Talk:Biophoton/Archive 1

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Statement of anonymous editor User:62.227.49.145, 08:43, 2005 Mar 8:

For an objective documentation we refer to http://www.biophotonik.de or http://www.lifescientists.de. This hint is necessary because of permanent defamation in this article.

Interesting definition of "objective". --Pjacobi 13:52, 2005 Mar 14 (UTC)

comments, 2005

AFAIK the described effect is the Hanbury-Brown and Twiss effect. It is not specifically "bio" and should better be explained on its own page, if someone is willing to do the work. See [1] --Pjacobi 01:50, 2005 Feb 3 (UTC)

ok, so essentially this makes the coherence theory testable using a correlation interferometer, no? -- 69.195.36.86 02:36, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
- Hey thanks, for setting up the page! I'd say it would be a question of photon rates. The basic counting and checking whether the distribution is Poisson or Super-Poisson is the method working for lowest rates. I'll have another look into it (Too much loose ends, too much day work) --Pjacobi 10:40, 2005 Feb 4 (UTC)
  - by the way, this paper gives a strong opinion on th matter: "coherence is the fundamental property of biophotons ... Remarkably biophotons are extremely coherent, even more so than human made lasers" http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/107555304322848931 -- 70.28.153.5 3 July 2005 19:09 (UTC)
    - Sorry, this paper looks all ~~bogus~~ pseudo-physics to me. THE JOURNAL OF ALTERNATIVE AND COMPLEMENTARY MEDICINE doesn't inspire confidence into me, nor do the authors. --Pjacobi July 3, 2005 21:21 (UTC)
    - Good science should be unconcerned with credentials and slogans, and point directly at arguments and evidence. Credible or not, this paper makes such a strong statement that it tells us what matters MUST be settled. So the central question becomes, how to test for coherence? -- 216.234.56.130 6 July 2005 14:54 (UTC)

comments for pre- 4 Oct 2004 version

This page is in serious need of attention. It contains, in my opinion, a large amount of unsubstantiated, pseudoscientific, non-NPOV garbage. Someone needs to completely overhaul this, make the explanations and definitions comprehensible, and adopt a consistent NPOV attitude. -- FirstPrinciples 06:43, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

One of the problems with the Biophotonists, is that they have some serious people use their vocabulry ("biophoton", "coherence"), so that the stuff cannot be challenged anymore with the argument, that it is completely ignored by the scientific community.

The other problem is, that biologists usually don't care much about quantum field theory and theoetical physicists don't care much about biology. So, at first glance one of Popp's articles didn't look as silly as it should to both groups.

Pjacobi 11:10, 3 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Can we have some cites for these claims, please?

As far as the existence of ultraweak luminesence; I'm not in the field, so I can't judge as to the reality of the indcated journals where these guys are publishing; but they claim to be peer reviewed (for what that's worth). Note that publishing these finding is probably not necessarily an endorsement of anything beyond that these photons exist.

Quickenden, T. I. and Que Hee, S. S. "Weak luminescence from the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the existence of mitogenetic radiation" Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, 1974 , 60, 764-770.

Tilbury, R. N. and Quickenden, T. I. "Spectral and time dependence studies of the ultraweak bioluminescence emitted by the bacterium Escherichia coli" Photochemistry and Photobiology, 1988 , 47, 145-150.

Tilbury, Gregg, Percival, Matich: "Ultraweak Cheminluminescence from Human Blood Pasma" [2]

A bio for Rod Tilbury [3] which makes him look like he might not be a kook; studies spontaneous ultraweak luminescence of cells.

As far as the theories of various mystical connections between these photons and any number of other effects - I see no evidence of reputable research being performed via a web search. Chas zzz brown 08:16 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)

Or rather than that, could we have some explicit allusion high up in the text about this being, surely, the sheer speculation of wackos, and about the likelihood that none of the interpretations avdanced in this entry are entertained by even a single staff scientist or tenured professor in any vaguely molecular form of biology? ( perhaps excepting Francis Crick, not that I know his thoughts on this particular seeming lunacy).

It's the difficulty of NPOV - if there is some evidence that there are extra photons, then we're bound to keep the article; but we can definitely strip out the pure speculation and label it as such. Chas zzz brown 08:16 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)

I haven't read all the stuff about NPOV, but to me it's common sense that we care about some people's opinion's more than other's--e.g. eye-witnesses. And it may be that some readers would prefer the opinion of a warlock over the opinion of a physician when it comes to speculating why some patient didn't respond to a certain drug; but if so we owe it to the witches to tell them which opinion comes from which.

Also, the explanatory paragraph below sounds fine in the abstract, but I can't imagine what it might mean in terms of a concrete example. So for me it doesn't wash at all. Could you elaborate? If not, I suggest you delete it--or else make clear, assuming this would be the case, that this explanation is what some non-biology people offer, and that there may not be much to it.

"Normal cell metabolism occurs in a chain of steps, each step involving a small energy exchange, for greater efficiency. With some degree of randomness ensured by thermodynamics, it would then be expected that some (unknown) number of these chains would possibly "skip" one or more steps. The resulting loss of efficiency would then be detected as a photon being emitted."

I cribbed it from the following few paragraphs of an article in the New Scientist (reprinted here [4]). Edit mercilessly as you see fit :) Chas zzz brown 08:16 Jan 18, 2003 (UTC)

But the kind of light that Kobayashi is interested in is far weaker-it is typically several million times as faint as the light from a firefly. In fact, the trickle of "biophotons" is so weak that researchers are only now beginning to agree where it comes from.

The main source is free radicals: atoms or molecules with an unbound electron that are desperate to pair up with electrons from other molecules. Free radicals are often an unwelcome by-product of the reactions that take place at the inner membrane of mitochondria-the power houses of the cell that use oxygen to make the cell's fuel ATP.

Free radicals are seriously bad news. When they bump into other molecules in the cell such as proteins, lipids or sugars, they destroy them by slicing them up into small chunks.

Most biological reactions take place in several small steps, each one designed to use energy efficiently. But these free radical reactions are so energetic that they tend to occur in one huge step. This means not all the energy is used up in the reaction. A little is absorbed by an electron on the molecule that's under attack. This electron becomes unstable and sheds its extra energy as a photon of light.

Since enzymes and anti-oxidants usually mop up reactive oxygen molecules and free radicals before they can damage the cell, a healthy cell tends to release very few photons, maybe only tens per minute. Not easy to collect, even in a pitch-black lab.

Good old New Scientist. It's hard to tell what's going on exactly from the above, but to me it seems like if metabolites are being made it's accidental or at least incidental--i.e. it's not like the metabolic process is slipping gears or anything, which is how the Wiki description struck me. Also the proposed mechanism as I read it in the NS exerpt is perfectly ordinary from a chemistry point of view. I'll see if I can come up with an alternative wording.

IMHO, New Scientist is increasingly becoming a gutter tabloid for science. It frequently offers features on things like homoeopathy and various pathological sciences - not because the scientific community is really interested in the phenomena, but because crazy stories sell magazines. -- FirstPrinciples 06:43, Oct 3, 2004 (UTC)

Homeopathy has had ramping evidence, which can be shown in various posts on Theproving on eGroups.com. The owner has contacted Randi multiple times but he has been reluctant and refusing to acknowledge the results, early on dismissing an experimental setup because it was too inconvenient (slow, but thorough) for him! Please explain your other complaints about New Scientist. lysdexia 06:44, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Postings on some free internet group don't count as "ramping" evidence. The only evidence that counts consists of randomized, placebo controlled, peer reviewed, double-blind trials reported in reputable scientific journals. That's all I have to say on the topic. This isn't an appropriate forum to have a debate on this issue. -- FirstPrinciples 09:32, Oct 23, 2004 (UTC)

Thorough revision Oct 4 2004

In agreement with the vast majority of contributions in the previous "Discussion", the following issues have now been dealt with:

1) “popular name” was wrong and grossly misleading. It is in fact the idiosyncratic term used by a sectarian circle around F.A. Popp in Neuss/Germany.

2) The whole section under the sentence of the old version QUOTE "Biophotons" are photons with unusual features isomorphic to life UNQUOTE had to be deleted, because this sentence has no relation to facts. The so-called “biophotons” are photons as all other photons, and as such they are neither “morphic”, nor “isomorphic”. Further, the concept that anything can be called “isomorphic” to life is a purely religious concept, and it would have to be presented as such.

3) A large number of changes were needed to improve the English.

213.116.220.87 11:36, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Excellent, this article is now much better than it was. A couple of further comments:

1) Should the article be under Category:Pseudoscience rather than Category:Protoscience?

2) One of the subheadings refers to a "Gurwitsch" but doesn't actually say who he is... should this be changed? -- FirstPrinciples 17:31, Oct 4, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments.

Re 1: Please put it under Category:Pseudoscience, because the main underlying hypothesis of the "biophoton" concept is "biophoton coherence" (an extremely weird misuse of quantum electrodynamics) by F.A. Popp and his followers. And this construct is definitely a non-testible theory. It must therefore be ranked on the same level as a religious concept.

Re 2: There is a contribution about Gurwitsch on the German Wikipedia. If you think it would be of use, I could translate the main parts from it.

213.116.240.135 18:59, 4 Oct 2004 (UTC)

OK, 'biophoton' is now classified as a pseudoscience (which is clearly where it belongs). As for Gurwitsch, I don't think it really matters. -- FirstPrinciples 00:23, Oct 5, 2004 (UTC)

It seems the existence of ultraweak bioluminescence is not pseudoscience, but that some hypotheses about it could be. What do you think? are these references credible or not?

69.195.36.86 00:26, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Serious research can better go into Bioluminiscence, as the term "Biophoton" is rather strongly tied to The F.A.Popp group. In times of the active discussions in these articles, I wasted a lot time seraching for the "serious core" but didn't find good evidence.

For instance the finnish physicist giving support to Biophoton thesis, is a fringe type himself, having created his private Theory of everything.

But if you have access to the pay versions of the sites you linked, read the articles, and report back.

Pjacobi 00:41, 2005 Feb 2 (UTC)

Biophoton

The article is pretentious and scientifically untenable.

(For directness and clarity, the following replies are interleaved. Normal text is from user 80, bold and interleaved text is from user 213.)

The article is much more cautious than anything that you wrote and are writing now.

The heading of Main View of Science is inappropriate for it is subsequently claimed that there is no scientific theory. In the absence of a theory to express the main view in bold heading is in poor taste.

Even in the absence of a complete theory, there can be a main view and also scientific approaches based on this main view. The present situation has been dispassionately reported in the article.

If main view has to be presented, then it should be the view of persons engaged in investigating the problem to find truth.

In this field many persons are trying to find the truth, in particular in Japan, Australia, Canada, and the USA. Outsiders, like F.A. Popp in Germany or R.P. Bajpai in India, had the same chances to publish their results as all others. If they did not succeed in doing so, this probably did not happen without reason.

The article concedes that there are persons who hold alternative view but fails to mention that these are persons of sound academic credentials who are trying to find out the truth.

The “sound academic credentials” in the case of F.A. Popp in Germany are that he was kicked out from two state universities in Germany (Marburg and Kaiserslautern), which means quite a lot, because university jobs in Germany are usually extremely safe, even for the most incompetent employees. Another piece of “sound academic credentials” is that F.A. Popp has failed, for almost 30 years now, to publish his hypotheses concerning his so-called “biophotons” in a widely accepted international journal for biology or medicine.

The hypothesis of photon emission from irregular random errors of metabolism experiences two serious problems:1. How biochemical energy ~ 0.01 e.v. of (ATP-ADP) cycle or its variant gets up converted in to visible range photons of energy ~ 3 e.v. in all living systems all the time?

“All the time” can hardly be the right word here, because a cell typically emits one photon per month, and two photons of the same wavelength in a typical interval of 100 years.

The problem is the same as faced in photo electric effect in the beginning of last century and was solved by Einstein 2. Why does one observe stable patterns in distributions of detected photons in a signal of almost constant strength? Any one can observe these patterns with a sensitive photo multiplier in a stable system from a sample of lichens to the palm of a human being. The alternative hypothesis of photon emission is as follows: “Many acts of live objects have a high degree of coordination called coherence. The coordination extends to biomolecular level where it occurs in the form of switching of desired pathways at appropriate times.How does this coordination occur? If it is a physical act, then energy balance is maintained in every act of coordination and every spontaneous act of coordination emits some energy as photons. These photons contains information about the act of coordination in some of its properties. The primary source of all our knowledge is essentially the information extracted from photon signals.The main assumption of the alternative hypothesis is that biophotons are the photons emitted in acts of coherence and contain information about in some properties. The correspondence between acts of life and properties of a biophoton signal is unique and one to one.” The one to one correspondence is called isomorphism and the corresponding entities are said to be isomorphic to each other. The objective of ongoing investigations is to find out how and why the correspondence is reflected. One finds biophoton signal to be a sensitive probe of the properties and state of live objects.It is emphasized that the unique feature of a biophoton signal is its association with ongoing dynamics and any inferences about the static properties are only incidental and are of not primary importance. Qi, cell to cell communication, etc could also be matters for investigation by a sensitive probe, if even 1% of what is claimed in these contexts is true. There is a need of controlled experiments to establish the truth. Finally, the field is fast evolving and the reviewer should read the material published after 2000. The two websites given in reference give the publication details.

What we are missing is a demonstration that the coherence hypothesis has the quality of being testable. If same-frequency photons are typically emitted by one cell once in 100 years, the testability of coherent emission from any biological probe seems not only impossible but quite ridiculous. As long as the “biophoton” hypothesis must be considered as obviously non-testable, all science that is based on this hypothesis must necessarily be regarded as pseudoscience. Such “science” has a similar status as a “science” of “multiple parallel universes”. 213.116.224.23 14:35, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)

How sensitive are those quantum field effect probes? Multiple parallel universes are testable if they interact. lysdexia 06:44, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Look, you have to accept that your view is not in any way mainstream science. Add a short dissenting section to the article if you must, but don't just arbitrarily delete other people's work. -- FirstPrinciples 16:24, Oct 7, 2004 (UTC)

It seems the "problems" and "questions" are duly explicated in the text of the article. Perhaps the disputed accuracy claim should be removed. Etymologically, the word biophoton exists as "biological photon," so disputing the language is akin to disputing the elementary constructs of grammer. This argument has turned into a caricature of itself. The point of the article is to explicate areas of research and interest related to the subject heading. This article does this, as well as providing ample explanations of dissenting views and ongoing debates in the relevent fields. All theories are disputable. Including quantum field theories, thermodynamics, superstring theories, etc. Many of the hypothesis these theories present are currently difficult to "test." This does not mean that a free world encyclopedia should not have a short introductory page on what the theories are about. Perhaps people need to spend more time trying to understand how something might work, rather than trying every rudimentary way possible to pin the label of "pseudoscience" on topics that nobody yet understands. Mystery is the essence of science, and atempting to destroy that with misplaced arrogance is only distructive for all involved.

But there are no biological photons, electrons, neutrons and protons, as elementary particles have no identity or memory. --Pjacobi 14:58, 2005 May 31 (UTC)

I've read through all the dissenting notions above, and unless I'm mistaken, this comment makes no sense. Could you explain this a bit more? I mean, the article, as it currently exists, certainly never claims anything about elementary particles or about particle physics in any way. It simply is a word used by accredited scientists to contextualize photons into the environment of, or due to, production by some biological processes. In the exact same way that with photonic crystals and quantum optics (parametric down conversion for example) we often use the term "crystal photon." With regards to the "identity or memory" of elementary particles, it should clearly be noted that there are very serious and deep reasons that the very existence of the photon (a so-called quanta of light) is in question, and discussed in excessive detail in a number of fairly elementary quantum field theories (if you don't knopw them you need to research alot more). But that is perhaps beside the point. I mean, for example, in optical lattices, photons can be "distinguished" from each other by a number of methods; and this lies at the heart of the enormous efforts being made the world over in quantum computing. Anyway, could you explain your dispute alot more please. Also, if you are not an accredited physicist and cannot provide some evidence for this above claim or some degree of knowledge in quantum field theory, then please stop spoiling this page with the "dispute" spoiler. This page has alot of interesting information which is being ignored because of some, as of yet, completely unfounded bias against what some wish to be "psuedo-science." As a final comment, please note that there are over 50 accredited articles on pubmed alone that use biophotons (see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?CMD=search&DB=pubmed I hope the link doesn't break, but just type "Biophoton" into the search engine). In addition, a search on Web of science (which I assume you have access to, see http://isi17.isiknowledge.com.content.lib.utexas.edu:2048/portal.cgi/wos/) shows 40 hits, some from extremely reputable journals such as physics letters which sits in the very center of the canon. I do not mean to be rude, but the controversy about the usage of this term seems to exist somewhere other than the established scientific community, and if it's somewhere other than your mind, could you please help me understand and stop the systematic insults aimed at my colleagues who study these phenomena.

A photon cannot be biological, its only properties are related to its movement, polarization and frequency. The idea, that living systems are made of something different than non-living systems, or at least have a special additional attribute, is known as vitalism and has fallen out of favour long time ago.

For this reason, the term "biophoton" is only used by a small faction of researches, most notably Popp and his supporters. (In addition there is completely irrational, but maybe notable, use of the term in alternative medicine.

The majority POV is to correctly label the process of emission "bio", not the emitted photons. Mainstream work in this area is found under lemmata like bioluminescence, ultraweak bioluminescence, delayed bioluminescence.

If you want to hear more physicists on this issue, I can help you asking them to contribute to this discussion.

FYI, despite the fact that it doesn't matter that much, I'm a physicist by education and did my diploma in QFT.

The indistinguishability of quantum particles is such a basic fact, that I can only suggest to look into your text books (or use the all knowing garbage dump of the WWW [5])

Ummh, and yes, the Pubmed search nicely outlines, who is using the term "biophoton": Morphogenetic fields advocates, Qi believers, Popp himself, and his international network, like those publishing mostly in Indian J Exp Biol.

So, we agree, it is not un-notable, therefore this article won't get deleted, but the ideas didn't get mainstream following (yet, if you want to hope for better times).

Pjacobi 21:30, 2005 Jun 3 (UTC)

I see. So I think it important to address what exactly we are talking about here. Scratching the surface of an issue is of little use when waving around statements like "The majority POV" of physics. Now, if we want to discuss elementary quantum mechanics, then fine ... everyone who has ever taken a freshman physics course is well aware of the fact that in these books some extremely oblique comment about the indistinguishability of quantum particles is always presented, in which students are usually then given someone like Landau as a champion of ensemble mechanics, and depending on the intstructor's background, may even include a brief lament as to why Einstein was wrong (classical mechanics - don't forget to mention "God does not throw dice")) and statistical mechanics right, and everybody feels like they understand something and the discussion ends with a class full of fairly poorly educated souls. However, in advanced quantum field theory, the issue is, of course, much much more complex. Reducing the issue to one of philosophy is really not the issue here. The issue is, I think obviously, what is meant by terms such as "fundemantal particle;" and why do certain mathematical models work to describe "some" of their properties. Anyway, sure, bring in your friends for a discussion if you'd like. Maybe we can drop Witten [6] a line and see what he says. Or if 3 of your friends say yeh, and 2 of mine say neh, then does that mean the majority POV of physics is in line with your "opinion?" Anwyay, regardless, I guess we should keep the little "the view of physics" at the beginning of the article, even if it's not really accurate fomr my POV. But for the record, the idea of a biophoton inherently has "nothing" to do with vitalism. A biophoton is most generally nothing but a quanta of "bioluminescence" if you wish. Or, I suppose, the more correct view, so that we aren't confused that someone would quite ridiculously be asserting a new elementary particle, is to say "this is a photon from a biological system that luminesces;" instead of the more succinct and natural "biophoton." Or maybe, "here we are refering to quanta of energy, in fact 3 quanta of energy from a single cell. This energy corresponds to weak bioluminescence and we could just as easily say we have 3 photons since someone came up for a term for quanta of light to make it more succinct. In fact, we could avoid this whole ridiculous explanation if we had a term, say "biophoton," but since people with no background in the subject tend to misinterpret this, and since we are notorious for naming our elementary phenomena with great care (see quark and James Joyce), we will not call photons from biological systems biophotons, instead we will call them photons from biological systems which do not in any way correspond to biophotons - which would, of course, imply some abstruse philosophical tenet known as vitalism." Whatever you like. But if I may, perhaps we should be a tad more careful about labeling mainstream thought in the rather enormous field of physics. If by mainstream you mean introductory undergraduate textbooks often written 20-30 years ago, then maybe that's what you should say instead. Or maybe reference this proverbial "text book" in which you refer. Because I can assure you, in the field of topological quantum field theory, for example, the mainstream view of, for example, a Higgs field with a spin geometry is not anywhere near the simple notion of indistinguishability that pervades undergraduate classes.

Thanks for your refreshing sarcasm. But the hard core of it still seems to be, that we agree to disagree (with a glimmer of hope, that you may agree that biophoton is a misleading name). Also your asides about "elementary" and "advanced" thrown in, and even some Higgs added, seem rather off topic to mee. Do you want to impress the bystanders? In the energy regime we find in living tissue, we are not expecting to see any deviation from plain vanilla QED, for a very large value of "not". --Pjacobi 06:50, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)

No, just trying to get a small sense of the larger picture. I admit some sarcasm, but the elementary and advanced are not inclined that way. They are used honestly. And I think you are "profoundly" wrong in the statement that we only need "plain vanilla QED" to understand this phenomena. This is the type of "things work just fine as they were" mentality that has kept science from progressing for hundreds of years. And, incidently, is exactly the mentality in the 1920's-1930's which kept quantum mechanics from being very seriously considered. I think the fact is, we have learned things about fundamental physics in the last 20 years that fundamentally could change (and in some ways already has) this so-called vanilla interpretation. I have no idea who the bystanders may be, and I admit this discussion has tended towards the extremely vague and "elementary." If you like to tackle some of the more mathematical and difficult subjects please move ahead. I assure you, I do not know who the bystanders are, if they exist, and what they may think. I am only interested in trying to expand the horizens of the critics of this page who I think pressume a bit much ... but what have you. Let us discuss topos theory.

Yeah, let the science progress. Then report back. An encyclopedia has to be a bit conservative. It's not the right place to battle for acceptance of new theories. --Pjacobi 16:54, 2005 Jun 6 (UTC)

i think that some of the stuff about chi-biophotons being connected is wrong,scientists are saying it is at least a similar thing[ an energy produced by the body that seems to be organised] but i have a few questions that i think need to be adressed in the article 1. how do organise themselves, do we have a biophotonic field 2. do they exist for their own sake or could they be emmsions from something else 3. does this mean there is something in the body that can direct and organise energy

Could i get some answers to these, i will try find a reputable scientific source for connection between chi/prana and bio-photons robin

Could you please read all of the comments above. Then, could you reformulate your question in a coherent way. For example, it has been clearly explained that the field, if you wish, is just a bosonic field. There are no fundamental "biophotons." This is why the chi energy part is in its own section. And further, clearly there is something in the body that organizes energy ... it's called cell metabolism. Anyway, please think your question through, and rephrase.

Facts and reason

Dear user "Cypa", the present article fundamentally contradicts facts and reason. As long as this is the case, we have to keep the "disputed" tag. BioMed 23:04, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Really? Thanks Cypa, let me try to clarify. And BTW, do statements like these (biomed) require any justification? What do you think Pjacobi? Which facts does this person refer to, and whose reason? I guess we are to imagine that since Biomed is incapable of providing details that this makes the claim obvious? By this logic, should we then not remove all entries relating to Hunduism, since, well, by this reasoning (which is mostly absent), these must all contradict both fact and reason? Apparently "Non-scientific" connections is too vague? Why is this page so hard to understand? Photons are emitted from biological cells. Fact! This phenomena has interested many people. Fact! These interested people are worthy of reference in an encyclopedia article about the subject (which follows by inference). Just because you don't like that people in these fields find these things interesting, really doesn't have anything to do with either fact or reason, does it? In fact, if an absense of reason is present, it seems present in the so-called logic presented by those who arbitrarily refuse to accept the reality that these people are interested in the topic of bioluminescence. Now, I am ready to respond to the statement, "fundamentally contradicts facts and reason," if someone could provide some, "any," fact or reason to justify it. And as far as foundations go, do you mean foundations of chemistry, foundations of cellular and or molecular biology, foundations of physics, foundations of logic and mathematics, foundations of what? Since you seem to think of yourself as a scientist, hopefully you can narrow down your criticism into a statement that makes some modicum of sense? Perhaps that's what you meant Cypa?

Let me try to address your problems Robin, assuming I can "guess" what you mean. In answer to, "how do organise themselves, do we have a biophotonic field." The answer is no. We know, as a fact, that we have an utterly garden variety bosonic field associated to all light sources.

In answer to "do they exist for their own sake or could they be emmisions from something else?" I do not know what "exist for their own sake" would entail, but they exist by virtue of God if you like (or Chaos if you prefer). That is, photons are emitted from cells sometimes due to unknown processes, period. They may be asscociated to cell processes, they may be random in nature, they may be something more exotic. no one knows for sure, though some scientists (referenced in the article) have some theories.

In answer to, "does this mean there is something in the body that can direct and organise energy." Uhm. Well, many things in the body organize energy. For example, cell mediated active transport organizes energy to transport nutrients and so-forth over the plasma membrane. If you meant, does the existence of photons being emitted from biological cells imply that the body organizes energy, then I guess the answer is maybe. But then, nobody really understands the source of these things. But in general, the biochemistry of life is an organization of energy which is entropically disfavoured and is independent of the phenomena of emission. Now, as has been "suggested" by people in non-scientific fields, if chi energy and so-forth exists in a more evanescent form in and around the body, then maybe it could have something to do with these emissions; but though that has been claimed, it remains a hypothesis from the realm of metaphysics at the moment.

Is that helpful?

All parts of the article that are now in combined "italic and bold" typing contradict either facts, or reason, or both. These parts need to be rewritten. BioMed 14:43, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Thanks biomed. Could you explain each please, as I can't figure out what you might mean on most of these. Here, does this help, I'll pull them all together for you (the 1's are the ones I think I disagree with, and the % are the ones I don't understand, and the unmarked I think I might understand). If I may guess here, you seem to think that contingent verbs are "non-scientific." Is that right? Like might, and may, and could, etc?

% and how it may relate to higher ordered phenomena: such as consciousness.

% Because of this

some

% might relate to the larger biological systems

% which are not associated to known physical mechanisms

% In this way, many have claimed it is all but impossible

One may generally also define a biophoton as the quanta which are emitted from biological systems away from thermal equilibrium.

% apparent

% have seemed to confirm his initial claim,

% cell growth can be generally stimulated by radiation

% each instantiation had its own flavor and corresponding perspectives.

seemed to cause more confusion than illumination

an extremely general and basic hypothesis was contained in the statement that the phenomenon was induced from rare oxidation processes and radical reactions. What this exactly meant remained unclear.

% Popp further suggested the extremely surprising and unprecendented claim that the radiation was both semi-periodic and coherent in the quantum mechanical sense.

% possible coherent emissions

then one may say that that these emissions are simply a random by-product of cellular metabolism, in much the same way that solar flares can on some level be thought of as a random byproduct of nuclear fusion on the surface of stars.

This model does not preclude the mitogenetic radiation hypothesis, but rather suggests that the actual mechanism may be more complicated with more parametric interdependencies.

% showed some evidence that they may be involved in various cell functions such as mitosis, or even that they may be produced and detected by the DNA in the cell nucleus.

% There is currently no universally accepted evidence for such claims, but the topic remains one of close research.

% irrefutable

% generally accepted

to slander "biophotons"

effectively distracting many in scientific fields from the serious questions they raise.

Please provide some justification for your dispute (my telepathy isn't working well today). It would be a big problem to change these sentences only to have you pick 20 more. We need some justification! The term dispute implies a debate, and as of yet, you have provided no POV other than, "contradicts fact and reason." In fact, many of the sentences above have been previously addressed I believe by some of the earlier posts on this Talk page.

I have now rewritten that first paragraph that contained unacceptable sections. Careful comparison of the old and the new version will hopefully make clear the job. BioMed 13:52, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The comment "(quantum, please!!)," I think is misguided. Strictly speaking, the probes that have been used thus far do not measure quantum, they measure quanta (the plural).

The comment "(A mouse is away from thermal equilibrium, but a fish is not. You must mean something different) " seems like nonsense. All living organism exist away from thermal equilibrium. So a dead mouse would be at ~ thermal equilibrium.

Again, strictly speaking, the process of emission of biophotons is a phenomena NOT a "(phenomenon, please!!)," because they arrise in many different organisms, under different conditions, different intensities, different etc. It is not a big deal either way with this one, if you think phenomenon sounds that much better, then fine, but it is hardly "poor english."

With all due respect Biomed, I appreciate that your comments have helped to improve this page, but is it not about time to get rid of the "disputed" tag. I mean, almost everything you've sited has been syntactic or grammatical, not contextual.

Necessary revisions - just a start (June 2005)

Dear user 66.141.40.63,

first a technical matter. Please put 4 "~" signs below your contributions on this discussion page, thus generating a time signature and showing all readers the end of your text.

As to the "disputed" tag, it will be necessary for a while. It is also in your interest, because it shows the readers that the article is still under construction. As it is now, not many readers will stay with it longer than a minute. I work in science, and I know how science people think and work.

Now to the first few items, one by one.

1) "A typical magnitude of the effect is 100 photons in the visible range at a photon per second (at 1 cm² of probe surface)." One per second, or 100 per second?

2) "black body radiation emitted by black bodies" impossible English!

3) "define a biophoton, in an elementary sense, as the quanta of light" Because "biophoton" is in singular, also "quantum" must be in singular. (Such things are not a matter of beauty, but a matter of logical transparence. Science people drop out, if they see your English.)

4) "from biological systems away from thermal equilibrium" Please look up "thermal equilibrium" in a dictionary (online). It makes no sense here at all.

5) "by perturbing chemical concentrations" Perturbation does not "organize equilibrium states".

6) "define the biophoton as the phenomena of light emission" Because "biophoton" is in singular, also "phenomenon" must be in singular.

7) "then many have very naturally extended this logic to define the biophoton as the phenomena of light emission that is a product of the complex living system from which they come, and is thus caused due to the underlying order of these processes." Not "many", but some. More importently, they did not define anything. They made a hypothesis about something. And by no means "very naturally" !! (This sentence definitely is a switch-off.)

8) "there remain sceptics to the scientific evidence" Either "there remains scepticism about", or (less preferable) "there remain sceptics concerning".

This is only a start. There is much more further down in the article. I would suggest you do all this in small daily quanta, preferably in collaboration with somebody else at your university. BioMed 15:04, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Excellent! Now we have something to work with. Just a note, I too work in science and mathematics, and having read thousands of peer reviewed journal articles, I think I might suggest that grammar varies quite a lot in our world science community. However, I agree, the grammar should be as clear as possible. What needs to be understood is that grammer is not an exact science. But we'll get to this.

On (1): That was poorly worded. Is this clearer - "the intensity of "biophotons" can be registered from a few photons per second and square centimeter surface area, up to some hundred photons per second and square centimeter surface area."

On (2): I will reword it slightly.

On (3): Easily done, in fact, you could easily have streamlined the tense yourself, but I can do it since your role is one of criticism.

On (4): Okay, so I looked it up. Found alot of definitions. Here's one: "It is observed that a higher temperature object which is in contact with a lower temperature object will transfer heat to the lower temperature object. The objects will approach the same temperature, and in the absence of loss to other objects, they will then maintain a constant temperature. They are then said to be in thermal equilibrium. Thermal equilibrium is the subject of the Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics." This is exactly what is meant in the sentence. Since I've reworded it twice, why not give your POV as to why it doesn't make sense. It makes perfect sense to me.

On (5): A perturbation is "small change in a physical system," as defined on dictionary.com. Perhaps you are thinking of a quantum perturbation, which could be confusing in this context. In fact, what is meant, is that the basic features of metabolism in living systems generate gradients over membranes, in general, in order to create, for example, action potentials, active and passive flux (transport), energy (ATP), etc. This is one of the most basic principles of biochemistry and molecular biology. In other words, living systems alter (perturb) local concentrations of chemicals in order to function. This is how photosynthesis, the TCA cycle, glycolysis, etc., work. They all work under the exact same chemical principle, which is always about local perturbations in concentrations causing cascade events, etc. (returning to the notion of equilibrium again, and local changes in ...).

On (6): fine. This is syntax, and makes sense, but I see you prefer the spoonfeeding style.

On (7): In the study of logic a definition is a tautology (by definition - which is a tautology), it is not an established theory or principle; rather, a collection of symbols assigned to a referent. In fact, "most" who I have seen who regularly use the term "biophoton" define it in this way. However, I did not use "most," as "many" seems more accurate, but "some" is fine if you wish (though less accurate it would seem to me). We can remove "natural" if you like, but assuming that the study of science is valid implies that things happen because of order and not because of disorder. To suggest that extending the logic of biophoton emission to be an extended peice of the ordered system is, from a logicians point of view, very natural; and in fact, inevitable. The only reason we refer to it as "random" is because we do not yet understand it. There is extensive discourse on this issue in the fields of QFT, chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics, and mathematics (which come to mind). I do however realize that there remains a subset of scientists who are still enamored by thinking of everything statistically, and allowing the answer to remain a normal distribution of "possible" outcomes with essentially no explanation. So how about "some see it as natural," etc.

On (8): fine.

And finally, I disaggree. You have not disputed anything about facts or reason, you have simply disputed certain grammatical nuances of the text, some of which are stylistic, some of which are sound, and some of which are bias. This is not a peer reviewed journal, this is an open source encyclopedia meant to expose people to ideas in all subjects of human knowledge. Also, I have made an effort to keep others contributions as intact as possible in keeping with the spirit of wikipedia. While I agree that we should improve the article for everybody concerned, and I appreciate your attempts to help, the "disputed" claim is utterly unwarranted, and makes the article virtually unreadable. Being a scientist you should know that science is a process. There is no perfect article, book, or text. The text will never be flawless. This sometimes leads to Textbooks often contain many typos, grammatical slips, and small (even sometimes large) inaccuracies - especially those which have become outdated but remain at the core of canon. This doesn't mean we should stamp DISPUTED on each of their covers. We should remove the disputed tag once and for all (or until something of a honest contextual dispute arrises), and I will continue to work on the article with you (and preferably a collaborative group of physicists, biologists, chemists, philosophers, gurus, and mathematicians at your (university?)). 128.62.97.227 18:00, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

We should not worry about the “disputed” tag. For those who are well informed it increases the attraction of the article. And for those who are less well informed it must be kept for reasons of fairness. Until we have sorted out things.

The following factual flaws had to be eliminated in the section under revision so far.

1) The laws of thermodynamics have no relevance here. The borderline between dead and alive can, with present knowledge, not generally be drawn according to any physical law. All borderlines, to date, had to be based on purely practical, ethical, and religious considerations.

2) The idea that biophotons may reflect an unknown order of matter is a legitimate one. But it must be clear that, at this point in time, it is a purely philosophical idea, which cannot be “defined” on the basis of any observations at all. This situation may change in future, but an encyclopedia has to report what we have today. Philosophy may have its place, but it must be described as such.

Once all flaws of this type are eliminated, we can delete the “disputed” tag. BioMed 14:46, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, so it looks like those were taken care of? I was correct to remove the disputed tag? Also, just a quick comment, though you bring up a good point with the thermodynamic equlilibrium, it should be noted that thermodynamics is founded in statistical physics. It's deepest construction is given in the partition function construction of the Gibb's equation. So, in other words, whenever one uses thermodynamics, one is either refering to statistical features of systems, or they are speaking loosely. So, strictly speaking, a dead human is statistically in thermal equilibrium, even though, you raise the important point that this is an approximation which fails at higher resolutions; and thus the statement is in some sense false. So really it depends on what you are talking about. However, a human that is 10 days dead is much closer to thermal equilibrium than any living human (unless under cryogenic stasis?). See? The point was not to stabilize the slippery notions of thermodynamics, but rather to suggest that thermal kinesis, rather than thermodynamics (at and near thermal equlibrium) is what is at the heart of the notion of the underlying order. Stating "away from thermal equilibrium" was a note to those who work in thermodynamics that this higher order hypothesis is not thought to be a thermodynamical process. And so, I think the paragraph has lost an important concept with what was removed. Perhaps you can state this more clearly and add it back in? 66.141.41.130 22:03, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I do not understand your language. How can "this higher order hypothesis" be, or not be, "a thermodynamical process"? Once I understand what you mean, I'd love to add your thought to the text. I hope to do the further revisions tomorrow and remove the "disputed" tag then. BioMed 22:42, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Okay, so thermodynamics is a bit strange. Might check out the wiki page if you haven't: thermodynamics -- it's not bad. Anyway, consider that "a central concept in thermodynamics is that of quasistatic processes, which are idealized, "infinitely slow" processes." For example, many people in physical chemistry who study thermodynamics study chemical structure, for example of small moleucular species. Here, the idea is to use spectroscopy to approximate structure in such a way that then stat. mech. and quantum mech. can be applied to the system to explain what is happening. So what you arrive at is a single model which utilizes these techniques to generalize over "all" structures. So, in this way we arrive at the molecular formula for water H20. In fact, water is very dynamic and has been shown to exist in H3/20, etc., but on average, assuming a special type of homogeneity that runs over all water, and applying this by assuming "no kinetics" in the system, we arrive at what is referred to as a thermodynamical model of molecular water. This remains highly debated in some departments, as they feel that thermodynamics is misleading in its approximation methods. Nonetheless, when we talk of thermodynamics, we usually consider these types of things. That we are looking at a system in thermal equilibrium, that is not reactive or dynamical (kinetic), and that does not change depending on where in the system you are (so things are the same at the edge of the container as at the center, etc. -- for example, water looks the same regardless of where in the container it is). However, at the level of the free energy equation, now things are in some sense more confusing. Enter biochemists, organic chemists, analytic chemists, biologists, etc. Now, in these fields, often what happens is that Gibb's free energy equation gets interpreted as being seperate and self-standing. So now, we start to equate variables to slightly "softer" notions, such as entropy, enthapy, etc. Where entropy is described as "order" (up to a sign convention), enthalpy "internal energy", etc. This leads to debates such as "is the order of the universe increasing or decreasing." What happens here, is that the nomos becomes restricted to a set of what some refer to as "first principles," and from there we can attempt to reformulate things based on different underlying assumptions. So you may say that a dead body is not in thermal equilibrium, and I may say that it is; and in fact, we are both right, because the definitions are dynamic enough to support both formal schemes. Now, the first issue, that of statistics, is what would be seen as a formal treatment, because it leads to predictions that can be quantified and tested. The second consists primarily of an interpretation of an object type, and is extremely useful as a diagnostic method to explain experimental systems. Since we are interested in formal notions, we are discussing the "hard" definition of thermodynamics, where we know a prior, that our system is not kinetic. Now, this is antithetical to what we are talking about in the "higher order hypothesis" of biophoton emission, because here, what we are suggesting is that there is a formal scheme which is able to describe the complex underlying order of the system in terms of cellular metabolism, intercellular signalling, intracellular communication, subcellular dynamics, suborganelle kinetics, molecular chemistry, etc. So, the claim is that as we resolve our understanding of the dynamics, the system becomes a time-dependent system which responds do to temporal state and surrounding. Thus, the system organizes as a living creature in a dynamical regime, and we do not ever wish to invoke the assumptions implicit in the construction of thermodynimcal systems. Now, this can be deceptive, because, of course, we must use some of the laws of thermodynamics in order to get a sense of what our envirnment is. In other words, we may want to see DNA, for example, as being extremely stable in the cellular make-up in cells. Nevermind that certain polymerases, telomerases, etc., may be generating "errors" periodically in the backbone that have to be fixed, or that there are more than 5 nucleobases, etc. So we use the principles of thermodynaics to understand their structure, then to understand the stability of there complexes in vivo ((let them be stable globally), but only to that point. The dynamics of the system are assumed to be kinetic. However, each of these levels can be addressed separately. The point is, it is not the thermodynamical assumptions that lead to these photon emissions, but rather it is the kinetics (dynamics) of the underlying flows, fluxes, etc. So, as a completely hypothetical example, in cellular respiration when pyruvate is converted to Acetyl Coenzyme A in the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex, the resulting protons (H^+) could protonate some enzyme complex, that under the right local concentrations of, say HOOH, forms a short-lived intermediate state that chemoluminesces. However, it may be that this is far too nonlinear of a n environment to be looking at for these types reactions, and that in fact, we must look inside of microtubules where we may be able to explain the coherence phenomena that has been reported in the literature. Either way, though we may depend on many thermodynamical properties of our system, we do not believe they inherently "cause" the emission of these photons; as that would imply a contradiction, that relatively static systems are set into motion by their immotility. This also does not mean that we cannot apply the "softer" terminology to then interpret what the existence of the photon emissions means, with respect to, for example, order etc. It also does not mean that, at the level of the dynamical system that may (in future) be implemented to explain this emission process, this thermodynamic system (the associated stable self-sustaining reaction, for example) could be isolated in vitro; or even in situ, etc. But again, that is veiwing the system from the point of view of its stable schematic representation, and not from the point of view of its underlying dynamics (kinetics). In this way it has often been suggested that term thermodynamics is extremely "slipperly ":). A slightly more diffcult way of saying this, is that thermodynamics, to chemical physicists, studies the global responses of systems under the heat equation. Anyway, hope that's helpful. Let me know if you have more specific questions, I don't think i've presentled this very elegantly, but, well, I have alot of work waiting for me. 66.141.41.130 04:18, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It is still not clear what your idea is. The wiki article on thermodynamics that you referred to does not even mention the terms biology or biological. Perhaps your unknown idea is compatible with the present article's phrase "possibly are emitted from all biological systems and could be a reflection of a particular order of matter in the biosphere". We should definitely not overburden the readers with complicated philosophy of thermodynamics. BioMed 13:10, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Sorry about that. I don't really know what your background is. If you would like to give me a sense of that, I can hone a little, and alter my language to meet it. But really, if you want to understand what I'm saying your going to have to formulate a much more specific question. The reason biology is not mentioned in the article is probably because biologists "use" the gibb's free energy equation, while chemists and physics discovered and analize it. However, biologists use it "all the time." For example, go to pubmed, and do a search on thermodynamics. I got 105020 hits.

Anyway, I don't think this is really the "philosophy of thermodynamics" that is being addressed. What I am discussing is actually what thermodynamics "is" to people of varying backgrounds. Because it is founded in equations with deterministic properties, what it "is" is a method of describing and theoretically determining what "could" or "would" or "did" happen in scientifically accepted systems. The philosophy would be "why" thermodynamics works most of the time and "why" it doesn't work sometimes; its epistemology, phenomenology, teleology, etc. So, the reason to include a short phrase, such as, "possibly are emitted due to the systematic kinetics of biological systems away from thermal equilibrium that could be a reflection of a particular order of matter in the biosphere," is because emission phenomena are usually perceived as thermodynamic at the scales that we are involved in; while here, such a notion almost certainly implies an underlying kinetics that would lead to a more highly resolved thermodynamic system. Since we are dealing with chemistry, the notions of thermodynamics and kinetics "must" be at issue. And since we are pressumably writing this page so that chemists and physicists can understand it, we should demonstrate at least a basic level of understanding of the ways in which they approach chemical (resp. physical) systems, and help them to understand where the state of the art is at.

This is of less importance than the other change that was made. The change, "According to this model there is no need to adopt a mysterious hypothesis, like the mitogenetic radiation hypothesis. But, of course, it cannot exclude it," borders on just being wrong. The so-called necessity (need) is I guess one of preference, but the model, in its own right, declares nothing either way. The random emission model is only useful up to the order of its naive simplicity. Since I wrote much of this section, I do not hesistate to mock its simplicity. The point is, what needs to be understood is that physics and chemistry, at theoretical levels, in a sense splits at (if your in chemistry) thermodynamics and kinetics, or (if your in physics) statistical physics and classical dynamics. The proffered model is a very general model that does not even try to address the underlying dynamics of the system. This makes it incomplete by virtue of its relation to its surroundings. In other words, declaring a phenomena as "random," in hard science, is equivalent to declaring "we don't know what is going on beyond this explanation." So, in some sense, making such a statement does indicate the need for some much more highly refined hypothesis. This is important. So, for example, it was once thought that cancer was caused by "random" mutations in chromosomal material. These days, for example, we have extremely strong cytogentic evidence that leukemias are caused by translational mutations in specific genes related to the transcriptional products associated to cell division; and consequently have ways of trying to treat it. As we trace the etiology of things further, the use of the term "random" shifts to a different (higher) resolution. This is why the statement "there is no need" is so inappropriate. There is probably most definitely always a "need," but even if there wasn't, the model certainly couldn't declare there wouldn't be on its own. In order to do this, the model would have to be what is often referred to as self-contained. In other words, it would have to be capable of describing all phenomena in the universe with its structured "first principles" (this is not even really at issue here, as the level of resolution required to do this is on a totally different level). 66.143.168.139 01:22, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Science and Philosophy

Look, talking about things that nobody can see remains philosophy - no matter what other Greek word you may add.

Your suggestion "possibly are emitted due to the systematic kinetics of biological systems away from thermal equilibrium that could be a reflection of a particular order of matter in the biosphere," could not work, for a simple reason. According to the rules of the English language your phrase "away from thermal equilibrium" defines SOME (but not all) "biological systems" in your sentence. You then have to say WHICH "biological systems" are "away from thermal equilibrium" and WHICH are not.

As to the sentences "According to this model there is no need to adopt a mysterious hypothesis, like the mitogenetic radiation hypothesis. But, of course, it cannot exclude it." This does not claim the end of science. It simply - and in plain English - states that our observations DO NOT demand a further hypothesis in this field. If there is nothing that needs to be explained, there is no need for a hypothesis. If I observe that the rain drops fall randomly on my roof, there is no need to make a hypothesis on a possible order behind the randomness. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. BioMed 22:01, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Metanoia

The metaphysics section contains the line "From the point of view of metaphysics, a science-wide metanoia may be desirable in order to transcend these biases." It's not clear to me what this means. What exactly needs to be done to all sciences, and which metaphysicists have proposed it? If no citation can be found, it should be removed from the article, since it doesn't currently provide any information. Factitious 08:52, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Perfectly right! Do as you say. BioMed 20:46, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

I think the idea behind the metaphysics section is, at least in part, in reference to the subfield of metaphysics dealing with philosophy of perception; in addition to much else. The general idea, that has caused such an uproar about the term biophoton to begin with, is that it has been adopted by the new-age movement, religions, martial arts, etc. This section is NOT about the biophysics, it is about the massive amount of literature out there in what may be termed "nonscientific fields" that are contained within the very general study of metaphysics. If you have ever read any of this literature you relaize that the use of metanoia is a very vague way of getting at the underlying voice of these fields; which generally suggest that science has lost its vision and ability to adopt new ideas due to growth of cynicism, nihilism, and arrogance at its heart. Anyway, something needs to be said about this in general, because it is a very prevelant criticism and it crops up a whole lot in this particular subject. References could be found by the thousands in any new age book store; for example. Not to mention that many gurus have used biophotons as evidence of ancient ideas. For example, in Hinduism, where biophotons are thought to correspond to the kundalini. Cypa 21:22, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

The whole section wreaks pseudo-science and, as Cypa mentioned, nihilism. It's trampling the page's credibility by preaching what looks like atheism. It'd be fine to mention theories on biophotons having to do with body/spirit interaction and what have you, but the section tells us nothing more than the opinions of anti-existantialism coated as facts. --Zareste 12:05, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia documents pseudoscientific beliefs the same as it documents everything else. Because of the connections between the early work on this phenomenon and the current pseudoscientific ideas, it does make sense to document both in the same article. The descriptions must satisfy WP:NPOV, of course. The comment at the end probably should be rewritten to use a more understandable word than metanoia, but it's not unreasonable to end the article with a paragraph that says what the scientists and the new-agers think of each others' usage of this term.--Srleffler 16:20, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes but it states everything from pseudo-scientists' perspective, saying, basically "Nihilists don't take this and that seriously" and such, which already goes without saying. --Zareste 00:08, 5 March 2006 (UTC)