Sense 1 — The Sense of Unity

Picture by Dmitry Buterin

Michael Levin is one of the leading experimentalists in cellular and developmental biology in the world with interest in computational and synthetic biology. His approach is broadly based on Karl Friston free energy principle and he is searching for cognition in the behaviour of biological and non-biological systems. One of his specialties is communication of cells through their shared bioelectrical networks, especially, in the process of morphogenesis but not only in it.

He is famous and has many achievements and titles. However, he attracts me by his neverending hunger for resolving new mysteries of the world — the holy curiosity as Einstein once put it. For Levin the truth is never settled. He challenges what others believe to be the cutting edge knowledge. This is the only way new knowledge can be obtained and brought into this world. His new ideas fascinate me and I gladly try to connect them with his previous findings and the areas of my interest.

Several years ago Levin began his research aiming at the eradication of cancer with the assumption that a normal cell has a big “self” of an entire organ or even the whole organism because it communicates with other cells via a shared bioelectrical network. [1]

In his interviews Levin explains that cancer cells block their channels of bioelectrical communication, disconnect from the bioelectrical network of a particular organ and the entire organism, and shrink their “selves” to a tiny “self” of a single cell. They begin to behave inside the body as single-celled organisms, a kind of amoebas. As single-celled organisms they pursue two goals: to proliferate and move in the direction of the most favourable conditions. Their struggle for survival with their external environment may end up with the death of both disconnected cells and the organism unless they are stopped in time.

Levin experiments with bioelectric impulses to force cancer cells to reconnect to the bioelectrical network shared by normal cells so that they can recall their larger “self” of a multicellular organ or organism and resume their normal life.

These experiments show that cells really do reconnect, recall their big “self” and start living as normal skin or liver cells instead of growing metastases.

However, some questions remain: Why do some cells disconnect in the first place? Will their reconnection be sustainable? Is their sense of unity with an organ and the organism secured by bioelectric communications only?

In February this year Levin shared a preprint [2] that resonated very strongly with my research in the area of the original old fashioned version of quantum mechanics and its measurement process as it was described by Albert Einstein [3] and Erwin Schrödinger [4–6]. “This paper is not the weirdest thing I plan to write but I think it holds the record so far,” Levin wrote in his blog. All things in space and time, according to it, are merely projections of ideas from Platonic space. Ideas can be as simple as Plato’s triangles or as complex as the human body. They can be compared to blueprints, according to which they themselves assemble complex things from simpler things.

If everything is already working at the level of interactions in the world of energy, then what do we need Plato’s space of ideas for? Levin, as far as I understand, has the idea that software creates hardware in the process of morphogenesis. However, in the world of energy we need hardware for software to run in the first place. Maybe the idea is that some software in our world of energy is running on other software from a different world? Further on I share my understanding of Plato’s ideas and their interconnection with the theory of measurement in quantum mechanics as described by Einstein and Schrödinger in the context of the sense of unity as a potential quality shared by all things.

According to Plato, only the idea of ​​good really exists. It is the ultimate reality. It can take the most diverse forms of other ideas. Some of these ideas can also take the form of things. There can be an infinite number of these forms, but they are all forms of the idea of ​​good, the only one that exists. [7]

Advaita Vedanta allows us to better understand Plato’s idea. According to it, Brahman is the supreme good. All ideas and the entire observable world are made of Brahman. The observable world is an illusion because only Brahman is real. Our conscious self — Atman is equal to Brahman. Some vedic texts use them interchangeably. [8]

I made this detour because Western interpreters of Plato very often have difficulty understanding Plato’s idea of ​​unity of the idea of ​​good and describe it as a collection of all ideas, and not as the original idea of ​​everything, which is present in everything and from which everything is made. From this fundamental oneness of everything comes the sense of unity that can be experienced by atomic particles, cells of our body, people and, why not, stars and galaxies.

The measurement theory of quantum mechanics helps us understand why this sense of unity can be stronger or weaker, and in some cases may be absent altogether. Although this understanding is still incomplete.

For example, most of the uranium 235 atoms in a nuclear bomb break apart (experience fission) when they absorb a neutron, while some simply capture the neutron and become heavier. The same thing happens with plutonium 238 that is also used in the bomb. If there were more atoms of the second type, an atomic bomb would simply be impossible. No observable difference between atoms of the first and second types can be detected. Perhaps the atoms that capture neutrons simply experience a stronger sense of unity than the atoms that break apart. The sense of unity is stronger the more often ideas return to their original unitary form — the form of ​​good according to Plato, the pure unconditional wave function, according to Schrödinger.

In quantum mechanics Plato’s idea of good indeed has an analogue — the pure wave function of the universe that is the only reality that exists, according to such notable figures in quantum mechanics as Hans-Dieter Zeh who discovered decoherence [9] and Hugh Everett, who authored the universal wave function (many worlds) interpretation of quantum mechanics [10]. Decoherence, according to Zeh, is a process of spontaneous entanglement of a pure wave function of a quasi-isolated thing with the already entangled environment. According to Schrödinger, the return to the pure wave function — disentanglement — takes place at the end of each observation.

When, in the beginning of every measurement, things (and we remember that they are forms of pure ideas and of one single pure idea in the end) begin to interact with each other, they begin to lose their pure ideal form (pure wave function) and therefore their sense of unity weakens. This process was described by Einstein and Schrödinger. The former called in reduction of the wave packet, the latter called it disentanglement.

It may seem strange that communication, interaction, which in our experience is a condition for any unification, in this case leads in the opposite direction. The reason is that the pure wave function of the one and only really isolated thing — the universe — is representing all its quasi-isolated parts with its pure approximations. In the case of quantum entanglement those pure approximations are getting replaced by a mixed wave function of a combination of parts. In the case of decoherence it is getting replaced by the mixed conditional wave function of the environment. The sense of unity is getting replaced by the sense of plurality. I will try to describe the process in more detail later.

There are many theories that quantum entanglement holds our world together, preventing it from falling apart, but the opposite is true. The sense of unity holds our world together like invisible glue. And quantum entanglement ensures the interaction of parts, which turns into mutual destruction if quantum disentanglement — the restoration of a pure wave function of a part, meaning its return to the one true reality — the idea of ​​good, is not regularly carried out.

The quantum theory of measurement is the foundation of original quantum mechanics. It can help us to understand how Plato’s single idea of good can transform into many ideas (forms) and in things as projections of ideas. It tells us that a pure wave function is a representative of an isolated physical thing. The universe is the only really isolated physical thing. Therefore, if we want to examine something smaller than the universe we need to mentally isolate the object of our interest from the rest of the world [11]. By doing so we can obtain a pure wave function of a thing that will be an approximation of the pure wave function of the universe at the same time.

A pure wave function of a thing contains the maximal sum of knowledge of that entire thing. Therefore, the pure wave function of any mentally isolated part of the universe should contain the maximal sum of knowledge of that part together with the maximal sum of knowledge of the universe.

Schrödinger uses definitions of maximal sum of knowledge and maximal catalogue of expectations interchangeably [5]. It gives us understanding of the idea that quantum mechanics deals only with knowledge about the future but not about the past. The full set of eigenstates in the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics that is necessary to make a dynamic variable observable [12] also deals with states in which a thing can be observed in the future without any reference to states in which it was observed in the past.

Although Einstein and Schrödinger use wave functions as theoretical representatives of things and Plato states that things are projections of ideas which determine them I think this difference is unimportant as representatives of things in quantum mechanics determine states of things instead of just predicting them.

We see that the maximal sum of knowledge is the maximal sum of knowledge of the whole but not just of a particular thing. When we mentally divide the whole into parts the sum of knowledge of each part will still remain maximal sum of knowledge of the whole. Such an imaginary part will know everything about the whole and perceive itself not as a part of the whole, but as the whole itself. Its sense of unity will be maximal in spite of its imaginary isolation from the rest of the whole.

The purpose of creating such imaginary parts is that the observables — projections of Plato’s ideas into the ordinary spacetime can be created from them. These observable projections are isolated things but they still retain the sense of unity. Unlike the ideas they can be observed (measured) because they can physically interact with each other. Every observation begins with such an interaction.

As soon as the projections begin to interact, part of their knowledge of themselves as a whole gets replaced by knowledge about the interdependence of measurements of one interacting projection on measurements of the other projection. They establish mutual connections in the world of ideas but not in the world of things. Those connections (conditional statements as per Schrödinger) remain after the projections seize to interact. Those mental conditional relations of remote things are the source of quantum nonlocality paradoxes.

At the level of knowledge, the projections form one combined sum of knowledge, although at the level of observations they still remain separately observable. Erwin Schrödinger called this process quantum entanglement. Although the definition of this term has become very vague now, I will still use it. In general, I am not writing a scientific paper, but just a post and I try to convey my understanding in the most natural language possible.

Quantum entanglement evolves over time, constantly reducing the amount of unconditional knowledge of the projections and increasing the amount of knowledge about the conditions of observation of one projection depending on the observation of the other, that is, about the relationships between projections as separate parts of a combined sum of knowledge.

Knowledge cannot disappear on its own. If the unconditional knowledge of a projection decreases, this means that the projection itself changes, manifests itself less as a single whole and more as one of many interdependent parts.

The evolution of quantum entanglement is a spontaneous process. If it is not stopped, unconditional knowledge of the projection will simply cease to exist. Then its conditional connections with other projections will lose their meaning.

The evolution of quantum entanglement can only be stopped by completing the measurement (observation) of any of the entangled projections by collecting all the information necessary to restore the maximum sum of unconditional knowledge about this projection. As soon as the maximum of unconditional knowledge of just one projection is reached, all projections entangled with this projection will be restored as maximal sums of unconditional knowledge of them. They will also regain their maximal sense of unity. The state of wholeness (represented by a pure wave function) for all projections except the one the measurement of which has been completed will simply be automatically calculated using the knowledge of dependencies of observed values of one part given the observation of the other — the very same conditional knowledge that has displaced the unconditional knowledge of the projections. This final part of the measurement process was called disentanglement by Schrödinger, although it is now considered a property of what is now called quantum entanglement.

In this phase of the process of measurement, it becomes possible to arbitrarily assign to all other projections, entangled with the one being measured, the state that the experimenter conducting the measurement wants to assign. To do this, he needs to select the appropriate sequence of actions during the measurement. Something similar, but in a completely distorted form, is now called quantum steering.

Returning to cancer cells, their sense of unity with the organism can be also restored by conducting their quantum disentanglement. Schrödinger suggested that the loop of entanglement and disentanglement may repeat itself infinitely. It might be the case for all things which retain their wholeness (good purpose according to Plato) in spite of being immersed in the entangled environment. Entanglement — disentanglement — entanglement… — this might be how the pulse of being of all things both dead and alive is beating.

References:

1. Levin, Michael. “Bioelectrical approaches to cancer as a problem of the scaling of the cellular self.” Progress in biophysics and molecular biology vol. 165 (2021): 102–113. doi:10.1016/j.pbiomolbio.2021.04.007
2. Levin, Michael. 2025. “Ingressing Minds: Causal Patterns Beyond Genetics and Environment in Natural, Synthetic, and Hybrid Embodiments.” PsyArXiv. February 7. doi:10.31234/osf.io/5g2xj_v3.
3. Einstein, Albert, Podolsky, Boris, and Rosen, Nathan, Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete? Phys. Rev. 47, pp. 777–780, Published 15 May, 1935, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777, PDF https://journals.aps.org/pr/pdf/10.1103/PhysRev.47.777
4. Schrödinger, Erwin, Discussion Of Probability Relations Between Separated Systems, Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 31, no. 4 (1935), pp. 555–563. doi:10.1017/S0305004100013554, PDF https://verga.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/pdfs/Schrodinger-1935.pdf
5. Schrödinger, Erwin, The Present Status of Quantum Mechanics, Die Naturwissenschaften 1935. Volume 23, Issue 48, PDF https://homepages.dias.ie/dorlas/Papers/QMSTATUS.pdf
6. Schrödinger Erwin. Probability relations between separated systems. Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society. 1936; 32(3): pp. 446–452. doi:10.1017/S0305004100019137, PDF https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/schrodinger/Schrodinger-1936.pdf
7. Frede, Dorothea and Mi-Kyoung Lee, “Plato’s Ethics: An Overview”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2023/entries/plato-ethics/
8. Shankara, Adi, Non-correspondence Comprehension, 8th century AD, cited by Zilberman, D.B., Revelation In Advaita Vedanta As An Experience Of Semantic Destruction Of Language, Questions of Philosophy, №5, 1972, pp. 117–129 (Translated from Russian: Д.Б.Зильберман, Откровение в адвайта-веданте как опыт семантической деструкции языка “Вопросы философии”, №5, 1972, с.117–129)
9. Zeh, H.-Dieter, The strange (hi)story of particles and waves, 2018, arXiv:1304.1003v23 [physics.hist-ph], https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1304.1003
10. Everett, Hugh, The Theory Of The Universal Wave Function, The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Princeton University Press Princeton, New Jersey, 1973
11. Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Philosophy — The Revolution in Modern Science. 1958. Harper & Brothers Publishers, New York.
12. Dirac, Paul (1930). The principles of quantum mechanics. Oxford, Clarendon Press. PDF https://digbib.bibliothek.kit.edu/volltexte/wasbleibt/57355817/57355817.pdf