In fact, when quantum physics was first becoming accepted as the mechanisms by which the universe operates, the physicists had trouble with this themselves. They could say, “Well, I can see these ideas working at the level of atoms and molecules but I can’t bring that kind of weirdness into my life.” So there was an arbitrary decision back in the 1920s to say, “Let’s restrict quantum mechanics to the world of atoms and molecules and use Newtonian physics to describe the rest of the world.” That is why biology went on its merry way using Newtonian physics. Yet we are today beginning to see work by very reputable scientists that says the universe is created by our observations; we create the field and the field shapes the particle. The big lesson is that what you think or ask for, as the Asians would say, is what you are going to get. It is not a coincidence; we are actively involved in physically shaping the world that we experience.

How It Works: the Biology

To understand how it works, we are going to talk about the biology. We start with the fact that we are made of cells and cells are living organisms made from protein building blocks. There are over 100,000 different kinds of proteins, which are molecules with very complex shapes almost like gears that engage with each other. Some of these coupled-protein gears create respiration, some provide for digestion, others for muscle contraction, et cetera. All the functions of the cells are due to protein gears. The blueprints for the gears are the genes. When I need to make gears for myself I have to go get the blueprint from the DNA, copy the blueprint, which is called RNA, and then use that RNA to build the proteins.

The assemblies of protein gears in biology are called pathways, such as a digestive pathway or a respiratory pathway. I can look at all the physiologic characters of the human body and identify them as gears that are engaging with each other and through that interaction providing the movements that are the character of life. At this point we should have a big drum roll because I am going to try to tell you the secret of life. The secret of life is movement. Without movement there is no life; animation is a character that distinguishes living things from non-living things. So the issue is, what is this movement and how does it come about?

All proteins are like strings of pop-it beads; the beads are amino acids. There are twenty different kinds of amino acids, and each of these amino acid “beads” has a unique shape. Changing the sequence of amino acids in the chain, changes the final shape of the protein Here’s the secret: the sequence of amino acids are like built-in knitting instructions that tell the string how to fold up to form a specific structure. It’s like self-knitting yarn. When amino acids are assembled into a chain you get a piece of protein “yarn” and then this piece of yarn will automatically knit itself into a specific structure based on the sequence of amino acids. We have 100,000 different proteins and each protein has a unique length and a unique sequence of amino acids that will determine how to knit that piece of yarn into a shape.