and physicians have studied the body, tissue, and cells in submicroscopic detail. We know of innumerable biochemical reactions that continuously take place in the body. Altogether we know a lot about the material side! Despite a cornucopia of detailed knowledge, the phenomenon of life is still incomprehensible. This way of thinking did not change much, even after the quantum revolution in the first half of the last century discovered that:
The real origin of all life is energy. Matter is just a particularly dense form of energy.
In order to truly understand life, another factor needs to be considered. Something intangible that enables the system to function. Something that is responsible for initiating, maintaining, and controlling the innumerable processes taking place on the material level. In her book, which is worth reading and taking to heart, Jutta Rost writes about the subject of life (Rost 1990): “How can we best define ‘life'? How can we describe it? There is nothing to see, nothing to measure, nothing to weigh, and even x-ray does not show anything. This ‘life per se' escapes all of our modern diagnostic and scientific methods.
We can experience it, however: Looking at effects or non-effects, we recognize its presence or absence. A living organism has motion, functions. Animate objects react to stimulation. Inanimate objects do not react.
In those terms life is not a condition but a function. This function would be impossible, even unthinkable, without integrative regulations. We know today that several million biochemical reactions per second are taking place in a regulated order in each living cell. Physicist F. A. Popp unequivocally states: “The fact that life does not end up in a chaotic mix of chemical reactions can only be explained by the existence of control functions based upon the principles of physics.”
Any attempts to hypothesize based on biochemical principles have proven untenable to date. In any event, the slow rate of chemical reactions would not support such gigantic numbers. Moreover, any biochemical explanation would not answer the central question about a superior coordination of biological functions.
Popp compares biological functions with the performance of an orchestra: “When playing at a concert, each musician is expected to play his instrument expertly. That is not the only important criterion. The quality of the artists' performance is determined by the coordination among each instrumentalist when each note is being played, in what manner, their harmonies, and on which instrument.”
It took a surprisingly long time before scientists asked a question as obvious as the one about superior control of living processes. Scientists in the former Soviet Union were the first ones to conduct research on this subject matter. In fact, the Russian biophysicist A. G. Gurwitsch discovered mitogenetic radiation back in 1922. He observed that the root of an onion, which is in the process of growing, can increase the rate of cell division of another root significantly, even if the two onions are separated by glass (Gurwitsch 1932). This opened the door to the amazing field of bio-information. Based on his findings, Gurwitsch postulated the existence of a regulating biofield. His idea, however, was largely ignored at the time. His compatriot G. La khovsky, who introduced the concept of electromagnetic resonance in the transference of biological information and considered life “to generate from and be maintained by radiation,” remained an outsider to the scientific community. At that time, people were not yet ready for the thoughts proposed by Gurwitsch and Lakhovsky. The scientific materialistic paradigm was still too omnipotent.
More than 30 years passed before physicists of the western hemisphere started to consider biophysical influences on living systems. Biological Effects of Magnetic Fields (Barnothy 1964) was the first publication to discuss this subject in the United States. In 1970, Electromagnetic Fields and Life was published by biophysicist A. S. Presman, also in the United States. During that time, the Russian biophysicists continued with their research. A summary of their work, Ultra-weak radiation in intercellular interaction, was published in 1981 by V. P. Kaznachejew and L. P. Michailowa. They conducted very exact and fundamental research on how biophysical information is transmitted, received, and stored in cells and organs; thus proving that electromagnetic intracellular and intercellular interactions (i. e. electromagnetic bio-information) were valid. These works were the first to clearly show that in order to comprehend life, “considering metabolic functions alone (= exchange of energy and matter) is insufficient. Particularly important is the analysis of information transmitted within living systems.”
Since the 1970s the German physicist F.A. Popp has studied the phenomena of how information is transmitted within living systems. He too encountered plenty of resistance and disrespect from the established scientific community, but was able to conclusively prove that photons transmit information within a cell and between cells. A photon is generally understood to be a light particle without mass. He showed that the DNA of living cells stores and releases photons (biophotons). These frequencies are inconceivably weak. Their intensity is about 1018 (the number 10 followed by 18 zeros) times lower than regular daylight. To prove the existence of such intracellular luminescence he developed a device called a photon multiplier. It is so sensitive that it can register the glow generated by fireflies from a distance of 10 km (16 miles). Using this technique of magnifying light to an extremely high degree, Popp was not only able to prove that photon rays are ubiquitous in all living systems, but also that:
All biochemical reactions in living organisms are operated and regulated by ultra-low electromagnetic frequencies.
This process is regulated by an oscillation field; the human mind cannot fathom the complexity of all its information. “If we wanted to understand the information content of just one single cell, we would need more than 100 years, reading day and night about the different possibilities containing information” (Popp).
The term information is commonly used today. In the physical scientific sense, however, it is hard to define.
R. N. Wiener (1963), founder of cybernetics, unmistakably recognized the superiority of information as compared to matter and energy:
Information is neither energy nor matter. It is a third, intangible entity comparable to a “message” emitted by a sender (or a system that contains the information) to a receiver.
For example, the signals transmitted may be letters, numbers, symbols or the like. In the field of bio-information, they are the electromagnetic frequency patterns as previously mentioned.
When transmitting information, concordance between sender and receiver is crucial. That is to say the sender/receiver must be able to understand the message. Let us use a common example to illustrate this. To have the desired effect, a message delivered via letter must meet a number of criteria. The receiver must be able to read, has to know the characters that were used, and understand the language. The size of the characters (i. e. individual signals) may also make comprehension difficult. Text containing characters several meters in size would be legible only from great distance. Text containing micrometer characters would be legible only using optical devices. Moreover, the receiver must not be blind.
Thus information can only be effective if it resonates with the system it is meant to influence. It must be “suitable for the system.”