On Man and Reality
Part 4: The Sentient Organism

Sentience - an Evolutionary Miracle
A Sentient Organism is one that has the capacity to be aware of what is going on around it and to respond appropriately. In our World, animals are the classic example.

It took life evolution three billion years to come up with animals. To make them possible, it first had to produce an atmosphere that made it feasible to energise macro-organisms. It then had to produce an organism capable of using sentience as an aid to survival. Apart from supplying the complex energising apparatus required to support a large organism, this entailed creating in its body, sense organs, a brain and a nervous system. A mind had to be added to turn the electrical impulses generated by its brain into sensory inputs that were meaningful to its Being. That Being had to evolve the capacity to turn-on emotions, such as fear, pleasure and pain, as appropriate, in response to these signals. Instincts had to be introduced that would cause the appropriate emotion to be triggered and the appropriate action to be stimulated – flee, fight, eat, sleep, communicate, mate, etc. On top of all that, genes had to be upgraded to provide means of evolving and perpetuating all of these essential animal attributes.

Now that all these essentials are in place, we take them for granted. However, when one considers the extraordinary challenges that had to be overcome in concert, it is impossible not to be awe-struck by the miraculous nature of evolution’s achievement.

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One Man's View - Robin A McQueen