The cell membrane as the ‘missing link’ for the evolution of consciousness
Reading | Physiology
Prof. John Torday, MSC, PhD | 2025-09-12
While Prof. Torday agrees with Federico Faggin that quantum mechanics is salient to consciousness, he maintains that the role of the cell membrane—which separates an organism from its environment—is key to the selective assimilation or mirroring of the quantum properties of the cosmos into the differentiated consciousness of the organism. This essay is short, dense, and may be difficult to unpack. But it handsomely rewards the effort of the patient and determined reader. The many literature citations in the essay also provide rich ground for further exploration.
I watched the Essentia Foundation interview that Hans Busstra did with Federico Faggin back in January 2025, entitled “Quantum Fields are Consciousness,” with great interest. I am also of the opinion that quantum mechanics is central to consciousness, but that the ‘missing link’ is between the cell and the Cosmos, as I have expressed it recently (Torday JS. The quantum cell. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2024 May;188:24-30). For without the cell, specifically the cell membrane, consciousness as we know it would not exist.
It is the cell that mediates the Symbiogenic mechanism that Lynn Margulis Sagan has hypothesized mediates the assimilation of factors in the environment that have posed existential threats over the course of evolution (1967), beginning with bacteria being co-opted to form the mitochondria in archaea, forming eukaryotes, and so on and so forth, building the physiology of uni- and then multicelled organisms as a result of an ever-changing environment caused by and expanding Cosmos (Hawking, 1988). The ultimate purpose of Symbiogenesis is to sustain and perpetuate the serial homeostatic control of energy that underpins evolution (Torday JS. Evolution, gravity, and the topology of consciousness. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2022 Oct;174:50-54), reflected by the addition of physiologic traits in adaptation to said environmental changes. The synchronic or ‘real-time’ mechanism for such adaptations is described as ontogeny, whereas the diachronic, across space-time mechanism is phylogeny, or speciation. In actuality, ontogeny and phylogeny describe the same mechanism of cell-cell communication mediated by soluble growth factors at different time scales. They are both the result of dyshomeostasis, which causes the production of radical oxygen species that result in gene mutations and duplications. Such genetic changes facilitate the self-referential self-organizational autopoetic adaptations (Maturana, H.R.,Varela, F.J., 1982. Autopoiesis and Cognition. Reidel, Dordrecht) we conventionally refer to as evolution.
In the process of assimilating factors in the environment Symbiogenically, we have passively acquired the mathematics inherent in the Cosmos (Plato, 2007. The Republic. Penguin, New York; Livio, M. The Golden Ratio. Crown, New York; Tegmark, M., 2015. Our Mathematical Universe. Vintage, New York). It is this convergence of physiology and mathematics that Weibel et al. referred to as Symmorphosis, or the ‘Goldilocks Effect,’ referring to how and why our ‘being’ fits with the “fine-tuning of the Cosmos.” The latter is conventionally referred to as the “Anthropic Principle,” that we just happened to land in an environment ‘just right’ for our physiology. Conversely, the autopoietic internal selection for physiologic traits due to ‘tinkering’ (Jacob F. Evolution and tinkering. Science. 1977 Jun 10;196(4295):1161-6) is consistent with the structural and functional changes that vertebrates have undergone over the course of their evolution. The feasibility of autopoiesis came to light when differentiated lung or bone cells were exposed to microgravity, only to discover that they lost their phenotypic identities in a step-wise fashion (Torday JS. Parathyroid hormone-related protein is a gravisensor in lung and bone cell biology. Adv Space Res. 2003;32(8):1569-76) consistent with the step-wise adaptation to land evidenced by the fossil record, having occurred on at least five separate occasions (Clack, 2012. Gaining Ground. University of Indiana Press, Bloomington). This was a paradigm-shifting observation because it merged physics with physiology evolutionarily, inferring that the force of gravity was necessary for the latter.
Subsequently, the question of the evolutionary origin of Symbiogenesis arose, given that the former is characterized by serial pre-adaptations, or what Gould and Vrba referred to as exaptations (Gould, S.J., Vrba, E.S., 1982. Exaptation- a missing term in the science of form. Plaeobiology 8, 4-15). Since the function of Symbiogenesis is to maintain homeostatic balance of energy, and the consensus is that classical mechanics evolved from Quantum Mechanics, the logical pre-adaptation would have been Quantum Entanglement as a homologous process, forging a continuum physiologically between the two for the first time (Torday JS. Consciousness, embodied Quantum Entanglement. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2023 Jan;177:125-128).
This insight ultimately led to the hypothesis that the unicell refers to the elements, which were formed as by-products of Stellar Nucleosynthesis (Hoyle, F., 1946.The Synthesis of the Elements from Hydrogen. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 106, 343–383) in the exact order of their atomic masses from lightest to heaviest, and everything in between, conferring a ‘logic’ to the Cosmos. Furthermore, the elements were produced by the reaction of two lighter elements such as hydrogen and helium to produce a heavier element, namely lithium, which is a Fibonacci-like sequence. Epigenetic Inheritance similarly is characterized by a Fibonacci-like sequence such as the reaction of nicotine with the Nicotinic-Acetylcholine Receptor to generate asthma, or vinclozolin reacting with the androgen receptor to cause abnormal male morphogenesis, or cortisol reacting with glucocorticoid receptor to cause obesity. The cell, in turn, assimilated the lighter elements (those of the atomic weight of iron or less) as the ions for maintaining metabolic homeostasis, such as sodium, potassium and chlorine. Conversely, the heavier elements were relegated to the extracellular matrix, most of which are toxic to the cell, with some exceptions such as zinc, which is a co-factor for the breakdown of the ECM by metalloproteases.
In the aggregate, the above interrelationships between the cell and its environment, ranging from its topologic formation from lipid molecules to produce semi-permeable membrane bound protocells (Torday, J.S., Rehan, V.K., 2012. Evolutionary Biology, Cell-Cell Communication and Complex Disease. Wiley, Hoboken), to serial homeostasis of energy, to the interrelationship between the cell and the elements as foundational constitutes consciousness (Torday, J.S., 2024. The quantum cell. Prog. Biophys. Mol. Biol. 188, 24-30.) as awareness of self and environment as a consequence of Symbiogenesis as both observer and observed (Torday, J.S., Miller, W.B. Jr., 2016. Biologic relativity: Who is the observer and what is observed? Prog. Biophys. Mol. Biol. 121 29-34.).
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