Consciousness and Liquid Crystals

Consciousness is probably related to the liquid crystalline physical state of animal brains.

Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz’s “Nova Aurigae.” Photo from WikiArt. Public domain.

“In this scheme of things consciousness is an emergent property of the liquid crystal, which need be no more mysterious than the ‘wateryness’ of water or the ‘colour’ associated with a wavelength.”

— R. K. Mishra, “The ‘Mind’ — Brain Relation: A Physical Analogy” (1965)

Contents

∘ States of Matter
∘ Universality and Aesthetics
∘ Excitement
∘ Learning and Knowledge
∘ Fluidity, Disorder, Dynamism and Learning in Idioms
∘ Solidness, Order, Stasis and Knowledge in Idioms
∘ Works Cited

States of Matter

The liquid crystallinity, ordered fluidity and dynamic stasis of living matter and especially brains is evident in the way other parts of the local universe exist exclusively in either fluid or frozen states and can therefore only freeze or melt, respectively, while life and brains can participate in both transitions. There’s a range of environmental temperatures at which we don’t melt into a dynamic, chaotic fluid or freeze into a…