Microvita Theory (P.R. Sarkar)

I. Introduction

There is a persistent gap between physics and the emergence of life and individual consciousness. As this is not because these phenomena necessarily lie outside physics, it could be that current methodology does not adequately account for the kinds of physical organization through which they occur. These could, for example, include forms that cannot be fully captured quantitatively alone.

This suggests that the difficulty may not lie in the phenomena themselves. In particular, what appears as a fundamental divide between conscious experience and physical processes may reflect an incomplete way of interpreting the latter, rather than a genuine ontological discontinuity.

The so-called “hard problem” of consciousness can be seen in this light (Chalmers, 1995). It arises from the expectation that experience is entirely derived from processes in the brain, while at the same time treating what is qualitative as necessarily subjective, and therefore as lying outside the domain of physical inquiry. However, that which is already objectively perceived, even while qualitative in nature, need not therefore be expelled from inquiry, nor was its subjectiveness ever compelled by physics. Instead, qualitativeness may point toward categories not presently articulated within physical theory. If certain configurations are both qualitative and objectively present, the apparent divide between physical processes and experience may reflect inadequate or missing classifications rather than a fundamental gap.

However, a deeper complication lies in the ambiguity of the term “consciousness” itself. It is often used to refer both to individual experience and to what underlies the possibility of experience. When this distinction is not explicit, questions about consciousness risk conflating different categories: the enabling factor may become tacitly absorbed into experience itself, thereby causing the latter to appear ontologically discontinuous from physical reality.

At the same time, related tensions are already present within physics. Questions ranging from the emergence of classical behavior from quantum systems and the role of the observer, to the status of gravitation and the so-called dark sector indicate that key concepts in physics remain unresolved. An impulse toward ontology in physics does not arise from within physics itself, but is a human-cultural one. It is prompted, however, when attempts to extend physics beyond its present scope — as indicated by the tensions encountered — no longer sustain a purely instrumental interpretation.

Taken together, these considerations suggest that what is missing is not a new class of phenomena, but a form of organization that is not reducible through local quantification, yet not external to physical theory either. A natural way to approach this is to expand physical legibility by considering an intermediate domain, situated between the ordinary dynamical categories in physics, and specialized regimes characteristic of life and conscious experience.

Re-examining the premises of the hard problem, while retaining the deeper categorial distinctions, thus opens a line of inquiry that extends physics without requiring additional metaphysical postulates. Such a domain would not introduce fundamentally new ingredients, but would instead provide a way of understanding how viable processes close into stable, self-consistent forms. In biological systems, such closure appears through tightly integrated sensorimotor organization; more generally, it marks the point at which physical dynamics become self-consistent and capable of coherent, organized behavior.

The aim of this work is to explore this possibility and to examine how such a domain might be developed within a broadened, yet still physical, framework.

II. Closing a Structural Gap in Physical Theory

Developing new categories for deeper legibility in physics reveals that biological forms occupy a uniquely intermediary role, situated not only between the physical micro- and macrocosmic scales, but also between ordinary dynamical categories in physics and the organized regimes through which life and conscious experience become manifest.

Biology's role becomes evident through its sensorimotoric closure. The perception side has been approached as qualitative without therefore being subjective. Motoric expression, by contrast, is quantitative in its very mode of operation, since it must resolve into directed, measurable activity. The deeper significance of the sensorimotoric apparatus, however, lies in the fact that the two sides cannot reasonably be considered as merely instrumentally linked: the quality of awareness and quantitative expression form a dynamic, experientially closed circuit. In this light, the motoric side cannot be treated as simply objective in the ordinary physical sense. Its quantitativeness is instead part of an intrinsic and more comprehensive energetic organization of biological systems.

The manifest world, which cognitively developed biology reads as a classical, differentiated physical reality, possessing ontological status in and of itself, may, from this expanded physical vantage, signify a systematic, bifurcated manifestation of a deeper, degenerate continuity. What stabilizes as closure-sensitive equilibrium in biology itself might equally be traced back to known categories across a much broader physical spectrum.

This extended reading suggests that closure-sensitive regimes are not restricted to biological forms. Rather, biology progressively consolidates and radicalizes the broader bifurcative spectrum into a fully reciprocal closure, while, in principle, remaining legible as an extended physical category. The broader physical spectrum thus already exhibits a wide range of viable structures, from atomic and molecular stability, to bio-molecules, to large-scale cosmological structure. While these regimes differ profoundly in structure and complexity, they nevertheless suggest that physical reality may itself emerge through varying forms of bifurcative stabilization.

From this perspective, local physical forms need not be understood as reflecting an ontological discontinuity. Rather, they may indicate a degenerate progression, tentatively extending between Lorentz-invariant regimes and what may be understood as an underlying actional or S²-oriented framework. Physically, this could include, for example, stable configurations in the bio-chemical domain, associated with molecular conformation and bio-molecular structure.

III. Toward an Intermediate Domain

In June 1989, Shrii P.R. Sarkar convened a small garden meeting that would later become known as the ‘blackboard session', and which formed the culminating chapter of a series of discourses on Microvita Theory initiated in January 1987.

In the course of the 2.5 years leading up to this scholarly meeting, Sarkar’s Microvita series developed what appears to be a novel cosmological orientation, covering topics ranging from psycho-spiritual and devotional concerns to increasingly physics-adjacent exploration. What complicates a comprehensive reading is not only the sheer breadth and conceptual novelty of the material, which by itself does not strongly constrain interpretation, but also the fact that the surviving transcriptions of this largely oral tradition require careful scholarly scrutiny.

In order that the Microvita framework may help articulate the missing intermediate domain between physics and the emergence of life and individual consciousness, it is approached here not primarily through the classification of hypothetical microscopic living entities, nor as a ready-made scientific doctrine, but as a partially stabilized cosmological vocabulary converging remarkably well with known deep physical categories.

The following scheme formed the culmination of the series and is taken verbatim from its publication:

(A) subjective relates to and controls (B) objective, and (B) subjective relates to and controls (A) objective.

A few remarks may help orient the present reading:

The qualitative versus quantitative, and objective versus subjective categories developed throughout the preceding philosophical and physical sections become recognizable in this highly condensed table. It suggests that the latter should not primarily be read as a metaphysical classification, but as an attempt to capture the extended relations between “knowing” and “doing” orientations within a physics-adjacent picture. The four Faculties of Sarkar's Microvita-based cosmology appear to align strikingly well with the bifurcative and closure-sensitive model developed here (Sarkar, 1989).

In particular, upon closer examination, it becomes apparent that the “Known” pole or faculty concerns that which is directly perceived, namely (A) Obj., rather than that which is understood or inferentially reconstructed. The latter clearly identifies (B) Obj., the quantitative physical category which Sarkar annotates as the “Done” portion.

Whatever the eventual scientific status of the Microvita framework, the physical and ontological questions it raises appear increasingly difficult to ignore. In this sense, Sarkar’s call to initiate systematic research into these domains may today be read less as a doctrinal program than as a still unresolved scientific and philosophical challenge.

IV. Outlook

The conceptual novelty of both the philosophical and physical background developed here, as well as P.R. Sarkar’s Microvita Theory, indeed pose a considerable research challenge: namely, whether an intermediate domain may exist between physics, life and individual consciousness.

While an (A)-axis has been identified in relatively straightforward sensorimotoric terms, its operational Faculties invert conventional epistemic distinctions between 'subjective' and 'objective', revealing its distinct ontological status. This inversion does not apply to the bifurcative or (B)-axis, proposed here as a degenerate continuum, through which conventional epistemic intuition primarily operates.

However, the corresponding Faculties of the latter remained comparatively underexposed. This may not be unrelated to the fact that the (B)-axis appears to form the deeper physical spine of the unified scheme. Not surprisingly, Sarkar suggests that “(B) objective is the field of external laboratory research.”

In contrast, the subjective Faculties would belong to the field of “psycho-spiritual laboratory research”. Importantly, this differs from claiming that such domains are unrelated to physics altogether — hence still the “laboratory” cue.

While the quantitative side, which was carefully approached here through motoric expression, can no longer be treated as simply objective, Sarkar directly identifies (A) Subj. both as “Knowing Principle” and as “Expressed energies...” (ref. Four Chambers scheme). This appears to capture its ontological subjectivity as a conserving resp. conserved condition that is itself not directly measurable, but rather deduced through measurement within (B) Obj. — a distinction which even physics may not always fully appreciate.

A similar observation may apply to the qualitative side, that is specifically (B) Subj., identified as “Doing principle or supra-mundane seed of the actional principle”. Here, another important connection with physics becomes difficult to ignore. While energy appears in physics as a conserved quantity, the Action Principle instead concerns the stationarity of dynamic trajectories in physical systems. Importantly, “Action” in this context does not imply external or Newtonian action, but rather an integral formulation governing the admissible evolution of physical systems as a whole. Indeed, it is among the deepest and most powerful organizing principles in modern physics, even if often regarded primarily as a mathematical convenience.

The same may also be approached from a more explicitly physical perspective, emphasizing the qualitative and quantitative dimensions as operative sides of the unified scheme:

In modern physics, Noether’s theorem had already placed Action at the center of lawful — or indeed qualitative — conservation relations, even if its deeper ontological status has remained comparatively unresolved ever since (Noether, 1918). As Louis de Broglie noted already in his seminal 1924 paper:

“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.” — Louis de Broglie

It is therefore striking that Sarkar places it in precisely this register: “… maintaining the balance of the actional universe.”