Biology Might Not Be Quantum, but Its Math Is Quantumlike

In the late 1920s and 1930s, scientists like Niels Bohr and Pascual Jordan speculated that quantum mechanics might explain biological phenomena.

Bohr suggested in a 1929 lecture that quantum mechanics could be crucial for understanding life, while Jordan, a contemporary, developed the field of Quantenbiologie (quantum biology).

He argued that life uniquely amplifies quantum indeterminism to macroscopic scales, even linking it to human thought and free will.

J.B.S.

Haldane, a geneticist, echoed these ideas in 1934.

However, Jordan’s association with Nazism in the 1930s damaged the field’s credibility.

These early attempts sought to explain life’s puzzling properties using quantum physics, contrasting classical particles (which exist in one state at a time) with quantum particles (which exist in superpositions of multiple states until observed).