The Emergence of Perspective: III. The Organism Becomes a Centre

A living organism is affected by its environment.

But it is not affected in just any way.

Its organisation determines which differences matter, and those differences in turn affect what the organism does. Nutrients are taken up. Damage is repaired. Conditions are regulated. Threats are avoided. Opportunities are exploited.

The organism is beginning to look less like a thing located somewhere and more like a centre of activity.

But what does that mean?

It does not mean that there is a little command centre inside the organism. There is no inner manager receiving reports from the senses and issuing instructions to the body.

The centre is the organisation itself.

An organism continually acts to preserve a particular organisation through changing circumstances. Its activities converge upon its continued existence, while its surroundings continually impinge upon those activities.

This gives the organism a peculiar kind of unity.

A rock can be pushed, heated or broken, but there is no ongoing organisation of the rock around the preservation of its own existence. A living system, by contrast, continually works to remain the kind of system it is.

Its parts therefore acquire their significance through their contribution to the whole.

A membrane separates an inside from an outside. Metabolism transforms materials. Regulation compensates for changes. Repair restores damaged structures. Reproduction extends the organisation beyond the individual.

None of these processes needs an inner observer.

Yet together they establish something remarkably close to what we ordinarily mean by a point of view: things happen to this organism, and some of those things make a difference to what this organism can continue to do.

The phrase to this organism is doing important work.

It does not designate a hidden subject behind the organism. It designates the organism's particular organisation and history.

A temperature change matters because of what this organism can tolerate. A chemical gradient matters because of what this organism can metabolise. A movement matters because of what this organism can pursue or avoid.

The centre is therefore not a point in space.

It is a centre of significance.

This also helps explain why the emergence of a centre is not the same thing as the emergence of consciousness.

A plant can coordinate an extraordinary range of activities without possessing a nervous system. A single-celled organism can alter its behaviour according to changing conditions. Even very simple organisms can maintain themselves through continuous exchanges with their surroundings.

So we should resist the temptation to draw a line too early.

The question is not:

When did nature put a mind inside an organism?

It is:

When did organised life become capable of being oriented within a world?

That question shifts our attention from an inner observer to a relation.

An organism has a centre because its activities are organised around the continuation of its own form of life. Its environment acquires significance in relation to that organisation.

And once there is a centre of this kind, something else becomes possible.

The organism need not merely be affected by its surroundings.

It can begin to distinguish them.

It can become sensitive to differences that matter, respond selectively to them, and alter its activity accordingly.

The organism begins to find its way through its world.

The next step is therefore not yet seeing.

It is sensing.