THE WEB OF THE SPIDER AND NETWORKED INTELLIGENCE
Bradley York Bartholomew
In 2003, Grazyna Fosar & Franz Bludorf published Vernetzte Intelligenz [Networked Intelligence](1). In the simplest of terms they argue that there is a communication link-up in the DNA of all sentient beings (including plants) via magnetic wormholes at the subatomic level. These magnetic wormholes facilitate a hypercommunication of information (instantaneous transfer of information, zero time lag, so conventional terms of ‘time’ and ‘space’ no longer apply). This networked intelligence in the DNA is responsible for the individual consciousness of all sentient beings (including plants), and moreover it is responsible for group consciousness phenomena, including the ‘collective unconscious’ of Carl Gustav Jung.
It will be demonstrated in this article that this networked intelligence concept put forward by Fosar & Bludorf, can explain certain obscure remarks made by Denis Diderot in his celebrated philosophical work Le Rêve de d’Alembert [d’Alembert’s Dream]. In that work Diderot suggests that all of life is like a unified spider’s web. He also draws an analogy between our individual consciousness and our group consciousness and the apparent one-mindedness of a swarm of bees.
Before dealing in detail with what Diderot actually wrote, I shall succinctly list the various grounds upon which Fosar & Bludorf base their networked intelligence theory. Firstly, it has been discovered by a group of Russian scientists, led by Drs. P. Gariaev & V. Poponin, that the DNA has a mysterious resonance. These scientists beamed laser light through a DNA sample, which caused a certain wave pattern to appear on a screen at the rear. However, when the physical DNA sample was removed from the experiment, another wave pattern appeared on the screen at the rear as if there was still a physical sample of DNA present. This same experiment was repeated several times and the same results obtained. They termed this experiment the DNA Phantom Effect. There is some resonating energy in the DNA that is outside of the conventional four dimensional ‘space-time’ scenario.
The Russian scientists also found that the 95% plus of human DNA that does not code for protein synthesis, so-called ‘junk DNA’, is actually structured like a language, and would therefore be capable of information storage. Indeed it is possible to capture the information patterns in the genes using laser light, and then transfer those information patterns from one genome to another, without the need for the cutting and splicing of chemical genes. By simply transmitting the data via laser light to a different genome they were able to convert a frog embryo into a salamander embryo.
The Russian scientists came to the conclusion that the human chromosome acts as a solitonic-holographic computer. The resonance of the DNA is ‘solitonic’ in the sense that it consists of discreet pulsating waves that hold their precise shape and are therefore capable of both storing and transmitting information. This in addition to the findings of German scientist Fritz-Albert Popp (2), that the DNA emits natural light photons and acts as a superconductor at body temperature.
Fosar & Bludorf also base their networked intelligence theory on the findings of Finnish physicist, Matti Pitkänen. The thrust of his work was to assimilate quantum theory into biology, and he came to the conclusion that magnetized wormholes in the DNA at quantum level were the most likely candidates to be responsible for our perception. In addition Matti Pitkänen found that the DNA is capable of storing information in binary format by means of twisted and untwisted magnetic flux tubes.
The combined theories of the Russian scientists and Matti Pitkänen would therefore have us believe that the genome of all sentient beings (including plants) acts as a solitonic-holographic computer capable of storing and transmitting information in binary format that sets up our perception of an external world and gives us an individual as well as a group consciousness. These processes occur in the ‘substratum’, that is to say beneath our four dimensional ‘space-time’ reality, and do not involve the passing of time or movement in space in any conventional sense. It is a networked, and therefore a unified, intelligence that is at work in the substratum.
According to Fosar & Bludorf, this magnetic resonance in the DNA is capable of interacting with conventional electromagnetic forces in the external world, such as the geomagnetic resonance of the Earth and the Schumann resonance in the biosphere. In addition it is capable of directing and controlling our brain waves, and this is how it sets up our individual consciousness, and because there is hypercommunication of information at the DNA level amongst all sentient beings (including plants), it is capable of modulating and coordinating our activity as a group. At the conscious level we think we are all individuals that enjoy complete autonomy of action, but in fact our individual consciousness is only part of a greater group consciousness which unifies us all at the unconscious level.
Fosar & Bludorf give several examples of a group consciousness that can be created by the networked intelligence in the DNA. For instance, the ability of ants to act in concert, and the way termites building their nests seem to know exactly what they are required to do, even though they are actually blind. Conventional science is at a loss to explain the ability of these insects to act as a group, and often they can perform feats that would be impossible for human beings even with their seemingly more sophisticated means of communication and technology. However the ability of various species of insect to acts as a group can be readily explained on the basis that there is a hypercommunication of information at the DNA level.
In particular, Fosar & Bludorf quote a passage from a book by Lewis Carroll, Sylvie and Bruno, observing that a swarm of bees seem to display a single intelligence. Although there may be several hundred of them swarming together, there appears to be only one mind at work. The passage from Sylvie and Bruno follows, where a discussion takes place between the story teller, Lady Muriel and the Old Earl:
“You mentioned ‘division of labour’, just now,” I said. “Surely it is carried to a wonderful perfection in a hive of bees?”
“So wonderful – so entirely super-human – ” said the Earl, and so entirely inconsistent with the intelligence they show in other ways – that I feel no doubt at all that it is pure Instinct, and not, as some hold, a very high order of Reason. Look at the utter stupidity of a bee, trying to find its way out of an open window! It doesn’t try, in any reasonable sense of the word: it simply bangs itself about! We should call a puppy imbecile, that behaved so. And yet we are asked to believe that its intellectual level is above Sir Isaac Newton.!”
“Then you hold that pure Instinct contains no Reason at all?”
“On the contrary,” said the Earl, “I hold that the work of a bee-hive involves Reason of the highest order. But none of it is done by the Bee. God has reasoned it all out, and has put into the mind of the Bee the conclusions, only, of the reasoning process.”
“But how do their minds come to work together?” I asked.
“Special pleading, special pleading!” Lady Muriel cried, in a most unfilial tone of triumph. “Why, you yourself, said, just now, ‘the mind of the Bee’!”
“But I did not say ‘minds’,
my child,” the Earl gently replied. “It has occurred to me, as the most probable
solution of the ‘Bee’-mystery, that a swarm of Bees have only one mind among
them. We often see one mind animating a
most complex collection of limbs and organs, when joined together. How do we know that any material connection is
necessary? May not mere neighbourhood be
enough? If so, a swarm of bees is simply a
single animal whose many limbs are not quite close together!”
Denis Diderot in Le Rêve d’Alembert [d’Alembert’s
Dream] seems to argue that all the cells in the body have this same quality as a swarm of
bees in as much as they are connected in a unified intelligence network, and he goes on to
suggest that it may also be the same for all supposedly independent, autonomous animals,
such as humans and the lesser creatures, particularly bees.
In Diderot’s work Mademoiselle de L’Espinasse is relating d’Alembert’s
dream to Doctor Bordeu (3):
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASE: Listen: ‘A living point… No, that’s
wrong. Nothing at all to begin with, and then
a living point. This living point is joined by
another, and then another, and from these successive joinings there results a unified
being, for I am a unity, of that I am certain… (As he said this he felt himself all
over.) But how did this unity come about?’…
He fell silent, but after a moment he went on as though speaking to somebody: ‘Now
listen, Mr Philosopher, I can understand an aggregate, a tissue of tiny sensitive bodies,
but an animal!...A whole, a system that is a unit, an individual, conscious of its own
unity! I can’t see it, no, I can’t
see it.’… Well, he went on, addressing himself: ‘Friend D’Alembert,
mind how you go, you are assuming that there is only contiguity, whereas there is
continuity… Just as a globule of mercury joins up with another globule of mercury, so
a sensitive, living molecule joins up with another sensitive and living molecule. First there were two globules, but after contact
there is only one. The same sensitivity is
common to the whole mass. And why not? I can mentally divide the length of an animal fibre
into as many distinct parts as I like, but in fact that fibre will be continuous, all of a
piece, yes, all of a piece. Contact between
two homogenous molecules – perfectly homogenous – gives the continuity, and this
applies to the most complete union, cohesion, combination or identity imaginable…
Yes, Mr Philosopher, all very well if those molecules are simple and elementary, but
suppose they themselves are aggregates, compounds… The combination will still take
place, and consequently there will be identity and continuity… A wire of pure gold is
one comparison I remember his making, a homogenous network into the interstices of which
others fit to form, perhaps, a second network, a tissue of sensitive matter which is in
contact with the first and which assimilates active sensitivity here and inactive there
and passes it on like movement… So everything works together to produce a sort of
unity which is only found in the animal world… Really, if that isn’t what you
call truth it is very like it…’ After
this preamble he started shouting: …’Have you ever seen a swarm of bees leaving
their hive?... The world, or the general mass of matter, is the great hive… Have you
seen them fly away and form at the tip of a branch a long cluster of little winged
creatures, all clinging to each other by their feet? This
cluster is a being, an individual, a kind of living creature… But these clusters
should be all alike… Yes, if he admitted the existence of only one homogenous
substance… Have you seen them?... If one of those bees decides to pinch in some way
the bee it is hanging on to, what do you think will happen?... this second bee will pinch its neighbour, and that
throughout the entire cluster as many individual sensations will be provoked as there are
little creatures, and that the whole cluster will stir, move, change position and shape,
that a noise will be heard, the sound of their little cries, and that a person who had
never seen such a cluster form would be tempted to take if for a single creature with five
or six hundred heads and a thousand or twelve hundred wings.’
BORDEU: Look at your notes
and listen: ‘A man who took that cluster for an animal would be making a mistake.’…
‘Do you want him to give a more balanced opinion?
Do you want to change the cluster of bees into one individual animal? Soften the feet with which they cling to each
other, that is to say make them continuous instead of contiguous. Obviously there is a marked difference between this
new condition of the cluster and the preceding one, and what can this difference be if not
that it is now a whole, one and the same animal, whereas before it was a collection of
animals?…are only distinct animals kept by the law of continuity in a state of
general sympathy, unity, identity…’
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASE: After that gibberish of yours – or his –
he said: ‘Take this cluster of bees, there, you see it over there, and let us do an
experiment… Take your scissors; are they sharp?... Now carefully, very carefully,
bring your scissors to bear on these bees and cut them apart, but mind you don’t cut
through the middle of their bodies, cut exactly where their feet have grown together. Don’t be afraid, you will hurt them a little,
but you won’t kill them. Good – your
touch is as delicate as a fairy’s. Do you
observe how they fly off in different directions, one by one, two by two, three by three? What a lot there are!
Now if you have followed me…
BORDEU: Nothing simpler. ‘Suppose that these bees are
so tiny that the thick blade of your scissors always missed their bodies, in fact that you
can cut them up as small as you like without ever killing one, and that the whole mass,
composed of bees too small to be seen, will be a real polyp, that can be destroyed only by
crushing. The difference between the cluster
of continuous bees and the cluster of contiguous ones is precisely the same as that
between ordinary animals, such as ourselves or fish, and worms, serpents and polypous
creatures.’
It seems fairly clear that
Diderot is saying, as it is with a swarm of bees, so is it with us all. We all appear to be autonomous or contiguous
creatures but in reality we are all continuous. All
creatures can be likened to a unified swarm of bees. In
the discussion that takes place between Diderot and d’Alembert before the dream,
Diderot makes certain pointed observations about the indivisibility of the Universe. He seeks to explain all of life in terms of a
harmonious interplay of resonances, and all sentient beings as being the means by which
the resonances are played and recorded. ‘Thus if this sensitive and animated
clavichord were endowed with the further powers of feeding and reproducing itself, it
would be a living creature and engender from itself, or with its female, little
clavichords, alive and resonant… Thus there can come a moment of madness when a
sensitive clavichord imagines that it is the only one that has ever existed in the world,
and that all the harmony in the universe is being produced by it alone.’(3) Diderot
talks of a certain resonance, and suggests that in the last resort there is only this
resonance and nothing else. This resonance is
to be found in our DNA – it is the networked intelligence – a precise resonance
that is storing and transmitting data.
Diderot also draws on the
metaphor of the spider’s web to demonstrate the networked intelligence. Again Mademoiselle de L’Espinasse is talking
to Doctor Bordeu as d’Alembert sleeps (3):
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASSE:
Doctor, come nearer. Imagine a spider at the
centre of its web. Disturb a thread and you
will see the creature rush up on the alert. Now
suppose that those threads that the insect draws from its own body and draws in again at
will were a sensitive part of itself.
BORDEU: I follow you. You
are assuming the existence inside yourself, in some part of the brain, for example the
part we call the meninges, of one or more points to which are signalled all the sensations
produced anywhere along the threads.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASSE: That’s it.
BORDEU: Your idea is as sound as could be, but don’t
you see that it is roughly the same thing as a certain swarm of bees?
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASE: Ah, so it is. I
have been speaking prose without really realizing it!
BORDEU: And very good prose, too, as you are about to see. Anyone who only knows man in the form he presents
at birth doesn’t know anything about him at all.
Man’s head, feet, hands, all his limbs, his viscera, his organs, nose,
eyes, ears, heart, lungs, intestines, muscles, bones, nerves, membranes are really nothing
more than crude extensions of a network which takes form, grows, extends and throws out a
multitude of imperceptible threads.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASSE: Back to my web; and the starting-point of all those
threads is my spider.
BORDEU: Exactly.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASSE: Where are the threads? And where does the spider live?
BORDEU: The threads are everywhere; there isn’t a
single point on the surface of your body that is not the terminus of one of them, and the
spider lurks in a part of your brain I have already mentioned, the meninges, which can
scarcely be touched without reducing the whole organism to unconsciousness.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASSE: But if the smallest speck of matter makes one
thread of the web vibrate, the spider is alerted, excited and darts here or there. At the centre she is conscious of what is going on
at any point in the huge mansion she has woven. Why
don’t I know what is going on in my own system or in the world at large, since I am a
bundle of sensitive particles and everything is touching me and I am touching everything
else?
BORDEU: Because messages weaken in proportion to the
distance they come from.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASSE: Yet if there is the very gentlest tap on the end of
a long rod I can hear it if my ear is applied to the other end. Even if that rod had one end on earth and the other
on Sirius, the same phenomenon would be produced. If
everything were interconnected and contiguous, as in the rod if it really existed, why can’t
I hear whatever is going on in the limitless spaces around me – especially if I
listen attentively?
BORDEU: And who has suggested that you can’t, to a
greater or lesser degree? But the distance is
so great, the initial impression so weak and so confused on its way by others, and you are
surrounded and deafened by so much violent and varied din.
In particular, between Saturn and you there are only contiguous bodies, and
not continuous, as there should be.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASSE: That seems a pity.
BORDEU: True. Were
it otherwise you would be God. Though your
oneness with all the beings in nature you would know everything that is going on, and
thanks to your memory you would know everything that has been.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASSE: And will be?
BORDEU: As for the future, you could make some very shrewd
guesses, but they would be subject to correction. It
is just as if you were trying to guess what is going to happen inside you, or at the
extremity of your foot or hand.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASSE: But how do you know that the whole world hasn’t
its meninges, or that there isn’t a big or little spider in some corner of space with
threads extending everywhere?
BORDEU: Nobody knows, but still less does anybody know
whether there has been one or will be one in the future.
MADEMOISELLE DE L’ESPINASSE: But how could a God like that –
BORDEU: The only conceivable kind of God –
This passage about the
spider’s web is perhaps one of the most famous aspects of Diderot’s work. He was writing at a time when nothing was known
about genetics. It is only since 2003 that this theory about the networked intelligence in
the DNA has emerged. And yet once we re-read
Diderot’s words, with the knowledge of the possibility that the genome of all living
creatures (including plants) may be linked in an intelligence network, it is difficult to
see what on earth Diderot could be talking about, if not precisely that.
NOTES
1. Grazyna Fosar and Franz Bludorf. Vernetzte Intelligenz
[Networked Intelligence].
2. Rattemeyer M., F.A. Popp, and W. Nagel. Evidence of photon emission from DNA in living systems. Naturwissen 68 (1981): 572.
3. Denis Diderot. Rameau’s
Nephew and D’Alembert’s Dream.