Dr. John Steven Torday
Professor, University of California- Los Angeles

Society for Consciousness Studies 2021 Conference Presentation Title:
Symbiogenesis, the ‘Missing Link’ Between Physics and Evolution

Abstract: The realization that the cell membrane is a ‘mobius strip’, able to Cosmically complement daily binary decisions would account for sensing ‘something greater than ourselves’ (Torday JS. Life is a mobius strip. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2021 Aug 5:S0079-6107(21)00094-8). This ‘two-tiered consciousness’ merges David Bohm’s mundane Explicate Order as ‘behavior’ with the Cosmologic Implicate Order of the cell as ‘physiology’, providing a deep homologic (of the same origin) understanding of Lamarckian epigenetic inheritance as the principle means of evolution, Darwinian evolution being an epiphenomenal analogy. In that vein, the interrelationship between the Periodic Table of Elements and Evolution is a homology, the physical and biological emanating from the same origin in the Singularity (Torday JS. The Singularity of nature. Prog Biophys Mol Biol. 2019 Mar;142:23-31). There is a fundamental convergence of these processes that derives from nucleosynthesis, the way in which stars produce light by converting matter into energy. In so doing, they generate the first 26 Elements in sequence based on their atomic mass, from the lightest to heaviest, from hydrogen to iron; the heaviest Element, Uranium, was produced by a Supernova. In turn, the way in which life has evolved from non-life is through the cellular endogenization of the Elements, referred to as Symbiogenesis; consequently, like the Elements, physiology must also ultimately comply with the Laws of Nature. Therefore, both the Periodic Table of Elements and Evolution are characterized by their simultaneous synchronic (real-time) and diachronic (across space-time) components, providing a holistic perspective for consciousness and/of the Cosmos.

Bio: Dr. Torday received his Masters’ and PhD in Experimental Medicine from McGill University, followed by a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Reproductive Endocrinology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His first faculty position was in Pediatrics and Physiology at Harvard Medical School, where he invented a highly accurate intra-uterine test for fetal lung development. He then joined the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Maryland, and most recently holds a position as Professor-in-Residence in Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology and Evolutionary Medicine at the University of California-Los Angeles. He has studied fetal development for over 50 years, having discovered the role of cell-cell communication in the formation of physiologic systems as a graduate student. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific articles on this subject, and six monographs on cellular evolution, including 10 articles on consciousness as the product of networked physiology. The functional relationship between physiology and physics has led him to hypothesize that our consciousness is founded on the Cosmic Laws of Nature, leading to a book on The Singularity of Nature (2020).

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