Two particles that have been joined in an intimate relationship within an atom remain coherently correlated with one another in their properties no matter how far apart they may be after emission from the atom. Einstein could not bring himself to believe that this 'spooky' implication of quantum mechanics could possibly be real.

The implied entanglement means that there is a holistic principle of connectedness in operation at the most elementary level of physical reality. Quantum fields have subverted our basic notions of causality and substituted a principle of wholeness in relationship for elementary particles.

which i'm sure half yall already know but...well i thought it was v. nicely (and shortly) put...

The idea that I have pursued in biology for much of my career is the concept that goes under the name of a morphogenetic field. This term is used to describe the processes in space and time that organise and coordinate the various activities involved in the emergence of a whole complex organism from a single cell, or from a group of cells in interaction with each another.

he goes on to talk about the "field" model(like a gestalt, or maybe a computing cloud, i think?) vs. mechanism model.

also when he talks about making sense of DNA, he leaves out sequencing, which involves WHEN the genes activate. sequencing may literally make the difference between a bird and a dinosaur.

apparently, vertebrates are put together w/pretty much the same genetic toolkit. we all have about 20,000 genes, give or take a couple of K. and the genes for body shape, i.e. number of limbs, whther or not we have scales or feathers on our talons, etc., number only about 1,000. (you can get feathers instead of scales on your talons if you get your genes to fire off in a different order.)

saw it on the discovery channel. the biologist who talked about it, basically said that all biologists everywhere shit a whole bunch of bricks. i kinda did too.

if my genes had fired off in only slightly different order, i coulda been a wombat!

or a half-elf or a tiefling or some other related geekery.

or at least the concept of time having something to do with formation of the organism. also he says:

"there may be underlying commonalities that can unify biological and cultural evolution rather than separating them."

he goes on to talk about how we can learn from the cultures of other species. i wonder when somebody will take a look at how slight differences in human biology may shape culture.

i.e. how much of individual cultures are based on environment (esp. climate) and how much might be partialy attributable to genetics to some degree. "people who have certain genes tend to do things this way in this environment; other people with different genes do it differently."

but then you end up with this whole thing about how behaviors might, just might be partially dependant on our genetic makeup. this kind of research--hell, this kind of talk--isn't likely to make anybody popular, but i'd be interested to see what kind of data (if any) the studies come up with.