- Title Pages
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
-
Introduction: Life’s Sensibilities -
1 Valuable Viruses -
2 More Like a Waterfall -
3 Alarmones -
4 Early Sensibilities -
5 Smart Bacteria -
6 Ancient Architects -
7 Others -
8 Nested Communities -
9 Cosmic Rhythms of Life -
10 Life’s Tectonics -
11 Evolutionary Illumination -
12 Symbiogenesis in Russia -
13 From Movement to Sensation -
14 Packaging DNA -
15 Lemurs and Split Chromosomes -
16 Interspecies Hybrids -
17 Origins of the Immune System -
18 Medical Symbiotics -
19 Animal Consciousness -
20 Brains and Symbols -
21 Thermodynamics and Thought -
22 “I Know Who You Are; I Know Where You Live” -
23 Cultural Networks - Bibliography
-
Appendix A: Major Groups of Living Organisms -
Appendix B: The International Geological Time Scale (Time-Rock Divisions) - Glossary
- About the Authors
- Index
- [UNTITLED]
Evolutionary Illumination
Evolutionary Illumination
- Chapter:
- (p.128) (p.129) 11 Evolutionary Illumination
- Source:
- Chimeras and Consciousness
- Author(s):
Peter Warshall
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
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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- Title Pages
- Foreword
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
-
Introduction: Life’s Sensibilities -
1 Valuable Viruses -
2 More Like a Waterfall -
3 Alarmones -
4 Early Sensibilities -
5 Smart Bacteria -
6 Ancient Architects -
7 Others -
8 Nested Communities -
9 Cosmic Rhythms of Life -
10 Life’s Tectonics -
11 Evolutionary Illumination -
12 Symbiogenesis in Russia -
13 From Movement to Sensation -
14 Packaging DNA -
15 Lemurs and Split Chromosomes -
16 Interspecies Hybrids -
17 Origins of the Immune System -
18 Medical Symbiotics -
19 Animal Consciousness -
20 Brains and Symbols -
21 Thermodynamics and Thought -
22 “I Know Who You Are; I Know Where You Live” -
23 Cultural Networks - Bibliography
-
Appendix A: Major Groups of Living Organisms -
Appendix B: The International Geological Time Scale (Time-Rock Divisions) - Glossary
- About the Authors
- Index
- [UNTITLED]