Department of Microvita Sciences

Introduction: Microvita, a renaissance of the Action Principle of physics, with applications in biochemistry and medicine

Despite breakthrough advances in fields such as paleobiology, biochemistry and genetics, the deeper origin and nature of life remain enigmatic. For example, the swiftness at which beneficial mutations appear to have spread in an entire population (fixation) is unexplained. Techniques such as fast sequencing and Crispr-Cas, while showing great insight and skill, at the same time reveal once more the perplexing complexity of the machinery of life at a fundamental level, for which there exists no integrative approach or model.

It is a trend especially in science, to consider that which we can’t detect directly as not evidence based, and therefore irrelevant. We forget however that an obvious and seemingly visceral concept such as “energy” is entirely abstract. Even few physicists realize that energy cannot be measured – it is an inferred, entirely abstract quantity that turns out to be conserved during a physical process or interaction¹.

A yet greater and more comprehensive abstraction than energy, widely introduced in physics but less known to the general public is that of “action”, that is, the Action Principle (resp. Principle of Least Action). In the words of Jean le Rond d’Alembert, an 18th. century French philosopher, “If one could grasp the whole Universe from one viewpoint, it would appear, if it is permitted to say this, as a unique fact and a great truth”². The Action Principle presents just such a grasp of the Universe, allowing to formulate laws of physics purely based on mathematics. However, famous physicist Louis de Broglie, in his ground breaking and Nobel winning 1924 paper noted: “Nevertheless, action is a very abstract notion, and as a consequence of much reflection on light quanta and the photoelectric effect, we have returned to statements on energy as fundamental, and ceased to question why action plays a large role in so many issues”³. This, in fact is a visionary statement on how physics, and arguably science in general has developed over the century since.

Our present challenge is therefore to extend this idea, that same “grasp on the Universe”, not only to physics, but to include life itself.

Such a renaissance of the Action Principle, especially (but not exclusively) aimed at biochemistry and genetics, as well as psychology and sociology, was proposed by the contemporary Indian philosopher and social revolutionary Shrii P.R. Sarkar (1921-1990), which he referred to as “Microvita”. It would be fair to recognize that besides the very detailed, purely “technical” aspects Sarkar applied a considerable deal of psychology obviously to break away from the prevailing (scientific) doctrine which is motivated by seeking self-consistency rather than seeking truth. P.R. Sarkar’s Microvita Theory, which is based on vastly deepened and extended application of the Action Principle is, in his own words, a “new line of thinking”, both with regard to philosophy and physics, and evidently with regard to bio-chemistry.

It’s ramifications, challenges and opportunities in said fields are many and far-reaching, as detailed in Sarkar’s collected discourses, “Microvitum in a Nutshell”⁴. Sarkar empathically states that microvita should be studied in the mind (intuitional science) and in the lab (physical science).

Researchers are invited and encouraged to submit papers to help forward Microvita Science and its practical uses in said fields, as well as in medicine, agriculture and environmental care. The proposed properties of microvita (referred below) can serve as a framework and guideline. A physics-oriented paper⁵, published by The Gazette of Medical Sciences, shows how an extended interpretation of the Action Principle (through a moderate re-interpretation of the quantum field’s self-interaction) could explain not only mass but also structure in the sub-atomic and atomic world.

Sarkar proposed various types (positive, negative, neutral), categories (detectability levels) and classes (functionalities) of microvita. The various types are depicted below.