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Rating: 
Summary: A LONG TIME COMING!
Review: Finally a science writer who pokes beneath the surface of cells and neurons to explore how the quantum realm affects man's evolution and consciousness-a long time coming. McFadden wades right inside the cell, the DNA, RNA, proteins and enzymes. He put all this in the form of a story for the layman but kept all the jargon for his colleagues. While you read his story you can soak up a basic education in biology. For example he suggests that both the animal's mitochondrion and the plant's chloroplasts started as independent bacteria before symbiotically hitching up with the animal and plant .McFadden explains that a unmeasured quantum state remains only a possibility and that to join the real world a quantum state must be measured. He dives right into Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and asserts that it is a fundamental property of matter. His most creative position is that the living cell can measure its own internal state. He clearly defines his notion of life as a cellular system that can perform internal quantum measurement to replicate, thus providing order as a means of avoiding decay or an increase in entropy. He demands that to stay alive a cell must accomplish the directed action of replication. His cursory happy ending supporting man's free will was amusing. His stab at explaining consciousness as brain waves was impressive though incomplete. Where he got bogged down was with exaggerating the importance of spoken language. He seemed to say that one could never know whether a mute or a baby could be conscious or not. This notion contradicted his thesis that consciousness springs from the a cellular, quantum fountain of measurement and replication.
Rating:
Summary: A LONG TIME COMING!
Review: Finally a science writer who pokes beneath the surface of cells and neurons to explore how the quantum realm affects man's evolution and consciousness-a long time coming. McFadden wades right inside the cell, the DNA, RNA, proteins and enzymes. He put all this in the form of a story for the layman but kept all the jargon for his colleagues. While you read his story you can soak up a basic education in biology. For example he suggests that both the animal's mitochondrion and the plant's chloroplasts started as independent bacteria before symbiotically hitching up with the animal and plant . McFadden explains that a unmeasured quantum state remains only a possibility and that to join the real world a quantum state must be measured. He dives right into Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and asserts that it is a fundamental property of matter. His most creative position is that the living cell can measure its own internal state. He clearly defines his notion of life as a cellular system that can perform internal quantum measurement to replicate, thus providing order as a means of avoiding decay or an increase in entropy. He demands that to stay alive a cell must accomplish the directed action of replication. His cursory happy ending supporting man's free will was amusing. His stab at explaining consciousness as brain waves was impressive though incomplete. Where he got bogged down was with exaggerating the importance of spoken language. He seemed to say that one could never know whether a mute or a baby could be conscious or not. This notion contradicted his thesis that consciousness springs from the a cellular, quantum fountain of measurement and replication.
Rating: 
Summary: Starts excellent ends disappointingly
Review: The first 138 pages of this book are pretty darn good. McFadden shows how evolution, particularly Darwinian evolution can not have occurred as we hypothesize. He drops the ideology of naturalism and admits quite plainly that cells have order, DNA is information, and there was not enough time to even make a simple cell. I found myself cheering the author on; the intellectual honesty in the first half of the book is breathtaking. The writing and science is lucid, cogent and compelling to the points. But then the unthinkable happens in an otherwise fine book. McFadden leaves his trained discipline of molecular genetics and wanders into quantum mechanics. This is when the book takes a turn for the worse. The major problems become evident, it states with the authors understanding of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. He seems to have defined HUP correctly but his application is incorrect. He than carries on this incorrect application forward and creates a hypothesis based upon a fallacy. The interesting and somewhat paradoxical point is that the author could shed his ideology of naturalism in his field of science but had to reinsert his presuppositions into a field that he is not trained for. Therefore nullifying what could have been a fantastic breakthrough in evolutionary thought. I hope others follow in his footsteps but decide to make the bold connections that are seemingly present while throwing of the constraints of ideology. Overall the first part of the book is great in understanding that a paradigm shift must be made if the evolutionary hypothesis is to remain salient. If these shifts are not adopted we may see the Darwinian evolutionist go down in history as ideological frauds much like the flat-earthers. The second part of the book is lacking due to a misunderstanding of Quantum Mechanics and trying to force science to fit a philosophical ideology.
Rating: 
Summary: Quantum Evolution
Review: This is a very clearly written book and overall quality of it is just great. The H.U.P. explanation is just amazing and better than almost any other I have encountered. The book is easily understood if you never had any biology courses in high school, but if you did, all the better. Some explanation of quantum phenomena are way more clearer than those of Brian Greene's in elegant universe, and it's definetly one of a kind.
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