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Chimeras and ConsciousnessEvolution of the Sensory Self$
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Chimeras and Consciousness: Evolution of the Sensory Self

Lynn Margulis, Celeste A. Asikainen, and Wolfgang E. Krumbein

Print publication date: 2011

Print ISBN-13: 9780262015394

Published to MIT Press Scholarship Online: August 2013

DOI: 10.7551/mitpress/9780262015394.001.0001

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PRINTED FROM MIT PRESS SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.mitpress.universitypressscholarship.com). (c) Copyright The MIT Press, 2021. All Rights Reserved. An individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in MITSO for personal use.date: 22 October 2021

Evolutionary Illumination

Evolutionary Illumination

Chapter:
(p.128) (p.129) 11 Evolutionary Illumination
Source:
Chimeras and Consciousness
Author(s):

Peter Warshall

Publisher:
The MIT Press
DOI:10.7551/mitpress/9780262015394.003.0012

This chapter reviews the evolution of life forms that sense, respond to, and exploit various wavelengths of life-sustaining light. It discusses the photosensitive systems that have specialized in environmental information. This chapter shows that photosensory systems evolved to perform different functions. It draws the major environmental and biological events in the photo-biological history of the planet: prebiotic molecules, Archean bacterial photosynthesis, bacterial chlorophyll, protest symbioses and accessory pigments, invasion of land by embryophytes, and the revolution in image formation that occurred during the Cambrian period. It demonstrates that the color-signal overlap between species helped integrate ecosystems and, in turn, fostered progressively subtler color patterns, visual apparatuses, discriminating awareness, and analytic evaluations of what is illusion and what is real.

Keywords:   life, light, photosensitive systems, photosensory systems, prebiotic molecules, bacterial photosynthesis, bacterial chlorophyll, illusion

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