I. Introduction 

      20th Century Physics has shown that Reality is different than we always thought.
At the foundation of ordinary things, elementary particles are not as real as the things that they form, but they are different in essence. Physical reality is not what it looks like, and it is possible to propose that:

      1. The basis of the material world is non-material.
      2. Reality has the nature of an indivisible, non-separable wholeness.
      3. Quantum entities possess properties of consciousness in a rudimentary way.

      These aspects of physical reality provide an important framework for the vision of Teilhard de Chardin, which had no basis in the outgoing mechanistic-materialistic worldview of the science of his time. At the same time, quantum reality is the basis for a new view of biological evolution.

II. Some Characteristic Aspects of Quantum Reality

II.1. The Basis of the Material World is Non-Material

    Schrodinger's Quantum Mechanics is currently the only effective theory which makes it possible to calculate the properties of molecules. In this theory, the electrons in atoms are not tiny particles, little balls of matter, but they are standing waves, wave patterns or mathematical forms. We owe to Max Born the discovery that the nature of these waves is that of probability waves.

      Probabilities are dimensionless numbers. Probability waves are empty; they carry no mass or energy, just information on numerical relations. Nevertheless, all visible order in the universe is determined by the interference of probability waves. For example, the wave functions of atoms determine what kind of molecules can be formed and what kind of chemistry they afford; the wave functions of molecules, in turn, determine the intermolecular interactions which are the basis of the general properties of materials and, in particular, of the chemistry of living cells.

      In this way we find that the order of the world is based on non-material principles. The basis of the order of the material world is non-material.

      In contemporary physics such conclusions were unexpected, but new they are not. Pythagoras already thought that "all things are numbers" and he claimed that "the harmony of the cosmos is based on the ratios of numbers." But what are probabilities? Ratios of numbers! Similarly, in his Timaeus, Plato proposed that atoms are mathematical forms, and St. Augustine wrote (Confessions, book 7): "The older I got, the more despicable became the emptiness of my thought, because I could think of no entity in any other way than as bodily visible."

II.2. The Non-Locality or Non-Separability of Reality

      The non-separability of reality has been revealed by experiments in which elementary particles act on each other without delay over long distances. Experiments testing Bell's Theorem and their interpretations (Bell, 1965, 1988; Aspect et al. 1981, 1982; Espagnat, 1981; Shimony, 1991) have shown that, under certain conditions, decisions made by an observer in one laboratory may have an instantaneous effect on the outcome of experiments performed in another laboratory, an arbitrarily long distance away. Two particles, which at one time interact and then move away from each other, can stay connected and act as though they were one thing, no matter how far apart they are. This phenomenon defines the non-locality of the quantum world.

      If the nature of reality is non-local, it is an indivisible wholeness. In that case, Kafatos and Nadeau (1990) proposed, a remarkable conclusion can be drawn: Since our consciousness has emerged from this wholeness and is part of it, it is possible to infer that an element of Consciousness is active in the universe: Cosmic Consciousness.

II.3. Aspects of Mind

      To physically affect a thing, we must spend some energy. For example, to move an object from one place to another we have to push it; that is, impart some energy to it. Just thinking about such an action will not get it done.

      Elementary particles, again, are different. Under certain conditions they change their behavior when what we know about them changes. They react to gradients of information, as though what we may think about them can affect them. In single-particle interference experiments, for example, which-way information destroys coherence.

   In the ordinary world of our sense experience, the only known entity which can react to the flow of information is a conscious mind. In this sense we can say that, at the foundation of reality, entities with mind-like properties are found. Polkinghorne (1998, p.66) called this "causality through active information." 

      "It is not unreasonable to imagine," Wheeler wrote (1998, p.340), "that information sits at the core of physics, just as it sits at the core of a computer." In passing a system of slits, electrons seem to know how many of them are open and how many closed, and they adjust their behavior accordingly. In a vacuum, pairs of particles can appear out of nothing, provided they exist for such a short time that we cannot know for sure that they existed. A particle that forms a singlet state with another particle seems to know whether or not a measurement was made on its twin, a long distance away. Stapp (1977): The central mystery of quantum theory is how does information get around so quick? How does the particle know that there are two slits? How does the information about what is happening everywhere else get collected to determine what is likely to happen here? How does the particle know that it was looked for in some far-away place and not found. And Wiener emphasized (1961, p.132): "Information is information, not matter or energy. No materialism which does not admit this can survive at the present day."

      From the mind-like aspects of elementary particles Eddington generalized (1939, p.151; 1929, p.276): "The universe is of the nature of a thought or sensation in a universal Mind ... the stuff of the world is mind-stuff." And Jeans (1931, p.146, 158): "Mind no longer appears as an accidental intruder into the realm of matter; we are beginning to suspect that we ought rather to hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter."

      It is in many phenomena that aspects of consciousness come to the fore: Non-material probability waves are closer to the nature of a thought than that of a thing. The limited capacity of electronic states to store electrons is the basis of all of chemistry and of the visible order of the universe. It is the result, not of any mechanical force that we know, but of a mental principle; namely, the symmetry of the wave functions of elementary particles; i.e., the symmetry of numbers. "There is indeed something quasi-mental, non-physical about it," Margenau wrote (1984, p.16).

      In Quantum jumps, quantum systems act spontaneously. A conscious mind is the only entity that we know that can act in this way. Spontaneity in physics is absence of causality. This "leaves us", Eddington (1929, p.309) wrote: "with no clear distinction between the Natural and the Supernatural."

      Thus, at the quantum level of reality, the line of demarcation is blurred between the Natural and the Supernatural; between the physical and the metaphysical; and between the mental and the material. The impression is unavoidable that quantum reality is a transcendent reality, as different from ordinary reality as it is beyond direct observation. At the level of elementary particles, idea-like states become matter-like. The Word is Becoming Flesh. Whatever King Midas touched turned into gold. Whatever we observe turns into matter. At its frontiers, observable reality does not fade into nothing but into something invisible. Physical reality borders on the metaphysical.

      In the same way in which dead atoms form living organisms and stupid molecules form intelligent brains, metaphysical entities form physical reality.

III. The Importance of Virtual States for the Emergence of Complex Order in the Universe

   In his book, "Finding Darwin's God" Miller writes (Miller, 1999, p.190): "In a scientific sense, it is certainly true that the world runs according to material rules, that we are material beings, and that our biology works by means of the laws of physics and chemistry. To all of this, evolution added one important fact; namely that our biological origins are material as well." Similarly, referring to a quotation by the evolutionary biologist Douglas Futumya, Miller writes (ibid. p.168): "Science, by this analysis, is mechanism and materialism. And all that Darwin did was to show that mechanism and materialism applied to biology, too."

      In contrast to the current views of mainstream biology, it is the thesis of this paper that science is not materialism and it is not the kind of mechanism which was accessible to Darwin. It is true that biology is ruled by the laws of physics and chemistry, but these laws can no longer be understood within the framework of traditional materialism and mechanism. Rather, since molecules are the basis of life and molecules are quantum systems, no comprehensive view of the emergence of complex order in the biosphere is possible without taking the quantum properties of molecules into account. Quantum reality is the basis of all visible phenomena.

III.1 First Evolutionary Relevant Aspect of the Quantum World: The No-copy, No-error, just Quantum Jumping Account of Biological Evolution

      All molecules exist in quantum states. All that a molecule can do is to jump from one state to the next. Quantum jumps are spontaneous, have no known cause, and are ruled by transition probabilities, which depend on the wave functions of the states involved. When processes are ruled by probabilities, one can never be sure of the outcome of a specific event.

      In living cells, the synthesis of genes' DNA molecules is a quantum process.

That is, one can never be sure of the outcome of a specific case. When a particular stretch of DNA is synthesized, the probability is overwhelming that the product sequence of nucleotides is the same as that of an attending DNA catalyst, but that need not be so.

      When the product is not the same as the attending DNA, we say an error was made in copying a gene, and a mutation occurred.

      In contrast, quantum entities make no copies and they make no errors, they just populate quantum states. In the synthesis of DNA a group of nucleotides simply populates a common quantum state. In a mutation a group of nucleotides populates a vacant state which was not occupied before. If the new state causes variations in phenotype, then natural selection will take control.

      In this way one is led away from mainstream biology and to the view that the units of natural selection are not stretches of chromosomes but the waveforms of quantum states, which actualize in chromosomes.

      If identical DNA molecules are not copies of one another, but just repeated actualizations of the same quantum state, the concept of descent changes its meaning. In a way, species do not change, but genes change quantum states. Since the quantum states that give rise to living organisms have not descended from one another, their phenotypic effects have not descended either, one from the other.

III.2 Second Evolutionary Relevant Aspect of the Quantum World: The importance of virtual states

 In the center of all processes of emergence in the universe we find virtual states. Every quantum system consists not only of the state in which it is observed, but also of countless other, invisible states that are vacant. When a particular molecule is observed in the state that it occupies, other states also exist, but they are not quite real, because they are empty. It is a general property of all things that they contain countless empty states.

      Quantum chemists call empty states Virtual States. They virtually exist, but not really. Virtual states are mathematical forms, wave functions, bits of information, but they are more than the mere idea of a mathematical form, because they can become real, when a system jumps into them. They can be termed "Heisenberg objects"; i.e., entities which exist "between the idea of a thing and a real thing." (Heisenberg, 1952, 1962)

      In addition to the virtual state created by the interference of H1s states, the quantum structure of H2 contains many more empty states because the H-atoms contain themselves virtual states, which can be thought to interfere and create additional molecular states. This is a peculiar situation: the interference of virtual atomic states, entities non-material and not quite real, creates molecular virtual states, again not quite real, but nevertheless with a predictable mathematical order which is predetermined by the conditions of the system and has the potential to actualize.

      When a molecule occupies a virtual state, that state becomes real; it is actualized. At that point its virtual order becomes a real order. In this way the actualization of virtual order in quantum jumps appears as a simple mechanism by which bits of transcendent order in the universe can express itself in the material world. All molecules, indeed all systems, the universe included, are centers of potentiality, of virtual states which are not quite real, but possible. And constantly something new evolves from them.

III.3.Virtual states as Parmenidian Entities

      Virtual states can be considered as Parmenidian Entities. Parmenides believed that motion is possible only, if empty space exists, into which an object can move. Since he also believed that there is no empty space, he claimed that there can be no motion.

      Quantum systems confirm and refine the Parmenidian principle: a system needs empty (virtual) states in order to be able to change. Quantum virtual states exist in the state space of a system. Their order does not reside in observable forms, but in virtual functions. The virtual wave functions are pieces of a transcendent order.

   The description above focused on the formation of molecular electronic states as a simple example. In addition, many other types of states exist which make up the total state of a system; they control the conditions of translational, vibrational, and rotational motion in space, and of the motion of chemical species across surfaces of potential energy, which leads them from one synthetic ensemble to another. In each case a given system is observed in just one actual total state of its state space, while many others exist which are empty. Every empty state carries with it a well defined wave form, a pattern of order and information, but a virtual pattern, a piece of transcendence not quite of this world, but always ready to enter it. The universe bristles with empty states that have not yet provoked an actual event and, transcribing a statement by Wheeler, it seems safe to say that it is filled with more virtuality than actuality. In an incessant, restless dance occupied states are constantly abandoned and become virtual, while empty states become occupied and real. At the foundation of things transcendent order and real order are interlocked in an uninterrupted frantic embrace. From the Transcendent to the Real, from the Real to the Transcendent - that is how easy that is.

      Genes, DNA molecules, are not exempt from this general state of matter. For each chain of nucleotides, there is a high density of empty states, and finite probabilities for transitions into each of them. A mutation is the actualization of a virtual state of a gene. 

III.4. Virtual Cosmic States as Platonic Ideas

      Virtual states can also be viewed as Platonic ideas. The entire universe is a quantum system. Its occupied states form the visible part of reality. In addition, there are infinitely many cosmic virtual states. Since they are not real in the material sense, the order that they define is a transcendent cosmic order and Virtual State Actualization (VSA) is the mechanism by which the material world is secreted and separated from the wholeness of the transcendent order of the universe,

      If the nature of the universe is that of a wholeness all states are cosmic states, and even the quantum states of single molecules are a part of the one whole cosmic quantum structure. Thus, molecular states can be thought to exist in the virtual cosmic state space before the corresponding molecules exist as actual lumps of matter. Chances are that the quantum states which actualize in DNA already existed at a time, when the real DNA molecules did not yet exist as material lumps on this planet. Since, in the quantum reality, everything that can happen at some time must happen, given a sufficient length of time, the actualization of states which express themselves in life forms was inevitable. Since we have to assume that the virtual state space extends through cosmic wholeness, as though it existed beyond spacetime, there is no reason to believe that the emergence of life was restricted to a single point in time, or to a single locality, like our planet.

      One is thus led in a natural way to Teilhard's view of life as a phenomenon that "cannot be considered in the Universe any longer as a superficial accident but, rather, must be considered to be under strong pressure everywhere - ready to burst from the smallest crack no matter where in the universe - and, once actualized, it is incapable of not using every opportunity and means to arrive at the extreme of its potentiality, externally of Complexity, and internally of Consciousness." (Teilhard, 1956, p. 50).

      In the virtual state space of the universe, it is sufficient that each quantum state exists only once, like in a central library or in the world of Plato's ideas. Out of the single system of quantum states representing a hydrogen atom in the cosmic library, the countless H-atoms which exist as material particles are repeated actualizations. A single state (or coherent group of states) in the virtual library; multiplicity in the visible order of the material world. In the virtual order, Ockham's razor ranks supreme and Cartesian clarity is the ultimate principle. In this model of the universal order, it is considered that there is a nucleus of cosmic virtual states, like a central archive or processing unit, from which the material world emerges by VSA. There is wholeness in the virtual order, separateness in the actualized objects. Our world has lost the sense of wholeness, because it is filled with repeated actualizations of the same virtual quantum states.

   The notion that identical material structures are repeated actualizations of the same virtual quantum state conveys a different view of things than the contention that they are copies of one another. The notion of copies and errors of mainstream biology represents the naive view of genetic processes. Like other anthropocentric views, it will eventually have to be abandoned. The reference point of a gene is not another gene, but a virtual quantum state. In a pool of identical genes, we consider none as the copy of another, but all as the actualizations of the same cosmic quantum state. Arbitrary numbers of identical DNA molecules are produced from a single quantum state of the cosmic library, a single bit of the virtual universal order.

III.5. The emergence of biological complexity through virtual state actualization

      By the concept of emergence we mean the becoming, or coming into being of systems, for which there are no antecedents. Emergence refers to the appearance of something new. Something appears in the material world that did not exist before, like new life forms in biology.

      The process of becoming has often been considered as enigmatic. How is it possible that never-before existing complex systems spontaneously emerge from simpler ones? Since the root of such processes is not found in visible forms, Darwinians have often claimed that complex biological systems are the result of nothing but chance and appear out of nothing. Since miraculous appearances out of nothing and order from chaos do not correspond to our normal experience of the nature of things, it is suggested that the creation of complex structures by VSA is immensely more satisfactory because it has a well established empirical precedent: at the molecular level, the emergence of complex order from actualizations of a coherent virtual order is so commonplace that it is a trivial phenomenon. Molecules do not create complex order de nihilo, but out of their virtual states.

      For Teilhard, 'the primacy accorded to the psychic and to thought in the stuff of the universe" (Teilhard, 1959, p.30) was a main theme of his vision. This view is now finding some foundation in the VSA hypothesis, in that virtual states are mind-like, not matter-like. Cosmic virtual states are ultimately expressions of the mind-like background of the universe which may be the source not only the principles needed to construct our bodies, but also of the universal principles that make up our mind.

      This brings out an important difference between Darwinism and the quantum perspective of biological evolution that is proposed in this paper. In contrast to Darwinism, the VSA hypothesis assumes the existence of an underlying non-material and coherent order to all of reality, which is at the same time immanent, because it is contained in the things, and transcendent, because it is not stored in visible forms and part of a virtual cosmic structure. Chance plays a role in both models. But in Darwinism the evolving order is created by chance, a "noise" that natural selection will transform into "music" (Monod, 1972, p.113). In the emergence by VSA, the music is part of an ongoing cosmic concert which is revealed in quantum jumps. Chance lies in the quantum jumping; whether a jump will occur or not, and where it will lead to. But the order of the states on which the jumping will land has nothing to do with chance. Both models agree with the same experimental evidence, which biologists have accumulated in the course of time. But only the concept of VSA is in agreement with the general understanding of the quantum nature of molecules and all material systems. Numerous observations show that the molecules of biology, too, are quantum systems.

III.6. Evidence for the need of a quantum perspective of evolution.

      Against the quantum perspective of evolution (Schafer, 1997-2005) it has often been argued that biomolecules are too large to be considered quantum systems and that it is completely sufficient to treat them as dense Newtonian objects. This is the currently accepted view of mainstream biology. In contrast, there is growing evidence that this is not so. 

  For example, quantum computations of the structures of peptides and proteins (Van Alsenoy, 1998; Jiang et al., 1995; Schafer et al. 1982) have predicted details of protein structures, which were subsequently confirmed by protein crystallography but are absent in computational results obtained by classical modeling procedures. These structural trends represent a clear quantum effect in an important property of proteins.

      In quantum calculations of clay minerals (see, e.g. Teppen et al. 2002), the size of a mineral crystal must be extrapolated to infinity in order to obtain realistic results which are in agreement with experimental data. Such studies show that all systems, regardless of size, can be understood as quantum systems. 

      Cytochrome oxidase is a giant protein molecule, with a molecular weight of some 400,000 atomic mass units. Its function in electron transfer reactions in living cells has been studied by spectroscopic means (Millett and Durham, 2002). Spectroscopic molecular phenomena always involve the absorption or emission of quanta of light accompanied by transitions of a molecule from one quantum state to another. Such phenomena make it completely impossible to understand cytochrome oxidase as a Newtonian corpuscle.

      Apart from such specific experimental observations, one must ask in a general way what the totality or wholeness of the universe might mean for the origin of life? What does the discovery of virtual states in small molecules mean for biological order? What do the mind-like aspects of the background of reality mean for the nature of life that evolves in the biosphere? Such questions are not meaningless because potential answers may not now be amenable to experiment. It seems a greater risk to neglect them than to discuss them.

      In statistical analyses, the time available since the birth of this planet has frequently been judged to be not sufficient for a process in which life evolves out of nothing and by random variations (for a summary see Spetner, 1997). Considerably less time is needed for a process, like VSA, in which the complex order already exists in virtual states and is merely revealed by chance, compared to a process, in which the complex order has to be created by chance.

      It is one of Darwin famous postulates that "Nature does not make jumps." In contrast, contemporary physics tells us that nature makes nothing but jumps, namely quantum jumps. As it seems, the overall progression of evolution is not exempted from this law because the succession of evolutionary levels is frequently not gradual but "everything seems to have burst into the world ready made" (Teilhard, 1959, 121).