient possible pathway for energy exchange
71

. It seems that many 

biological processes which involve the conversion of energy into forms that are usable for 

chemical transformations are quantum mechanical in nature; it would be remarkable if 

evolution ignored quantum efficiency enhancing techniques and decided (so to speak) to stick 

to nuts and bolts ‘classical’ mechanisms. In particular a quantum understanding of the evo-

devo phenomenon indicates that the connection between feathers and scales lies at a deep, 

implicate quantum ‘template’ level, not a fully materialized transformation with intermediate 

animal types between dinosaurs and birds. The notion of ‘exaptation’ will be shown to be as 

mythological as the notion that genes in differing species must be wildly different, a mistaken 

notion that Mayr confidently asserted, on the basis of a materialist preconception rather than 

any evidence, in his ‘many roads to Rome’ fiasco. 

It is now time to turn our attention to the details of Ramachandran’s ‘synesthetic 

bootstrapping theory’ of the evolution of language competence. Synesthesia is a condition in 

which perceptual or sensation modes become in some way mixed.  Examples are specific 

colors being clearly seen when certain tones are heard or when specific numbers or letters are 

perceived. According to Ramachandran the most common form of synesthesia is letter or 

number to color form (grapheme-color). Ramachandran, with his associate E. M. Hubbard 

have proposed that this phenomenon can be explained by the fact that the brain areas 

responsible for processing graphemes and colors are adjacent: 

The key insight comes from anatomical, physiological and imaging studies in both 

humans and monkeys, which show that colour areas in the brain … are in the 

fusiform gyrus.  We were struck by the fact that, remarkably, the visual grapheme 

area is also in the fusiform … Can it be a coincidence that the most common form 

of synaesthesia involves graphemes and colours and the brain areas corresponding 

to these are right next to each other? We propose, therefore, that synaesthesia is 

caused by cross-wiring between these two areas, in a manner analogous to the 

cross-activation of the hand area by the face in amputees with phantom limbs…
72

 

This is the ‘hyperconnectivity’ theory of synesthesia, although a few pages on in their paper, 

Synaesthesia – Perception, Thought and Language, Ramachandran and Hubbard say that they 



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are using the term ‘cross-wiring’ ‘somewhat loosely’ and that the term ‘cross-activation’ 

might be more appropriate. Such ‘cross-activation’ may come about through several 

mechanisms; (1) cross-wiring, (2) disinhibition, (3) increased feedback, (4) excess activity. 

The actual nature of the cross-activation is not directly relevant to our discussion. 

Ramachandran’s musings on this phenomenon led him to consider a possible link between 

synesthesia and ‘some of the high-level thought processes that humans alone are capable 

of.’
73

 His own thought process of this issue centrally involves the ‘bouba-kiki effect’. When 

people at large are asked to look at the two shapes shown in fig. 5 (without the ‘bouba’ and 

‘kiki’ labels of course) and asked to say which one is ‘bouba’ and which ‘kiki’ it turns out that 

about 98 percent match up the shapes and labels as shown. This phenomenon occurs whether 

the experiment is carried out even in ‘non-English-speaking people in India and China’. As 

Ramachandran indicates this matching is due to the fact that: 

 

 

 

Fig. 5 

 

 

…the gentle curves and undulations of contour on the amoeba-like figure 

metaphorically (one might say) mimic the gentle undulations of the sound bouba, 

as represented in the hearing centers in the brain and the smooth rounding and 

relaxing of the lips for producing the booo-baaa sound. On the other hand, the 

sharp wave forms of the sound kee-kee and the sharp inflection of the tongue on 

the palate mimic the sudden changes in the visual shape.
74

 

This phenomenon, Ramachandran suggests indicates that ‘there is a sense in which at some 

level we are all “synesthetes,” and, furthermore, he considers that this fact ‘might hold the key 

to understanding many of the most mysterious aspects of our minds, such as the evolution of 

metaphor, language and abstract thought.’ 

  



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So, with a deft sleight of mind, somewhat analogous to the tricks with mirrors that he 

performs in order to relieve the pains in phantom limbs,  Ramachandran thinks he has 

reduced the ‘mysterious aspects’ of the evolution of metaphor, language and abstract thought 

to nothing more than the material resonance generated cross-wiring or cross-activations 

within adjacent regions of the brain.  By ignoring the quantum realm beneath the appearance 

of the material world Ramachandran is able to adopt a thoroughly materialist idiom which 

gives the impression that the brain is the ultimate and final source of the mysterious aspects 

of mind. But, of course, this is not true.   

In order to get a clearer understanding of the situation it is useful to have an understanding of 

the central Buddhist Mahayana-Madhyamaka presentation of the ontological/metaphysical 

structure of reality as being comprised of the ‘two truths’. According to this doctrine the 

appearance of the ‘conventional,’ or ‘seeming’ realm of the everyday world is an ‘illusion,’ 

an illusion which conceals the true ‘ultimate’ nature of reality.  Buddhist scholar Jeffrey 

Hopkins, refers to a samvrti satya, a ‘conventional truth’, as a ‘concealer of suchness,’
75

 a 

misleading mode of ‘reality’ which covers the true ‘ultimate’ reality, which is tathata or 

‘suchness,’ the direct and pure nondual experiential essence of reality.   

Thus the metaphysical structure of the Buddhist worldview asserts two interpenetrating but 

radically different perspectives within reality, the ‘seeming’ and the ‘ultimate.’  This 

viewpoint indicates a metaphysical structure of reality within which the dualistic world is a 

deceptive veil hiding the ultimate nondual nature of reality. The physicist and Buddhist 

practitioner Victor Mansfield has clearly indicated that modern quantum physics constitutes 

an ‘experimental metaphysics
76

’ precisely because quantum physics has penetrated the veil of 

the material world to what lies beyond. In fact quantum physics has clearly shown the 

significance of the notion of ‘the two truths,’ precisely because it turns out that the ‘material’ 

world, as it was conceived of in the era of ‘classical’ physics, is an illusion because it is 

generated from the quantum  level by the internal epiontic operation of a deep non-individual 

level of consciousness.  

The notion of ‘metaphysics’ as a philosophical endeavor within the Western tradition had as 

its central concern the determination of the ‘ultimate’ nature of the seemingly external world 

of materiality; at its most basic the core issue was that of the ultimate nature of the world: 

‘Matter’, ‘Mind’ or both?  In the time when this question was central for Western 

philosophical thought physics was what is now called ‘classical’ physics, the investigation 

and description of the Newtonian edifice of reality. So when quantum mechanics first 

discovered a mode of existence radically at variance with the ‘billiard ball’ Newtonian 

façade of materiality physics had penetrated through the surface of the material world to see 

a more ‘ultimate’ nature which lies ‘beyond’.  Thus Victor Mansfield tells us:   

We can now demonstrate that ‘quantum moons’ do not exist when unobserved. 

Such ‘experimental metaphysics’ has an extraordinary resonance with the Middle 

Way Buddhist principle of emptiness…
77

 

Mansfield uses the term ‘quantum moons’ here in reference to a question that Einstein once 

posed to the a colleague as to whether the moon existed when no one was looking at it. The 

point is that it has been shown quite clearly that quantum ‘entities’ do not ‘exist’ when not 

being observed in some fashion.  Furthermore quantum physics has now shown that 

consciousness is an essential factor in ‘creating’ existence out of an indeterminate realm of 



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quantum potentiality, a realm which can be shown to be equivalent in ontological nature to 

the Buddhist concept of ‘emptiness’ (shunyata).     

   

Fig 6. - The ‘two truths’ according to John Wheeler  

The photo shows Professor John Wheeler in mid flow of explaining the ‘two truths’ as 

discovered by quantum theory: the ‘classical’ realm and the ‘quantum’ realm.  On the left of 

the photo the blackboard drawing shows a ‘classical’ size object moving between two points.  

At every point in time it has a definite position and it therefore seems to follow a definite 

trajectory between the points.  In other words it behaves like an everyday object. The section 

of the blackboard drawing behind Wheeler’s head indicates the situation at the quantum 

level; quantum ‘entities’ behave in a completely different and counter-intuitive manner; they 

spread out or ‘smear out’ over increasingly large areas and fade into a ghostly semi-existence 

of potentiality. Such ‘entities’ only recover their full entity-ness when they are observed.  

When unobserved quantum entities really are not ‘entities,’ they are a ‘smeared out’ 

potentiality fields of possible entity experience.   

Henry Stapp, who is one of the few physicists still around who discussed such ‘experimental 

metaphysical’ issues with some of the ‘founding fathers’ of quantum theory, says that the 

central distinguishing feature between these two physical ‘truths’ is that on the ‘classical’ 

level motions are ‘apparently independent of our human observations of them.’
78

  The 

important word in this observation is ‘apparently’, a word we could equally replace with 

‘seemingly’, so the ‘classical’ level, or ‘truth’, has been clearly established by physics as a 

‘seeming’ reality.  It is a ‘seeming’ appearance of an independent material world of 

Newtonian objects, an appearance which, when analyzed from the perspective of quantum 

theory, is found to emerge from a deeper, more ‘ultimate’, quantum level through the 

operation of consciousness, although not necessarily individual consciousness.  It follows 

from this discussion that to ascribe ultimate validity to the brain as ultimate cause of mental 

phenomena is clearly false and, as we shall see, adopting such a ‘known-to-be-false’ 

perspective, to quote Stapp again, leads to bizarre, if not absurd, proposals. 

In his explanation of the way in which the magical ‘mirror neurons’, neurons whose primary 

job is to internally mirror other members of the species actions but which also apparently get 

utilized for more abstract tasks through ‘exaptation’, underpin the bouba-kiki effect he tells 

us that: 



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The main computation done by mirror neurons is to transform a map in one 

dimension, such as the visual appearance of someone else’s movement, into 

another dimension, such as the motor maps in the observer’s brain, which contain 

programs for muscle movements (including tongue and lip movements). Your 

brain is performing an impressive feat of abstraction in linking your visual and 

auditory maps. The two inputs are entirely dissimilar in every way except one – 

the abstract properties of jaggedness or curviness – and your brain homes in on 

this common denominator very swiftly when you are asked to pair them up. I call 

this process “cross-model abstraction.”  This ability to compute similarities 

despite surface differences may have paved the way for more complex types of 

abstraction that our species takes great delight in. Mirror neurons may be the 

evolutionary conduit that allowed this to happen.
79

 

And he then proceeds to make the following outlandish proposal of why the ability of ‘cross-

modal abstraction’, a capacity which Ramachandran considers fundamental for the use and 

appreciation of metaphor, evolved ‘in the first place’: 

…it may have emerged in ancestral arboreal primates to allow them to negotiate 

and grasp tree branches. The vertical visual inputs of tree limbs and branches 

reaching the eye had to be matched with totally dissimilar inputs from joints and 

muscles and the body’s felt sense of where it is in space – an ability that would 

have favoured the development of both canonical neurons and mirror neurons. 

The readjustments that were required in order to establish a congruence between 

sensory and motor may have initially been based on feedback, both at the genetic 

level of the species and at the experiential level of the individual.
80

 

Thus the ability to form and understand metaphors reduces to the contingent requirement that 

animals which for some evolutionary reason took to the trees needed to develop (presumably 

very quickly) brain mechanisms for swinging form branch to branch: 

One also wonders about the evolutionary origin of metaphors. Once the cross-

modal abstraction mechanism was set up between vision and touch … (originally 

for grasping branches), this mechanism could have paved the way for cross 

sensory metaphors (‘stinging rebuke,’ ‘loud shirt’) and eventually for metaphors 

in general.
81

 

The notion that the presumed evolutionary necessity for our ‘ancestral arboreal primates’ to 

somehow match and co-ordinate together the ‘totally dissimilar inputs’ from ‘vertical visual 

inputs of tree limbs and branches reaching the eye’ and ‘inputs from joints and muscles and 

the body’s felt sense of where it is in space’ is the origin of metaphor is dramatically counter 

intuitive, and must certainly must be included within the class of what Ramachandran himself 

describes as his ‘wild intuitive hunches’ with which he attempts to ‘navigate the gaps’ of his 

account of how the evolution of brain neuron circuitry accounts for ‘mysterious faculties that 

are so quintessentially human, such as art, language, metaphor, creativity, self-awareness, and 

even religious sensibilities.’
82

  

The fundamental capacity of the metaphorical function of consciousness is clearly that of 

apprehending a significant similarity within two aspects of reality which are in all other 

respects different.  Ramachandran, in an apparently ingenious employment of the very 

function of metaphorical cognition itself, tries to account for the phenomenon itself. This 

strategy, however, turns out to be disingenuous. Consider his account of the way in which the 



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necessary ‘congruence between sensory and motor’ is supposed to be established by 

‘readjustments’ which, we are told, are initially ‘ based on feedback, both at the genetic level 

of the species and at the experiential level of the individual’.  The image which we are offered 

is one in which at some point in evolutionary history our ‘ancestral arboreal primates’ must 

have been making a bad job of co-ordinating their motor circuits with their visual circuits 

and, presumably, thereby constantly and frustratingly missing the branches they were aiming 

to swing from and therefore painfully falling onto the forest floor beneath them.  

Some ‘readjustments’ are called for; but how exactly do these readjustments come about? 

Ramachandran tells us that that some kind of feedback mechanism is involved, elsewhere we 

are told that mirror neurons are possibly involved in a ‘self-amplifying feedback loop’, but 

the question posed by such a proposal is that as to upon what basis the feedback loop gets 

started. And the only significant answer can be that at some point there is some kind of proto-

metaphoric recognition of similarity within dissimilarity which then gets amplified over time. 

In other words there must be some kind of glimmer of metaphoric capacity internal to brain 

functioning in order for any kind of amplification of metaphoric functioning to get off the 

ground, thereby enabling our ‘ancestral arboreal primates’ to also effectively get off the 

ground without risking skull fractures. So the account clearly fails to account for the 

metaphorical capacity of the human brain, unless perhaps, we accept it was just a fortuitous 

random mutation which just happened to connect up two regions of the brain which, 

fortunately for our ‘ancestral arboreal primates’ patiently awaiting a life amongst the 

branches, just happened (by random mutation?) to be adjacent. However such an account, 

leaving aside its massive improbability, simply makes no sense from the perspective of evo-

devo which suggests that there would have been a kind of primordial gene ‘template’ 

underlying the evolution; Ramachandran’s account relies on brain structure being a matter of 

random organization. The molecular investigation of the brain amphioxus seems to suggest 

otherwise, brain organization does seem to be there in potential. 

In their paper Synaesthesia – Perception, Thought and Language, Ramachandran and 

Hubbard say that: 

The bouba/kiki effect example provides our first vital clue to understanding the 

origins of proto-language, for it suggests there might be natural constraints on the 

ways in which sounds map on to objects. 

This, together with ‘the existence of a kind of sensory-to-motor synaesthesia, which may have 

played a pivotal role in the evolution of language’, leads to the: 

… conjecture that the representation of certain lip and tongue movements in  

motor brain maps may be mapped in non-arbitrary ways onto certain sound 

inflections and phonemic representations in auditory regions and the latter in turn 

may have non-arbitrary links to the external object’s visual appearance (as in 

bouba and kiki). The stage has been set for a sort of ‘resonance’ or bootstrapping 

in the co-evolution of these factors, thereby making the origin of proto-language 

seem much less mysterious than people have assumed.
83

 

In order to press the point home various examples are provided, such as: 

…words referring to something small often involve making a synaesthetic small 

/i/ with the lips and a narrowing of the vocal tract (e.g. words such as ‘little’, 



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‘petite, ‘teeny’ and ‘diminutive’) whereas the opposite is true for word denoting 

large or enormous.
84

   

And it all does seem to ‘resonate’ magnificently, until, that is, one considers that in this 

account the organization of the brain which allows such a wonderful cross-modal interactive 

material resonance came into existence for other purposes (swinging from branch to branch 

being one of them). In other words for Ramachandran there is absolutely no glimmer of inner 

teleology to produce the most effective means of communication appropriate for any 

particular level of conscious awareness within the process of evolution itself, and therefore 

language is considered a remarkably fortuitous unintentional, and random-exaptational result 

of the mindless machinations, which are supposed to be completely disinterested as to 

survival (why would inert ‘matter’ ‘think’ that survival matters), little lumps of ‘matter’.  But 

such a view, besides its cartoon like preposterousness in places, ignores both the crucial 

evidence of evo-devo and quantum theory which, taken together, suggest that organic 

structure, ‘meaning’ and at least a minimalist intentionality or teleology are an inherent aspect 

of the universe.  

 

 

                       Fig 7 

A ‘Quantum Epiontic Evo-Devo Mindnature’ understanding of the process of evolution, 

however, indicates that individuated structures of embodied consciousnesses emerge from a 

deeper realm of quantum information processes, a view which clearly means that the ‘stuff’ of 

quantum reality must be some form of non-individuated consciousness or awareness. And this 

perspective also suggests that brains are intermediate level material constructions, constructed 

from the deeper level of quantum informational awareness-consciousness precisely in order to 

individuate consciousness.  This process takes place through a sequence of what the physicist 



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 379 

David Bohm called ‘implicate orders’ which emerge from the fundamental ground quantum 

‘implicate’ source and thereby manifest the ‘explicate’ dualistic world of experience (fig 7). 

As the founding father of quantum physics Erwin Schrödinger said:  

Mind has erected the objective outside world … out of its own stuff.
85

  

And it also seems that the fundamental quantum Mindnature creates individuated 

consciousness by organizing its own ‘stuff’ into the apparently ‘material’ stuff of the brain. 

In his important work Wholeness and the Implicate Order Bohm indicates that reality 

encompasses both the objective aspects and the subjective aspects of what is essentially an 

interconnected and undivided ‘wholeness’; Bohm calls this totality the ‘holomovement’:   

…what carries the implicate order is the holomovement, which is unbroken and 

undivided totality.  In certain cases we can abstract particular aspects of the 

holomovement …, but more generally, all forms of the holomovement merge and 

are inseparable.
86

 

In an interview for Omni magazine Bohm explained: 

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.
87

 

The assertion that the ultimate source of individuated consciousness is a deeper level of non-

individuated consciousness-awareness does not mean that Ramachandran’s account of brain 

anatomy has no value. It quite clearly does have significance; it indicates the structure that 

the quantum level of awareness has produced in order for individuated consciousness to 

function as it does.  A problem arises, however, because Ramachandran suggests, sometimes 

directly but on many occasions by more insidious methods, that the matter which makes up 

the brain is the ultimate source of consciousness and the mental realm.  And on the basis of 

this mistaken conception he aligns himself with a modern movement which seemingly seeks 

to deny any spiritual dimension do the universe by embracing a ‘known-to-be-false’ 

materialism:  

As a scientist, I am one with Darwin, Gould, Pinker, and Dawkins. I have no 

patience with those who champion intelligent design, at least not in the sense that 

most people would use that phrase. No one who has watched a woman in labor or 

a dying child in a leukemia ward could possibly believe that the world was custom 

crafted for our benefit. Yet as human beings we have to accept - with humility -

that the question of ultimate origins, will always remain with us, no matter how 

deeply we understand the brain and the cosmos that it creates.
88

 

It is clear that the notion of ‘intelligent design’ that Ramachandran has in mind is an 

unintelligent one, a fundamentalist view of an anthropomorphized loving independent creator, 



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 380 

which it must be admitted more than a few people embrace. However, to counter such a 

dogmatic fundamentalist theistic view with an equally unintelligent, and clearly incorrect, 

view that the process of the universe is nothing other than mindless matter mutely mattering 

to itself and consciousness has no ultimate significance is counter-productive. To counter one 

dogmatic false view with an equally false dogmatic view (does the brain create the cosmos?!) 

simply produces animosity and conflict. 

The evidence of quantum theory and evo-devo, however, now clearly suggests that the source 

of the realms of ‘matter’ and ‘mind’ must derive from a unified quantum Mindnature which 

may be considered as a ‘transcendent’ source which is of the nature of awareness-

consciousness.  This ultimate source produces the multifarious dualistic realms of 

individualized experience within the continuums of all sentient beings in order to explore and 

discover its own possibilities. As Rupert Sheldrake indicates one possible interpretation of 

this view: 

If this transcendent conscious being were the source of the universe and 

everything within it, all created things would in some sense participate in its 

nature.  The more or less limited ‘wholeness’ of organisations at all levels of 

complexity could then be seen as a reflection of the transcendent unity on which 

they depended, and from which they are ultimately derived.
89

 

And Henry Stapp has remarked concerning the spiritual implications of quantum theory as 

follows: 

This situation is concordant with the idea of a powerful God that creates the 

universe and its laws to get things started, but then bequeaths part of this power to 

beings created in his own image, at least with regard to their power to make 

physically efficacious decisions on the basis of reasons and evaluations.
90

 

Such views are concordant with the ‘Quantum Epiontic Mindnature’ metaphysical 

perspective which embraces the evo-devo evidence within a quantum context.  This 

viewpoint will be further elucidated in a future article which will be made available shortly: 

The Quantum Epiontic Metaphysics of Symbolic Forms, which will deal primarily with the 

philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms) in the context of the 

Quantum Epiontic Mindnature paradigm.  

 

 
                                                      

1
 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p46 

2
 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p47 

3 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p34 
4 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p104  
5 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p121 
6
 ibid 

7 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p124 

8 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p125 

9 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p106 
10

 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p164 
11

 Carroll, Sean B. (2006) p72 
12

 Carroll, Sean B. (2006) p9 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2011 | Vol. 1 | Issue 3 | pp. 351-382 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’ Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 

 

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

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 381 

                                                                                                                                                                     

13 Carroll, Sean B. The Origins of Form 
14

 Carroll, Sean B. The Origins of Form 
15

 http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/features/061488/the-origins-of-form 
16

 ibid 
17

 In a talk given at a conference Blackmore suggests that we might call the original primal creature a 

‘blobbie’. 
18

 Conway Morris, Simon (2003) p242 
19

 Carroll, Sean B. (2006) p176 
20

 Carroll, Sean B. The Origins of Form 
21

 Carroll, Sean B. (2006) p177 
22

 Carroll, Sean B. The Origins of Form 
23

 Carroll, Sean B. (2006) p175-176 
24

 Carroll, Sean B. The Origins of Form 
25

 Sheldrake, Rupert (2009) p136 
26

 Sheldrake, Rupert (2009) p104 
27

 Life’s Solution p6 
28 Life’s Solution p7 
29 Life’s Solution p180 
30

 Dennett, Daniel (1991) p33 
31

 Allday, Jonathan (2009) p493 
32

 Allday, Jonathan (2009) p496 
33

 Barrow, John D., Davies, Paul C. W., Harper, Charles L. (eds) (2004) p136 – Wojciech H. Zurek: 

‘Quantum Darwinism and envariance.’ 
34

 Barrow, John D., Davies, Paul C. W., Harper, Charles L. (eds) (2004) p129 – Wojciech H. Zurek: 

‘Quantum Darwinism and envariance.’ 
35

 Barrow, John D., Davies, Paul C. W., Harper, Charles L. (eds) (2004) p121 – Wojciech H. Zurek: 

‘Quantum Darwinism and envariance.’ 
36

 Dennett, Daniel (1996)  p27 
37

 Barrow, 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. 
38

 Barrow, John D., Davies, Paul C. W., Harper, Charles L. (eds) (2004) p10 – Paul C. W. Davies: 

‘John Archibald Wheeler and the clash of ideas.’ 
39

 Rosenblum, Bruce and Kuttner, Fred (2006) p 
40

 Stapp, Henry (2004) p223 
41

 The Observer (January 25th, 1931) 
42

 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) 
43

 Schrödinger, E. (1944) p121. 
44

 Rosenblum, Bruce and Kuttner, Fred (2006) p67 
45

 Rosenblum, Bruce and Kuttner, Fred (2006) p179 
46

 Stapp, Henry: ‘Quantum Interactive Dualism: An Alternative to Dualism’ p18 
47

 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain - introduction 
48

 Stapp, Henry (2007) p139 
49

 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain – introduction x 
50

 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p292 
51

 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p164 
52 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p164 
53 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p165 
54

 Woolfson, Adrian (2000) p74 



DNA Decipher Journal | November 2011 | Vol. 1 | Issue 3 | pp. 351-382 

Smetham, G. P., Quantum Evo-Devo Universe II: Materialists’ Metaphoric Phantoms of Matter in Mind 

 

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

www.dnadecipher.com 

 

 382 

                                                                                                                                                                     

55
 Barrow, D. John & Tipler, Frank J. (1986) p105 

56
 Woolfson, Adrian (2000) p83 

57
 Woolfson, Adrian (2000) p76 

58
 Guenther, Herbert V. (1984).  p52 

59 Life’s Solution p46 
60 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p171 
61

 Bohm, David (2003)p180 
62

 Wheeler quoted in Barrow, John D., Davies, Paul C. W., Harper, Charles L. (eds) (2004) p73 – 

Freeman J. Dyson: ‘Thought-experiments in honor of John Archibald Wheeler.’ 
63 Bohm, David (2003)p175-176 
64

 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p168 
65

 ibid 
66

 http://evolution.berkekey.edu/evosite/evo10/IIIE5cExaptations.shtml 
67

 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain pxii-xiii 
68

 Stapp, Henry: ‘Philosophy of Mind and the Problem of Free Will in the Light of Quantum 

Mechanics’ p19 
69

 Stapp, Henry: ‘Quantum Interactive Dualism’ p18 
70

 Fodor, Jerry – ‘Why Pigs Don’t Fly’, New York Review of Books 
71

 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=when-it-comes-to-photosynthesis-plants-

perform-quantum-computation 
72

 Sythaesthesia – Perception, Thought and Language, V. S. Ramachandran and Hubbard, p9 
73

 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p109 
74

 ibid 
75 Hopkins, Jeffrey (1996) p405 
76 www.namgyal.org 
77

 www.namgyal.org 
78

 MMQM p233 
79

 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p129 
80

 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p129-130 
81

 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p131 
82 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain - Introduction 
83

 Sythaesthesia – Perception, Thought and Language, V. S. Ramachandran and Hubbard, p20 
84

 ibid 
85

 Schrödinger, E. (1944). 
86

 Bohm, David (2003) p131 
87

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

in Omni, January 1987 
88

 Ramachandran – The Tell-Tale Brain p293 
89

 Sheldrake, Rupert (2009) p244 
90 Stapp, H. P. (2010). ‘Minds and Values in the Quantum Universe’ in Information and the Nature of Reality, Davies, Paul 

& Gregersen, Niels Henrik (eds), Cambridge University Press, p117.