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Scientists elucidate the astounding collective sensory capacity of
Earth and its evolution through time. Chimeras and Consciousness
begins the inquiry into the evolution of the collective
sensitivities of life. Scientist-scholars from a range of
fields-including biochemistry, cell biology, history of science,
family therapy, genetics, microbial ecology, and primatology-trace
the emergence and evolution of consciousness. Complex behaviors and
the social imperatives of bacteria and other life forms during
3,000 million years of Earth history gave rise to mammalian
cognition. Awareness and sensation led to astounding activities;
millions of species incessantly interacted to form our planet's
complex conscious system. Our planetmates, all of them conscious to
some degree, were joined only recently by us, the aggressive modern
humans. From social bacteria to urban citizens, all living beings
participate in community life. Nested inside families within
communities inside ecosystems, each metabolizes, takes in matter,
expends energy, and excretes. Each of the members of our own and
other species, in groups with incessantly shifting alliances,
receives and processes information. Mergers of radically different
life forms with myriad purposes-the "chimeras" of the
title-underlie dramatic metamorphosis and other positive
evolutionary change. Since early bacteria avoided, produced, and
eventually used oxygen, Earth's sensory systems have expanded and
complexified. The provocative essays in this book, going far beyond
science but undergirded by the finest science, serve to put
sensitive, sensible life in its cosmic context.
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