# Non-linearity, complexity, and quantization concepts in biology

## TL;DR

This paper explores how quantum mechanics concepts might apply to biology, suggesting a new method to bridge quantum and classical behaviors in living systems.

## Contribution

The paper introduces the Method of Coherent Structures to unify non-linear and quantum properties across biological scales.

## Key findings

- Biological systems exhibit coherence across scales through quantum-like behaviors.
- The Method of Coherent Structures explains transitions between classical and quantum phenomena in biology.
- Metabolic energy supply is crucial for the emergence of complexity in biological systems.

## Abstract

Founders of quantum mechanics (QM) anticipated that revisions to classical physics due to strange elements of quantum reality, would necessitate similar changes in biology. Complexity theory, systems biology and quantum biology provide possible solutions indicating that subject/object separation is a useful fiction for reductive science. Direct correlates to such QM observational/measurement issues as Complementarity and Uncertainty may justify the introduction of an analog of Heisenberg's uncertainty and the Planck constant for living systems. The phase space of “adjacent possibles” for biological systems from which one “actual” is selected resembles the collapse of the QM wave function. Since biological systems are hierarchical, this occurs across organizational scales resulting in biological coherence. The location of a quantum/classical boundary is unclear due to complexity. Whether biological systems' characteristics arise directly from QM or are of a different origin remains unsettled. To combine non-linear with quantum properties across biological scales we propose the Method of Coherent Structures (MCS), developed for quantum many-body systems. In MCS, a higher-level scale provides a classical envelope for quantum fluctuations at the lower scale. It yields a seamless transition from non-linear classical fields to quantum excitations and accounts for the emergence of complexity by incorporating metabolic energy supply.